THE BURGUNDIANS
BART VAN LOO, TRANS. NANCY FOREST-FLIER A VANISHED EMPIRE: A HISTORY 1111 OF YEARS AND ONE DAY
Apollo, 624pp, £30
Bart Van Loo’s history of the Burgundian Empire has proved a publishing sensation in Europe, having sold 230,000 copies in hardback, and was described in Le
Soir as ‘a history book that reads like a thriller’. The Burgundian ‘empire’ lasted from 1369 until 1477, when it was absorbed into the Habsburg Empire. Yet, as Dominic Sandbrook explained in his Sunday Times review, ‘Burgundy was never a kingdom in its own right, but an autonomous grey area, uneasily poised between France, England and the Holy Roman Empire.’
It benefited from French monarchical weakness, but it was also an economic powerhouse, encompassing dynamic, urbanised Flanders. ‘A complicated story, then – but a thrillingly colourful and entertaining one too. Stuffed with elaborate feasts and bloody battles, Van Loo’s book has been an enormous success in his native Belgium and it’s easy to see why. He has clearly done his research, but wears his learning lightly and keeps the emphasis firmly on story and character. If there’s any justice, a blockbuster TV series awaits.’
Simon Sebag Montefiore chose it as one of the Books of the Year in Aspects of History magazine. It is ‘a thrilling narrative of the brutal dazzlingly rich wildly ambitious duchy that was the most advanced and sophisticated economy and the most extravagant flashy court of its time,’ he wrote. ‘Filled with flamboyant murderous and debauched dukes, courtesans, courtiers and maniacs, it is a total pleasure to read.’
Burgundy still owes a debt to its great medieval dukes
In the Times, Paul Lay explained that Burgundy’s ‘name was eradicated in the 18th century only to resurface as a regional council in 1972…Yet Burgundy still owes a debt to its great medieval dukes, who form the heart of Van Loo’s entertaining study. For its wine, among the finest and most expensive in the world, is the fruit of the pinot noir grape that Philip the Bold promoted in his Great Wine Law of 1395. There are worse legacies.’
And in the New Statesman, Michael Prodger welcomed Van Loo’s ‘lively, anecdotal unpicking of this fascinating but nebulous entity’, and concluded that ‘if we have reached peak Tudor, the Burgundians are even more rewarding’.