Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. Her previous books (HELEN OF TROY: GODDESS, PRINCESS, WHORE and THE HEMLOCK CUP: SOCRATES, ATHENS AND THE SEARCH FOR THE GOOD LIFE) were published to great critical acclaim and worldwide success. Hughes has made a number of factual films and documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, National Geographic, Discovery, The History Channel and ABC. She is a Research Fellow of King's College London and has been honoured with numerous awards including the Norton Medlicott Medal for History.www.bettanyhughes.co.uk / @bettanyhughes
This is historical narrative brimming with brio and incident.
Hughes's portraits are written with a zesty flourish ... Istanbul
is a visceral, pulsating city. In Bettany Hughes's life-filled and
life-affirming history, steeped in romance and written with verve,
it has found a sympathetic and engaging champion'
*GUARDIAN*
Bettany Hughes' Istanbul is built deliberately on what is passing
as well as past. It is a story of numerous overlapping names,
changes that often happened more slowly than the guidebooks tell
us. Her subject is the city that was Byzantium for some 900 years,
Christian Constantinopole for another 1,000, Islamic Islam-bol,
then Istanbul - while also being New Rome, a Diamond Between Two
Sapphires and The World's Desire...assiduous...passionate...there
have beeen swirling tidal shifts around Istanbul since she began
this book 10 years or so ago. She is celebrating citizenry of the
world at a time when that idea is in retreat, damnming the
"otherness" that the west has bestowed upon the east when
throughout the world there are more and more "others"...She is a
wistul and impassioned cosmopolitan who has produced a challenging
story for 2017.
*FINANCIAL TIMES*
Her latest book, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, is a particular
stroke of genius...Over the years the city has had three names -
Byzantium, Contantinople and Istanbul so in a vivid rattle she
hurls Xerxes, Alcibiades, Constantine, Justinian, Theodora,
Suleyman the Magnificent and a sometimes overwhelming cast of
thousands before us...It is a story well worth telling as the
region continues to implode, the final or at least latest lashings
out of the Ottoman Empire's collapse...The book is littered with
historical echoes that...are impossible to ignore...there are
wonderful anecdotes...She concludes with an encomium to Istanbul as
a world city - literally, a cosmo-polis - where faiths and
ethnicities are brought together by learning or trade...not an
original thought but one that in this particularly troubled moment,
for bomb-hit Istanbul and the rest of us, bears repeating.
*THE TIMES*
With a broadcaster's delight, Bettany Hughes...throws herself into
the gargantuan task of capturing the history of a city that spans
3,000 years, and whose story has been woefully neglected compared
with other great urban centres...Hughes reconstructs Byzantium,
Constantinople and Istanbul as living, breathing landscapes...her
scholarship is impressive...her enthusiasm radiates...Her
subject...is irresistibly rich. The place known simply as "The
City", Hughes notes, has long lived a "double life - as a real
place and as a story"...The tale she tells of the metropolis at the
crossroads of the Earth is textured, readable and often
compelling.
*SUNDAY TIMES*
A magisterial new biography...Bettany Hughes transports the reader
on a magic-carpet-like journey through 8,000 years of history...in
a vivid narrative dotted with colourful characters and fascinating
tangents...the quintessential historical overview of a city racing
up the modern political agenda.
*THE LADY*
Fiery and magnificent new biography of Istanbul...Hughes does a
fantastic job of cramming all this history into a fluid and
engaging narrative. She also possesses a great turn of phrase, such
as when she describes Haghia Sophia as seeming "to be suspended by
a golden chain from heaven"...A gripping and erudite book.
*CATHOLIC HERALD*
Award-winning historian Bettany Hughes pieces together the history
of Istanbul in a riveting biography of a brilliant, bloodied
city.
*SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (IRELAND)*
Ten years in the researching and writing, it's a glittering mosaic
of a history, packing the stories of three cities - Byzantium,
Constantinople and Istanbul - into one volume, from their earliest
settlement in 6000BC, to the 20th Century.
*THE BOOKSELLER*
Over its 6,000 year history, Istanbul has been home to Phoenicians,
Genoese, Venetians, Jews, Vikings and Azeris, and been the
cornerstone of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires...Hughes
traces the history of one of the world's greatest cities.
*GUARDIAN*
Sweeping across eight millennia in its 800 pages, this glinting
mosaic of a book is divided into short, vivid, episodic
chapters...With 2017 marking the 500th anniversary of the Ottoman
caliphate in Istanbul, this sumptuously produced history book is as
timely as it is enthralling.
*SUNDAY EXPRESS*
A scholarly narrative, but Hughes isn't averse to heating it up
with the salacious stories that dot the city's past
*SUNDAY TELEGRAPH*
For all its colourful drama, the city's history can be hard to
narrate in a way that is coherent and gripping...Bettany Hughes
[takes] up that challenge and...the result is impressive. In
'Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities' Ms Hughes plays intriguing,
sophisticated games with time and space...by making unlikely
connections between well-described locations and events separated
by aeons, she gives voice to those witchy, diachronic feelings in a
spectacular fashion.
*ECONOMIST*
One of the pleasures of wandering the city today - whatever you
call it - is in recognising that its layers of history are so
enfolded with one another that they are impossible to separate.
This is also the pleasure of Bettany Hughes' highly readable jaunt
through its past 2,500 years..Istanbul is still living history.
Perhaps the most moving moment in the book comes when Hughes goes
looking for the song of hte Janissaries...Hughes tracked down one
of their descendants...Could he remember one of the Janissaries'
famous old songs? "Yes he could - and out came a fluid, mellifluous
prayer, a song from the religion of the road, a song of hope and
revolution, of piety and of cosmopolitan human heartedness. It
could be the city's anthem.
