A Short History of Byzantium

For more than a thousand years, the Byzantine Empire stood at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, preserving and reshaping the Roman imperial tradition while developing a distinctive political, religious and cultural world centred on Constantinople. John Julius Norwich traces its history from Constantine the Great and the foundation of the new capital in the fourth century through Justinian, iconoclasm, crusades and dynastic struggles to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

This volume is Norwich’s abridgement of his celebrated three-volume history of Byzantium, retaining the personalities, political drama and narrative sweep that made the larger work so widely read. Alongside emperors, wars and court intrigue, it follows the empire’s intellectual and cultural achievements and its extraordinary art and architecture. Substantial yet highly approachable, it is an engaging introduction to one of the medieval world’s longest-lived empires.