John Julius Norwich - A Short History of Byzantium

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John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and, after a spell of National Service in the Navy, at New College, Oxford, where he took a degree in French and Russian. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service, where he remained for twelve years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and with the British Delegation to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1964 he resigned from the service in order to write.

His many and varied publications include two books on the medieval Norman kingdom in Sicily, The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun, which are published by Penguin in one volume entitled The Normans in Sicily; two travel books, Mount Athos (with Reresby Sitwell) and Sahara; The Architecture of Southern England;Glyndebourne; three anthologies of poetry and prose, Christmas Crackers, More Christmas Crackers and Still More Christmas Crackers; A History of Venice, originally published in two volumes; his three-volume history of the Byzantine Empire, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, Byzantium: The Apogee and Byzantium: The Decline and Fall; the single volume A Short History of Byzantium; and Shakespeare's Kings. Many of his books are published in Penguin. In addition he has written and presented some thirty historical documentaries for television, and is a regular lecturer on Venice and numerous other subjects.

For nearly thirty years Lord Norwich was chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund. He is now chairman of the World Monuments Fund in Britain. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Geographical Society and the Society of Antiquaries, a Companion of the Royal Victorian Order and a Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH

PENGUIN BOOKS

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Byzantium: The Early Centuries published by Viking 1988

Byzantium: The Apogee published by Viking 1991

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall published by Viking 1995

This condensed edition first published by Viking 1997

Published in Penguin Books 1998

Copyright John Julius Norwich,1988,1991,1995,1997

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192859-3

For Moll

A fourth-century porphyry group believed to represent Diocletian's Tetrarchs; incorporated into the south-west corner of the Basilica of St Mark, Venice

St John Chrysostom. A ninth-century mosaic from the north tympanum in St Sophia

The Church of St Eirene, Istanbul

The interior of the Church of St Eirene

Theodosius the Great or Valentinian I a late fourth-century bronze statue outside the Church of S. Sepolcro, Barletta

The Theodosian Walls

The sixth-century apse of S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna

The Barberini Ivory; probably the Emperor Anastasius, who is known to have received an embassy from India in 496 (see lower panel). The right-hand panel (which presumably portrayed another warrior bearing a statuette of Victory) is missing

The Emperor Justinian and his court. A sixth-century mosaic from the Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna

The Empress Theodora and her retinue. A sixth-century mosaic from the Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna

Charlemagne: reliquary bust, c. 1350

Ravenna: two fifth-century lunettes in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Saint Laurence the Martyr

Apostles in Veneration

The Archangel Gabriel, c. 861, mosaic on arch of north bema, St Sophia, Istanbul