The story of the Burgundian elite and its remarkable court and
culture, a medieval and early modern epic of dynastic struggle, artistic
achievement and eventual extinction.
A History of 1111 Years and One Day.
'A sumptuous feast of a book' The Times, Books of the Year
'Thrillingly colourful and entertaining' Sunday Times
'A thrilling narrative of the brutal dazzlingly rich wildly ambitious
duchy' Simon Sebag Montefiore
'5 stars!' Daily Telegraph
'A masterpiece' De Morgen
'A history book that reads like a thriller' Le Soir
At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an
independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region
situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English
kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe,
this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle
of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the
Netherlands.
This is the story of a thousand years, a compulsively readable narrative
history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage
battles, luxury and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals
and the awakening of individualism and of cities, the struggle for
dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns and
fatally bad marriages. It is also a remarkable cultural history, of
great art and architecture and music emerging despite the violence and
the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties.
