Dynasty
The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
«Holland writes with all the excitement and immediacy of the gossip-mongers of Rome . . . One senses that if Tom Holland were emperor for the day he would give the crowd not only the bread and circuses but a jolly good education too»
Daisy Dunn, Evening Standard
'This is a wonderful, surging narrative - a brilliant and meticulous synthesis of the ancient sources . . . This is a story that should be read by anyone interested in history, politics or human nature - and it has never been better told' - Boris Johnson, Mail on Sunday
Rome was first ruled by kings, then became a republic.
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'This is a wonderful, surging narrative - a brilliant and meticulous synthesis of the ancient sources . . . This is a story that should be read by anyone interested in history, politics or human nature - and it has never been better told' - Boris Johnson, Mail on Sunday
Rome was first ruled by kings, then became a republic. But in the end, after conquering the world, the Republic collapsed. Rome was drowned in blood. So terrible were the civil wars that the Roman people finally came to welcome the rule of an autocrat who could give them peace. 'Augustus,' their new master called himself: 'The Divinely Favoured One'.
The lurid glamour of the dynasty founded by Augustus has never faded. No other family can compare for sheer unsettling fascination with its gallery of leading characters. Tiberius, the great general who ended up a bitter recluse, notorious for his perversions; Caligula, the master of cruelty and humiliation who rode his chariot across the sea; Agrippina, the mother of Nero, manoeuvering to bring to power the son who would end up having her murdered; Nero himself, racing in the Olympics, marrying a eunuch, and building a pleasure palace over the fire-gutted centre of his capital.
Now, in the sequel to Rubicon, Tom Holland gives a dazzling portrait of Rome's first imperial dynasty. Dynasty traces the full astonishing story of its rule of the world: both the brilliance of its allure, and the blood-steeped shadows cast by its crimes. Ranging from the great capital rebuilt in marble by Augustus to the dank and barbarian-haunted forests of Germany, it is populated by a spectacular cast: murderers and metrosexuals, adulterers and druids, scheming grandmothers and reluctant gladiators.
Dynasty is the portrait of a family that transformed and stupefied Rome.
Rome was first ruled by kings, then became a republic. But in the end, after conquering the world, the Republic collapsed. Rome was drowned in blood. So terrible were the civil wars that the Roman people finally came to welcome the rule of an autocrat who could give them peace. 'Augustus,' their new master called himself: 'The Divinely Favoured One'.
The lurid glamour of the dynasty founded by Augustus has never faded. No other family can compare for sheer unsettling fascination with its gallery of leading characters. Tiberius, the great general who ended up a bitter recluse, notorious for his perversions; Caligula, the master of cruelty and humiliation who rode his chariot across the sea; Agrippina, the mother of Nero, manoeuvering to bring to power the son who would end up having her murdered; Nero himself, racing in the Olympics, marrying a eunuch, and building a pleasure palace over the fire-gutted centre of his capital.
Now, in the sequel to Rubicon, Tom Holland gives a dazzling portrait of Rome's first imperial dynasty. Dynasty traces the full astonishing story of its rule of the world: both the brilliance of its allure, and the blood-steeped shadows cast by its crimes. Ranging from the great capital rebuilt in marble by Augustus to the dank and barbarian-haunted forests of Germany, it is populated by a spectacular cast: murderers and metrosexuals, adulterers and druids, scheming grandmothers and reluctant gladiators.
Dynasty is the portrait of a family that transformed and stupefied Rome.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Abacus
- Innbinding
- Paperback
- Språk
- Engelsk
- Sider
- 544
- ISBN
- 9780349123837
- Utgivelsesår
- 2016
- Format
- 20 x 13 cm
- Priser
- PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2016
Anmeldelser
«Holland writes with all the excitement and immediacy of the gossip-mongers of Rome . . . One senses that if Tom Holland were emperor for the day he would give the crowd not only the bread and circuses but a jolly good education too»
Daisy Dunn, Evening Standard
«A richly panoramic picture of Rome in the first century AD»
Allan Massie, Literary Review
«Holland's Tacitean vision of the dynasty of Augustus makes for a very compelling read»
Times Literary Supplement
«Thrilling, thunderous prose, fully equal to that of the great days of Thermopylae and Salamis»
Wall Street Journal
«Holland is perhaps Britain's most engrossing historical storyteller. He has a rare gift of combining academic respectability with a great knack as a narrator»
Catholic Herald
«Holland's masterly account of this first wicked century of the Roman empire is, at its heart, a political analysis . . . the story he tells strides onwards across the landscape of grief and horror without pause or stutter . . . Holland is unshockable as he proceeds with breezy, clear-eyed analysis from one degrading display of cruelty and paranoia to the next . . . It is down to his skill as a storyteller that there's no difficulty in imagining that it might all happen again tomorrow»
Sunday Times
«Deft and skilful . . . Among the many virtues of Tom Holland's terrific history is that he does not shrink from seeing the Roman emperors for what they were: 'the west's primal examples of tyranny' . . . Dynasty is both a formidable effort to compile what we can know about the ancient world and a sensational story»
Observer
«This is a wonderful, surging narrative - a brilliant and meticulous synthesis of the ancient sources . . . This is a story that should be read by anyone interested in history, politics or human nature - and it has never been better told»
Mail on Sunday
«This is history in which fact and fiction overlap, rigorously researched and lightened with dashes of humour . . . first-rate ancient history and a compulsively good read»
Daily Mail
«A swaggering history of the dynastic house that Julius Caesar built. Nothing entertains like excess and the weird cruelties, bloody intrigues and eye-popping depravities of emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero are queasily fascinating»
Sunday Express
«A witty and skilful storyteller . . . He recounts with pleasure his racy tales of psychopathic cruelty, incest, paedophilia, matricide, fratricide, assassination and depravity»
New Statesman
«A thrilling book by one of the country's best popular historians . . . genuinely breathtaking»
History Today
«Holland has crafted a history of early Rome that has all the gripping detail and narrative momentum of a novel... he gives the reader a startlingly visceral sense of the violence and brutality and wretched excess of ancient Rome»
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
«[A] dramatic, intrigue-ridden, blood-and-guts tale of Rome's first line of emperors»
Peter Jones, The Times
«Dynasty, like its companion volume Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, is a fine example of narrative historical writing. Yet you could also read it as something else entirely: a meditation on the enduring power and possibilities of storytelling»
Richard Miles, Financial Times
«Dynasty has Holland's usual novelistic ability to bring a narrative alive, together with his extraordinary command of ancient sources»
New York Times Book Review
«This is great material, and Holland does it justice with a chiseled prose style and an eye for the luminous detail.... Holland is a master of narrative history. On the strength of Dynasty, he deserves a laurel wreath»
Washington Post
«A vivid account of five Roman emperors, emphasizing their vices and vicious behavior with less attention to the vast empire, which continued to prosper despite them»
Kirkus
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