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Tag Archives: Roman Empire
Byzantium: The Decline and Fall
The last in the series is an ever-more dizzying whirligig of passing characters and incidents, few of them with enough purchase for this to be more than a shallow parade. Maybe that is the nature of the subject matter, given … Continue reading
Byzantium: The Apogee
Second volume: more of the same, equally entertaining and well-written, with the same caveats. Most monstrous character: Basil the Macedonian, who maneuvered himself from stable boy to imperial confidant to Michael III, murdered the emperor’s uncle (who had effectively been … Continue reading
Posted in read
Tagged book review, Byzantium, Greek Orthodox, Istanbul, Roman Empire
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Byzantium: The Early Centuries
John Julius Norwich, author of this history of the Eastern Roman Empire from the founding of Constantinople in 330 until the coronation in 800 in Rome by the Pope of Charlemagne as rival Emperor of the West, is a jolly … Continue reading
Posted in read
Tagged book review, Byzantium, Greek Orthodox, Istanbul, Roman Empire
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Istanbul: The Imperial City
This book about Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, by the American teacher John Freely, is a curious read. It purports to be a chronological history of the city, yet is in fact mostly a string of anecdotes about the doings of its sometime rulers … Continue reading
back to Byzantium
Once again in Istanbul: Asia to the left, Europe to the right, with the Sea of Marmara in the background and the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia on the hill: By the Marmara shore, this is all that remains of … Continue reading
the man who invented Europe
On Sunday afternoon, Aachen is a quietly typical German bourgeois town, with a brass band playing in the Cathedral square and teenagers wearing t-shirts emblazoned with legends like NEW YORK FUCKING CITY. It has hot springs, which, along with its … Continue reading
Posted in road
Tagged Aachen, Byzantium, central Europe, Charlemagne, church, Germany, Holy Roman Empire, Roman Empire
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48 hours in Moravia
On into Moravia, the other half of the Czech lands. Long vistas of rolling land, field and heath and forests that are just as cool and dense and lush, if a little more coniferous than in Bohemia. At a small … Continue reading
Posted in road
Tagged Brno, central Europe, Czech Republic, death, Moravia, Olomouc, Roman Empire, Soviet empire, TelĨ
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Dresden: the Saxon one percent
Upstairs in the Royal Palace of the Kings of Saxony is a spectacular collection of Ottoman weaponry, from the days when the Turks had Hungary and threatened Vienna. Downstairs, the so-called Green Vault: two floors of unbelievable and unnecessary trinkature … Continue reading
Posted in misery for the many, freedom for the few, road
Tagged central Europe, Dresden, Germany, Mughal, Ottoman, religion, Roman Empire, Saxony
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home soil
I landed in London at 6 in the morning. People are really friendly. Everything moves slowly, and there seems so much space and time between objects. Almost nobody employed in London, apart from the guys with the green fluorescent waistcoats … Continue reading
Posted in England, someone's England, road
Tagged British Museum, classical art, Egypt, England, Greece, London, Roman Empire
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Byzantium by bus
And so, 30 years after I first conceived the ambition while turning right at Thessaloniki, I came not sailing but on a highway bus (aware, always, of the tyre-tracks of history) to Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium. The rain had cleared and we descended … Continue reading
Posted in anybody up there?, road
Tagged Byzantium, church, Greek Orthodox, Islam, Istanbul, mosque, Ottoman, religion, Roman Empire, Thrace, Turkey
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