Jason Goodwin
Batten The Hatches
Victory of the West: The Story of the Battle of Lepanto
By Niccolò Capponi
Macmillan 356pp £20 order from our bookshop
Coming hard on the heels of the Ottoman occupation of Venetian Cyprus, the Battle of Lepanto was the first major victory that the Christians had ever carried against the Turks, and has been duly celebrated ever since as marking the moment that the tide turned against the Ottoman project. Only Voltaire demurred; he thought the battle was inconsequential. Niccolò Capponi dismisses this as the error of a man living in an age when victory meant territory: Lepanto gained its victors very little.
Unlike their predecessors, who turned the Mediterranean into a Muslim lake in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Ottomans were not a seafaring people: but they were patient and resourceful. Their style at sea was always a little lubberly, but they could freshen things up with the help of the
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
'There is a difference between a doctor who writes medical treatises and a doctor who writes absurdist fiction. Do we want our heart surgeon to be an anti-realist?'
Joanna Kavenna peruses Iain Bamforth's 'Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trust-me-philosopher
How did Uwe Johnson, the German writer who was friends with Hannah Arendt and Max Frisch, end up living out his days in the town of Sheerness, Kent?
https://literaryreview.co.uk/estuary-german
You only have a week left to take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/