The medieval historian and former justice of the Supreme Court chooses his favourite books. The fifth and final volume of his history of the Hundred Years War, “Triumph and Illusion”, is out in paperback this week
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon, 1776
Published two-and-a-half centuries ago and never out of print since, it is one of the great classics of historical writing: urbane, witty, and still not entirely displaced by modern scholarship. Don’t forget the footnotes – it’s where the jokes are.
The Waning of the Middle Ages
Johan Huizinga, 1919
This is a beautiful and poetic reconstruction of life in Western Europe six centuries ago, with all its pleasures and sorrows, its fears and rituals, and its deep pessimism about the future of mankind, a reminder of things we have lost and things that never change.
Religion and the Decline of Magic
Keith Thomas, 1971
Something of the same atmosphere, but focused on 16th and 17th century England, is conveyed by Keith Thomas’s book, a marvel of readable historical scholarship.
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer, 1392
I much prefer fact to fiction, but some fiction illuminates the past just as well. Geoffrey Chaucer’s book is six centuries old but still makes me laugh out loud. Perhaps jokes are eternal. The 16th century French satirist François Rabelais certainly thought so.
Gargantua and Pantagruel
François Rabelais, c.1592
Rabelais’ story of two grotesque giants, is a hilarious celebration of food, drink and general excess. Try the translation by the Scottish eccentric Thomas Urquhart, which perfectly reproduces the crazy exuberance of the original. The translator is said to have died in a fit of laughter.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1866
Dostoevsky’s account of the terrorist mind and totalitarian police methods was written in Russia in the 1860s, but its contemporary relevance takes me by surprise every time I open it.