EMPIRES OF THE SEA
Roger Crowley (Faber and Faber, £20)
Plunging back nearly 500 years into the history of the Ottoman empire, this is a glorious achievement in classical hands. As with his previous book on the siege of Constantinople, Crowley has taken up sword and scimitar to give an entralling account of East and West duelling for supremacy in the wide blue expanse of the Mediterranean. And what a stage! Malta, Gibraltar, Rhodes, Tunis, Cyprus and of course exotic Istanbul.
The years 1521 to 1580 represented an extraordianry era of conflicting interests between Christian forces and Islamic idealists with the future of Europe at stake. It was punctuated by raids, campaigns and battles, finally leading to crisis point at Lepanto amid the islands of Greece.
The triumph of Western galleys in the cauldron of Lepanto is a book in itself, as Hugh Bicheno recently illustrated. Including the knife-edge siege of Malta, when the Knights of St John fought off hordes of janissaries, Crowley brings to it an epic stature worthy of the crusaders themselves.
Crowley also swirls in a sea of adroit characterisation, from the Barbary corsairs to the Christian commander Don Juan of Austria and the Ottoman sultans. It is such a rich chalice of history that anyone straying into this maelstrom of violence and political intrique will find deep inspiration. Quite simply, blood and thunder at its best.
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