There were two Norman Conquests. John Julius Norwich is the consummate historian of the 'other' one: the conquest of Sicily.When on Christmas Day 1130 Roger de Hauteville was crowned first King of Sicily, the island entered a golden age. Norman and Italian, Greek and Arab, Lombard, Englishman and Jew all contributed to a culture that was as brilliant as it was cosmopolitan; and to an atmosphere of racial and religious toleration unparalleled in Europe. But sixty-four years later, to the day, the sun set on the Sicilian Kingdom. In this second volume of his history (The Normans in the South 1016-1130 is also in Faber Finds) Norwich describes the reigns of the grotesquely misnamed William the Bad and the Good and the bastard Tancred. We read, too, of St Bernard, magnetic but insufferable; of Adrian IV, the only English Pope; of Richard the Lionheart (behaving abominably in Messina); and other notables.This scintillating narrative history is also a superb traveller's guide, listing every Norman building extant on Sicily.

The Normans originally came to Italy and Sicily in the 11th and 12th centuries looking for adventure or a livelihood, but once there, found opportunity for fame and fortune. The story of the Norman conquest in Italy and Sicily is indeed one of knights and adventurers, great battles and lowly pillage, opportunism and statesmanship, and crusade and coexistence. This rich and often dramatic study focuses on the eight sons of Tancred of Hauteville, especially Robert Guiscard, who has been called "the most dazzling military ruler between Julius Caesar and Napoleon," and his youngest brother Roger, who conquered Sicily. It discusses how they expanded their lands throughout southern Italy, and then took Sicily from its Muslim rulers. The brothers, often in conflict with each other, challenged both the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire, became the main supporters of the reformed Papacy, and founded a rich, sophisticated kingdom that lasted until the nineteenth century.

This book is an introductory account of the kingdom of Sicily established in 1130 by Roger II, a 'Norman' king, and ruled by Roger, his own son and grandsons until 1194 when the kingdom was conquered by his son-in-law, Henry VI of Hohenstaufen. The period covered does, however, extend from Charles of Anjou, a period roughly as long and as coherent as the 'Norman' monarchy of England between 1066 and 1204. Roger II's difficulties in creating an enduring kingdom needed continuous military effort. Even when these efforts were no longer required, the monarchy had still to learn how to function in lands where traditions of local government were strong. Yet when the monarchy itself faltered, the kingdom did not fall apart. Frederick II, the grandson of Roger II, showed that it could be revived and that his sons could maintain it. The ways in which the monarchy made itself indispensable cannot be traced in detail, but pointers to its success can be seen. The kingdom did not spring full-armed at birth - it took time and experience to hammer it into shape. When at last it looked capable of assuming the leadership of all Italy, its enemies combined to prevent it from doing so with the most profound consequences for Italy, the papacy and the west.

A young Inca girl succeeds where her brothers and others have failed, when her bird friends help her find the special water that will cure the king's son.

Histories of medieval Europe have typically ignored southern Italy, looking south only in the Norman period. Yet Southern Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries was a complex and vibrant world that deserves to be better understood. In Before the Normans, Barbara M. Kreutz writes the first modern study in English of the land, political structures, and cultures of southern Italy in the two centuries before the Norman conquests. This was a pan-Meditteranean society, where the Roman past and Lombard-Germanic culture met Byzantine and Islamic civilization, creating a rich and unusual mix.

Although many studies have addressed important aspects of medieval southern Italy, this was the first work for nearly ninety years to be devoted specifically to the life and reign of King Roger II, the founder of the kingdom of Sicily. The book provides a comprehensive introductory narrative of the reign and a clear, scholarly analysis of its culture and of the development of royal government. The kingdom created by the Norman Roger of Hautville in the first half of the twelfth century was a monarchy with highly developed absolutist ideas, an elaborate bureaucracy, a reasonably well-filled treasury, and a mixed cultural heritage reflected by the presence of Arabs and Greeks at court. Based on many years of research in archives and libraries across Europe, the book offers a valuable overview of one of the most striking periods in south Italian and European history.

From battlefield to sacred building, from castle to cottage, from the Bridgwater Canal to Blackpool Pier, acclaimed historian John Julius Norwich tells the political, cultural, social, religious and economic story of England through one hundred key places you can still visit today. Part narrative history, part exploration of our national heritage, his wide-ranging selection of sites will stimulate, entertain, inform - and certainly provoke - a debate about the most significant moments in English history.