Adam LeBor
Aftershocks of the Risorgimento
Jerusalem: The Biography
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Weidenfeld and Nicholson 638pp £25 order from our bookshop
Jerusalem is much more than a narrative account of the many incarnations of our holiest and most contested city. It is a dazzling historical encyclopaedia that brings alive the world of the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – that have ruled the city almost from its birth millennia ago to the present day. Its splendid historical cast includes scheming kings and manipulative queens, bloodthirsty warlords and genocidal emperors, wild-eyed prophets and alluring harlots.
All human life is here, and much death also. Jerusalem has been conquered, levelled and rebuilt so many times – often accompanied by the wholesale slaughter of its inhabitants – that the biggest miracle (in a city famed for them) is that nowadays there is anything left standing
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The trick of a successful mercenary ... was somehow to get on almost as well with your enemies as your allies, since those two positions could be reversed at dizzying speed.'
Sarah Dunant on the life of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/scholar-in-arms
'McDormand has come closer to Lady Macbeth in some of her previous grimly comic performances ... Here she can convey only the banality of evil, as when she fussily curtails the banquet after Macbeth’s hallucination.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/come-thick-night
'"Extinct" comprises eighty-five essays on defunct objects, from arsenic wallpaper to the Zeppelin. The format does not immediately inspire confidence ... but "Extinct" turns out to be more satisfying than one might expect.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ode-to-an-ashtray