*DAILY TELEGRAPH*
Bettany Hughes' history of Istanbul through the ages is richly
entertaining and impeccably researched. Hughes' ebullient book is
an ode to three incarnations of the city...[she] guides us round a
city that is magestic, magical and mystical, leaving few stones
unturned. It is a loving biography of a city that never stands
still, never mind never sleeps...Hughes has written an important
book that brings the past of this glorious city to life. It is
filled with charming vignettes...snappily written...plenty here to
entertain those who know something about the ciy and to enthrall
those who don't.
*THE OBSERVER*
The research is immaculate, as is the telling of it.
*CHOICE*
Bettany Hughes transports the reader on a magic-carpet-like journey
through 8,000 years of history...[this is] the quintessential
historical overview of a city racing up the modern politcal
agenda.
*THE LADY*
Istanbul's newly revived status as perhaps the major centre of
Sunni Islam in the non-Arab world, and a pivot to the current
Middle East imbroglio, is underlined by Bettany Hughes in the
introduction to her sumptuous urban biography.
*EVENING STANDARD*
Hughes...wishes to show how the city's topography shaped the
civilisations that grew from it - and how the many peoples that
have passed through its walls went on to shape the lands and seas
and trade routes of their known world...The thrill the author takes
in her discoveries is infectious...Keen as she is to identify a
past that is still omnipresent, she does not just like the city to
a "historic millefeuille": time and again she proves it...this
heroic work...is the perfect read if - having noticed that Istanbul
is increasingly in the news these days - you wish to know its place
in the scheme of things, and what light it may case on the
uncertain future we shall most certainly share.
*NEW STATESMAN*
Hughes suceeds triumphantly...and produces a cogent, passionate
survey...bolstered by staggeringly wide-ranging research...[a]
captivating book...Istanbul, a place where the past is impossible
to miss...and few have told its enchanting story with Hughes's
blend of precision and panache.
*GEOGRAPHICAL, The Royal Geographical Society magazine*
It is a delightful book for those who know Istanbul, but what a
treat for those who do not, and are considering a visit. [Hughes]
is an excellent, informed and good natured guide...she gets under
the skin of the great city.
*CLASSICS FOR ALL*
Undoubtedly timely, because, as Hughes argues, Istanbul is once
again central to the European narrative, as a postreligious
secularism confront a resurgent religious movement.
*IRISH TIMES*
The complexity of the city's story is revealed in mesmerising
detail in Bettany Hughes's new book. At times her writing feels
like a love letter, or a eulogy to what has been lost. Her
compassion for the city and its millions of inhabitants, past and
present, comes across from the very first pages. It is quite rare
to read a historical book that weaves research and insight with
understanding and love: here is a book written as much with the
heart as the mind...Here is an important book that must be
translated into many languages - and especially into Turkish.
*THE SPECTATOR*
Ground-breaking...There has been no recent large-scale history of
the city with many names (Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul),
which makes this colossal undertaking a notable achievement, coming
at yet another turbulent moment in its long existence.
*LITERARY REVIEW*
Istanbul has many inhabitants yearning to nurture their grand but
asphyxiated city. In this tome - which begs a Turkish translation -
Hughes gives them the time that Istanbul's pace, developers and
officials do not. Her quiet confidence in the city's hard-earned
cosmopolitanism soothes this concerned Istanbullu
*ART REVIEW ASIA*
A witty and lavish account of a shimmering city caught between
heaven and hell
*THE TABLET*
Bettany Hughes's sprawling, 600-page love letter to one of the most
inspiring cities on earth was a decadein the making, as befits a
book covering millennia's worth of history in impressive
detail.
*PROSPECT*
Historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes has pulled off the feat of
wrting about three empires in one book: the Roman empire of
Constantine, the Byzantine empire which ended with the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, and the Ottoman empire which lasted into
the 1920s
*THE OLDIE*
Istanbul has endured an awful run of terrorist attacks and
political disorder over the past few years so Bettany Hughes'
ebullient homage to the city is a welcome reminder of its long and
fascinating history.
*i NEWSPAPER*
Majestic and immensely enriching...It's a journey through conquest
and greatness from Roman to Ottoman times and it reminded me of why
I love the city.
*FINANCIAL TIMES*
This scholarly work by television historian Bettany Hughes tells
the city's story in rich and compelling detail
*SUNDAY BUSINESS POST*
I can't think of a city with a more extraordinary history than
Istanbul, and in Bettany Hughes it has its ideal biographer.
*MAIL ON SUNDAY*
She deserves enormous credit for managing to traverse swathes of
time (right down to the present day) with such aplomb. Rarely have
I read a book in which I learnt more things that I really should
have already known.
*CATHOLIC HERALD*
She populates her three cities of Byzantium, Constantinople and
Istanbul with a rich cast, in a book that brims with brio and
incident.
*THE GUARDIAN*
Hughes guides us round a city that is majestic, magical and
mystical, leaving few stones unturned. It is a loving biography of
a city that never stands still, never mind sleeps. Hughes has
written an important book that brings the past of this glorious
city to life. It is filled with charming vignettes and is snappily
written.
*THE OBSERVER Paperback of the Week*
With a broadcaster's delight, the historian Bettany Hughes throws
herself into the gargantuan task of capturing the history of a city
that spans 3,000 years, and whose story has been woefully neglected
compared with other great urban centres...Impressive
*SUNDAY TIMES*
The English historian's spawling study of one of the world's great
capitals covers 3,000 years. It has witnessed enormous flux in that
time - not all of it for the better - but Hughes' biography will
likely make those who've never visited want to book a plane
ticket.
*IRISH INDEPENDENT*
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