Böcker av Philip Mansel

Levant is a book of cities. It describes the role of Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut as windows on the world, escapes from nationality and tradition, centres of wealth, pleasure and freedom. By their mix of races and religions, they challenge stereotypes. France and Britain liberated the area through their schools, while conquering it through arms. They were not only manipulators but manipulated, often invited in by local factions. Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut were both pacifiers and stimulants of nationalism. Nasser was born in Alexandria, Smyrna and Beirut became centres of Turkish and Arab nationalism. Using unpublished family papers Philip Mansel describes their colourful, contradictory history, from the beginning of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century to their decline in the mid twentieth century. Smyrna was burnt; Alexandria Egyptianised; Beirut lacerated by civil war. Levant is the first history in English of these cities in the modern age. Levant is also a challenge from history. It is about ourselves; it shows how Muslims, Christians and Jews live together in cities. Levantine compromises, putting deals befor ideals, pragmatism before ideology, made these cities work, until states reclaimed them for nationalism. Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut have a message for today. The new Levantine cities of the twenty-first century, with comparable mixes of races and religions, are London, Paris and New York.

The definitive portrait of Napoleon's court

Invaluable to all those interested in the magnificent history of this now-ruined city.

Philip Mansel's highly acclaimed history absorbingly charts the interaction between the vibrantly cosmopolitan capital of Constantinople - the city of the world's desire - and its ruling family. In 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror entered Constantinople on a white horse, beginning an Ottoman love affair with the city that lasted until 1924, when the last Caliph hurriedly left on the Orient Express. For almost five centuries Constantinople, with its enormous racial and cultural diversity, was the centre of the dramatic and often depraved story of an extraordinary dynasty.

Far from destroying the Royal Court, the French Revolution resulted in a stronger monarchy and a larger, more elitist series of courts. Philip Mansel's delightful study of the royal court describes how this came to be.

The French Emigres in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789-1814 underlines, for the first time, the achievements rather than the failures, of the Emigres. The French Emigres were more than refugees, they were active, and often remarkably successful, agents on the European struggle against the French Revolution.