Tom Holland author of RUBICON and PERSIAN FIRE gives a thrilling panoramic account of the
birth of the new Western Europe in the year 1000. Of all the civilisations existing in the year
1000 that of Western Europe seemed the unlikeliest candidate for future greatness. Compared to
the glittering empires of Byzantium or Islam the splintered kingdoms on the edge of the
Atlantic appeared impoverished fearful and backward. But the anarchy of these years proved to
be not the portents of the end of the world as many Christians had dreaded but rather the
birthpangs of a radically new order.
