Philip Mansel

القسطنطينية

Chronicles the history of three major cities in the Levant region--Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut--from its golden age in the sixteenth century when different cultures and religions lived together to the present day.

Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean

Levant

Traces the city's history during the five hundred years it was the capital of the Ottoman Empire

City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924

Constantinople

Winner of the Franco-British Society Book Prize 2019 Louis XIV dominated his age. He extended France's frontiers into Netherlands and Germany, and established colonies overseas. The stupendous palace he built at Versailles became the envy of monarchs all over Europe. In his palaces, Louis encouraged dancing, hunting, music and gambling. He loved conversation, especially with women: the power of women in Louis's life and reign is a particular theme of this book. Louis was obsessed by the details of government but the cost of building palaces and waging continuous wars devastated the country's finances and helped set it on the path to revolution. Nevertheless, by his death, he had helped make his grandson king of Spain, where his descendants still reign, and France had taken essentially the shape it has today. King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure in English. It draws on all the latest research to paint a convincing and compelling portrait of a man who, three hundred years after his death, still epitomises the idea of le grand monarque.

The Life of Louis XIV

King of the World

'Every time gardens welcomed us, we said to them,Aleppo is our aim and you are merely the route.' Al-Mutanabbi Aleppo lies in ruins. Its streets are plunged in darkness, most of its population has fled. But this was once a vibrant world city, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and traded together in peace. Few places are as ancient and diverse as Aleppo - one of the oldest, continuously inhabited cities in the world - successively ruled by the Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman and French empires. Under the Ottomans, it became the empire's third largest city, after Constantinople and Cairo. It owed its wealth to its position at the end of the Silk Road, at a crossroads of world trade, where merchants from Venice, Isfahan and Agra gathered in the largest suq in the Middle East. Throughout the region, it was famous for its food and its music. For 400 years British and French consuls and merchants lived in Aleppo; many of their accounts are used here for the first time. In the first history of Aleppo in English, Dr Philip Mansel vividly describes its decline from a pinnacle of cultural and economic power, a poignant testament to a city shattered by Syria's civil war.

The Rise and Fall of Syria's Great Merchant City

Aleppo

Levante. Smirne, Alessandria, Beirut: splendore e catastrofe nel Mediterraneo

ثلاث مدن مشرقية

dünyanın arzuladığı şehir 1453-1924

Konstantiniyye

Throughout history rulers have used clothes as a form of legitimization and propaganda. While palaces, pictures, and jewels might reflect the choice of a monarch’s predecessors or advisers, clothes reflected the preferences of the monarch himself. Being both personal and visible, the right costume at the right time could transform and define a monarch’s reputation. Many royal leaders have known this, from Louis XIV to Catherine the Great and from Napoleon I to Princess Diana. This intriguing book explores how rulers have sought to control their image through their appearance. Mansel shows how individual styles of dress throw light on the personalities of particular monarchs, on their court system, and on their ambitions. The book looks also at the economics of the costume industry, at patronage, at the etiquette involved in mourning dress, and at the act of dressing itself. Fascinating glimpses into the lives of European monarchs and contemporary potentates reveal the intimate connection between power and the way it is packaged.

Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II

Dressed to Rule

Philip Mansel's highly acclaimed history absorbingly charts the interaction between the vibrantly cosmopolitan capital of Constantinople - the city of the world's desire - and its ruling family. In 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror entered Constantinople on a white horse, beginning an Ottoman love affair with the city that lasted until 1924, when the last Caliph hurriedly left on the Orient Express. For almost five centuries Constantinople, with its enormous racial and cultural diversity, was the centre of the dramatic and often depraved story of an extraordinary dynasty.

