Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

by Judith Herrin

Penguin, HK$330

Judith Herrin's carefully packaged history of Byzantium had an unlikely genesis. Two workmen knocked on the door of her office at King's College London in 2002 to inquire about the precise nature of her job. 'What is Byzantine history?' they asked.

Presumably flabbergasted that hard-hatted, heavy-booted artisans should entertain cultural reference points that extended beyond watching Big Brother, Herrin - a respected author and archaeologist - tried to sum up 1,000 years in 10 minutes off the cuff. Nodding sympathetically, the workmen asked why she didn't write about it for them.

The result is Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. It's more substantial than the Wikipedia entry of a similar title, but does raise the question of how far history needs to be dumbed down. Trying to shove a millennium into 300 or so pages, and particularly as colourful a period of history as this (90 emperors, 125 patriarchs, countless pitched battles and lesser engagements) inevitably involves cutting a few corners. Herrin occasionally - and annoyingly - drops into the first person, checking the natural flow of the narrative. Whether this is a habit picked up lecturing students, or an attempt to engage the reader, is a moot point; it comes over as vaguely patronising, as if she were constantly attempting to spark the interest of a brace of apprentice plumbers.