A review by Tom Holland of Chris Wickham's Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 in the Times. Can't remember when a book on late antiquity was so widely publicised. Good:
Indeed, of all the periods covered by the Penguin
History of Europe, [this] is probably the most challenging to synthesise:
empires splinter into fragments, shadowy kingdoms dissolve almost before
they have coalesced, place names change with a bewildering rapidity. Nor can
any of his protagonists, not even Charlemagne himself, rival the sheer
brand-recognition of the big hitters that Tim Blanning, for instance, in his
Penguin History of the long 18th century, could draw upon: Voltaire, Mozart,
Napoleon. It is to that extent that the early Middle Ages remain shrouded in
a measure of darkness still.
Full story here.
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