Louis XIV domine son époque. Sur le plan international, il étend les frontières du royaume, établit des colonies en Amérique, en Afrique et en Inde, et contribue à faire de son petit-fils le roi d'Espagne. Il est l'un des plus grands mécènes de l'histoire européenne - Molière, Racine, Lully, Le Brun, le Nôtre travaillent pour lui, Versailles et ses satellites à Marly sont jalousés. Partout Louis encourage la danse, la chasse, la musique, la conversation, en particulier avec les femmes, dont le pouvoir est l'un des thèmes les plus originaux de ce livre. Obsédé par les détails du gouvernement, Louis XIV fut un roi politique, même si ses choix de ministres et généraux se sont avérés désastreux, notamment après la mort du très compétent Colbert. C’est de cette figure hypnotique bien qu’imparfaite, incarnation idéale du grand monarque, que Philip Mansel brosse le portrait, en s'appuyant sur les toutes dernières recherches tant en France qu’en Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis. Il porte une attention particulière à la culture de cour et à la politique étrangère du roi, réintroduisant dans l’histoire européenne puis mondiale un roi de France aux prétentions universelles.

Roi du monde

Louis XIV

Presents a political and social history of the golden age of Paris, from the fall of Napoleon I in 1814 to Louis-Napoleon becoming emperor Napoleon III in 1852.

Monarchy and Revolution 1814-1852

Paris Between Empires

Levant is a book of cities. It describes the role of Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut as windows on the world, escapes from nationality and tradition, centres of wealth, pleasure and freedom. By their mix of races and religions, they challenge stereotypes. France and Britain liberated the area through their schools, while conquering it through arms. They were not only manipulators but manipulated, often invited in by local factions. Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut were both pacifiers and stimulants of nationalism. Nasser was born in Alexandria, Smyrna and Beirut became centres of Turkish and Arab nationalism. Using unpublished family papers Philip Mansel describes their colourful, contradictory history, from the beginning of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century to their decline in the mid twentieth century. Smyrna was burnt; Alexandria Egyptianised; Beirut lacerated by civil war. Levant is the first history in English of these cities in the modern age. Levant is also a challenge from history. It is about ourselves; it shows how Muslims, Christians and Jews live together in cities. Levantine compromises, putting deals befor ideals, pragmatism before ideology, made these cities work, until states reclaimed them for nationalism. Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut have a message for today. The new Levantine cities of the twenty-first century, with comparable mixes of races and religions, are London, Paris and New York.

Louis XVIII had the most extraordinary career of all the kings of France, mirroring in many ways that of Charles II in England. Born in 1755, the younger brother of Louis XVI, he escaped from Paris in the middle of the revolution disguised as an Englishman. During his ten year reign from 1814 to 1824, France experienced parliamentary government, freedom of speech and religious tolerance. He was successful by the standards of his time, for while Napoleon was ultimately vanquished, Louis XVIII died on his throne.

Louis 18 [dix-huit]

The post-Revolution emergence of a stronger monarchy and larger and more elitist courts than had previously existed is shown in this descriptive account of the succession of courts in France from the revolutionary period to the fall of Charles X.

The Court of France 1789-1830

"When I think of the great Emperor, in my mind's eye it is summer again, all gold and green." Heine The court of Napoleon I, in its grandeur and extravagance, surpassed even that of that the Sun King. Napoleon's palaces at Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries were the centres of his power, the dazzling reflection of the greatest empire in modern European history. Napoleon's military conquests changed the world and dominate most portraits of him, but it was through the splendour of his court - a world fashioned beyond the battlefield - that Napoleon governed his empire. Using the unpublished papers of the Emperor's leading courtiers, and his second Empress Marie Louise, Philip Mansel brings to life the intoxicated world of a court 'devoured by ambition' as Stendhal called it : its visual magnificence and rigid hierarchy; mistresses, artists and manipulators. The life of the court illuminates the life of Napoleon himself and the nature of a personality that conquered half the world yet, in the end, was abandoned by his dynasty and his courtiers, his past glories fading into lonely and ignominious exile.

Inside the Court of Napoleon

The Eagle in Splendour

Torsten Riotte

Using detailed studies of fifteen exiled royal figures, the role of Exile in European Society and in the evolution of national cultures is examined. From the Jacobite court to the exiled Kings' of Hanover, the book provides an alternative history of monarchical power from the 16th to 20th century.

Philip Mansel

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