PositiveThe GuardianSimon Winder’s trilogy – Germania, Danubia and now Lotharingia – is rather remarkable ... It is an insane undertaking, yet somehow he has got away with it and come to the end of his \'personal history\' largely unscathed ... The dynastic twists and turns are at times hard to follow, and I could have done with better maps than Winder has supplied. A separate chronology might also have been handy, but perhaps “personal histories” frown on such academic apparatus. On the plus side, he is a jolly guide ... offering shafts of illumination that make the distant, knotty past come alive ... His reluctance to follow chronology and his liking for unexpected byways...mean you have to be on your toes and piece together the key developments yourself ... Winder overdoes the knockabout humour and at times comes close to the tone of 1066 and All That with his tales of bloodthirsty nobles and long-suffering peasants. But his strength is that, ignoring what pusillanimous academics might think, he trusts himself to have a go at reframing European history.
