Julian Fellowes

Tell Us More About the Fat Empress

The Habsburg Monarchy 1618–1815

By

Cambridge University Press 262pp £27.95 order from our bookshop

By his own admission in the preface Charles Ingrao has been set an impossible task. Namely, to address simultaneously both a student and a scholarly audience on this most diverse of historical subjects. Unable to assume much fundamental knowledge in his readership, he is also unwilling to neglect the minutiae of every issue. In short, his brief was to tell the detailed story of the most complex monarchical grouping of states in Europe throughout two centuries of unremitting religious, philosophical, social and political turbulence in 262 pages. Before one considers the degree of his success or lack of it, like Dr Johnson’s walking dog, we must first admire the fact that he has done it at all.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Half-way through The Conquest of Water I felt as if I had been subjected to the literary equivalent of excessive c… ,
    • 'Volume five, then, but still no end in sight. Sandbrook is clearly enjoying himself so much he can’t bear the seri… ,
    • 'By the end of the book something so weighty, stylish and impressive has been built up that one feels far nearer to… ,
    • 'Her ensuing psychotic episode is described so convincingly ... that the reader will wonder if Dobrakovová did not… ,
    • 'The perspectives complement and contest one another, amounting to a glorious, atmospheric set of ventriloquisms.'… ,
    • RT : I reviewed The Testaments for . I will not be taking any questions at this time. ,
    • 'The Testaments is, first and foremost, a manual of resistance ... a type of resistance that is organised, articula… ,
    Follow Us