'Let the nations rejoice: this history of Europe is a truly glorious book' John Adamson, Sunday TimesThe Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history – from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. Tim Blanning depicts the lives of ordinary people and the dominant personalities of the age (Louis XIV, ...

From the acclaimed author of The Pursuit of Glory and Frederick the Great, a riotous biography of the charismatic ruler of 18th-century Poland and Saxony - and his catastrophic reign.Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2025Shortlisted for the 2025 Apollo Book of the Year Award'It's been a superb year for history but Augustus the Strong ranks up there with the very very best! I ca...

George I was not the most charismatic of the Hanoverian monarchs to have reigned in England but he was probably the most important. He was certainly the luckiest.Born the youngest son of a landless German duke, he was taken by repeated strokes of good fortune to become, first the ruler of a major state in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and then the sovereign of three kingdoms (England, Ireland and Scotland).Tim Blanning's incisive short biography examines George...

SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, dominated the 18th century in the same way that Napoleon dominated the start of the 19th - a force of nature, a caustic, ruthless, brilliant military commander, a monarch of exceptional energy and talent, and a knowledgeable patron of artists, architects and writers, most famously Voltaire. From early in his reign he was already ...

Once musicians such as Mozart were little more than court servants; now they are multimillionaire superstars wielding more power than politicians. How did this extraordinary change come about?Tim Blanning's brilliantly enjoyable book examines how everything from the cult of the romantic to technology and travel all fed the inexorable rise of music in the West, making it the most dominant and ubiquitous of the art forms. Encompassing balladeers, the great composers, jazz legends and...

Die Geburt des modernen Europas: ein Epochengemälde als »Sternstunde der Geschichtsschreibung« (Literary Review)Tim Blannings Geschichte Europas erstreckt sich vom Ende des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs bis zum Wiener Kongress und zeichnet detailliert, höchst unterhaltsam und mit großer erzählerischer Kraft das Bild eines Zeitalters in tiefgreifendem Wandel – wirtschaftshistorisch, machtpolitisch, kulturell, militärisch. Neben großen Persönlichkeiten wie Louis XIV., Fried...

A distinguished historian chronicles the rise of music and musicians in the West from lowly balladeers to masters employed by fickle patrons, to the great composers of genius, to today’s rock stars. How, he asks, did music progress from subordinate status to its present position of supremacy among the creative arts? Mozart was literally booted out of the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg “with a kick to my arse,” as he expressed it. Yet, less than a hundred years later, Europe’s most p...

Politisches und militärisches Totalversagen, aber ein kulturhistorisches Vermächtnis von Weltrang auf diesen Nenner bringt der britische Historiker Tim Blanning die Lebensbilanz von August dem Starken, Kurfürst von Sachsen und König von Polen. In seiner ebenso erhellenden wie unterhaltsamen neuen Biographie entführt er seine Leserinnen und Leser in die opulente Welt des Barock und erzählt das wilde Leben von Sachsens Sonnenkönig. Der historische Zufall schenkte dem sächsischen Kurfürsten 1...

A compelling and persuasive account of how the Romantic Movement permanently changed the way we see things and express ourselves.Three great revolutions rocked the world around 1800. The first two - the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution - have inspired the greatest volume of literature. But the third - the romantic revolution - was perhaps the most fundamental and far-reaching. From Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Burns, to Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz...