Hughes, equally well known in Britain for her popular historical documentaries, gives us an even heftier opus written with a classicist’s linguistic precision ... Hughes’s book begins with the prehistoric substrata, delving with curiously gripping detail into layers of settlement archaeologists have only recently unearthed ... And so, right from the start, we are confronted with a vastly larger sense of time than that in which the city is usually conceived. Moreover, Hughes also establishes just how deep the Greek roots of the settlement called Byzantion went, and how heterogenous the Hellenic frontier town of the seventh century B.C. probably was. She has a fine feel for the complexities and shadings of that distant past ... Hughes argues that in this period — just before the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 heralded the arrival of a new enemy, the Turks — the two religions and empires [Christian empire and the caliphate] had found a way of coexisting.
More emblematic of this intense struggle than any other city is the beautiful, atmospheric place now known as Istanbul, the subject of the terrifically rewarding new book by Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities... As its title implies, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities looks at this storied place through the eras of its three distinct identities... Hughes concentrates her account on major personalities and what she refers to as 'game-changing events'... In sure, gripping prose, the story moves steadily forward through violent clashes between Christian and Turkish forces vying for this city... Readers are taken through the dramatic high points of these clashes and all the city's later phases... It's a spellbinding performance from start to finish ...her presented bibliography is enormous, but always the narrative itself is infused with an obvious love for the city that Hughes first visited when she was 18.
Bettany Hughes’s ebullient book is an ode to three incarnations of the city: Byzantion of the ancient past; the Constantinople that was the capital of the Christian Byzantine empire; and the Constantinople of the Muslim Ottomans that today goes by the name of Istanbul. Hughes guides us round a city that is majestic, magical and mystical, leaving few stones unturned. It is a loving biography of a city that never stands still, never mind never sleeps ... Bettany Hughes has written an important book that brings the past of this glorious city to life. It is filled with charming vignettes...is snappily written... Chapters are kept short and entertaining, broadly in chronological order, but with the author sidestepping to look at such diverse topics... There is plenty here to entertain those who know something about the city, and even more to enthrall those who don’t.
Fortunately for today’s readers, the historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes has a rather broader outlook, sufficiently wide to encompass everything from the earliest spear-carrying bronze age inhabitants to marauding ancient Greeks, Christian-slaughtering Roman emperors, pious Byzantine ascetics, world-conquering Ottomans and hatchet-faced 20th-century nationalists. She populates her three cities of Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul with a rich and dizzying cast of ordinary and extraordinary men and women ... This is historical narrative brimming with brio and incident. Hughes’s portraits are written with a zesty flourish ... Istanbul is a visceral, pulsating city. In Bettany Hughes’s life-filled and life-affirming history, steeped in romance and written with verve, it has found a sympathetic and engaging champion.
Since her 2003 documentary series on the Spartans, Ms. Hughes has been one of Britain’s most successful television historians. She is the author of sparkling biographies of Helen of Troy and Socrates of Athens, but Istanbul is an altogether more ambitious enterprise. In vivid and readable prose, Ms. Hughes tells the story of the three cities that succeeded one another on the Golden Horn ... One of the leitmotifs of Ms. Hughes’s book is the cultural pluralism that has characterized Istanbul since earliest times ... Ms. Hughes doesn’t conceal the fact that Istanbul’s history has often been a bloody one... But Istanbul has also been a place of tolerance and enlightenment, and when one compares its recent history with that of the other great multicultural cities of the Middle East...Ms. Hughes’s wonderful evocation of Istanbul’s glittering past, snakes and all, should remind us of just how much there is to lose.
...Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul is built deliberately on what is passing as well as past. It is a story of numerous overlapping names, changes that often happened more slowly than the guidebooks tell us ... She retells the bitter clashes of civilisation that have occurred where Europe meets Asia... She is equally assiduous and rather more passionate in finding what brings the world together in Istanbul, the place with the longest claim to be its centre ... Hughes’ more hopeful stories come from the city’s formidable trade in ideas, arts and goods, only briefly interrupted by catastrophe... Sometimes she writes too much like a television presenter, placing herself on a boat where someone once crossed or something once happened. Mostly she writes from a safer distance ... Hughes is not an argumentative historian. She avoids the debates of academe. She is a wistful and impassioned cosmopolitan who has produced a challenging story for 2017.
From its title, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, it’s clear that this book will explore the morphing character of a place that has played a pivotal role in the human story for thousands of years ... The strength of this particular account lies in Hughes’ focus on the totality of the city’s inhabitants, not just the powerful ones. She introduces the reader to emperors and sultans, but also to slaves and refugees ... Hughes walks the reader through the city’s evolution always with an eye on its past, and she deftly points out the constant cosmopolitanism that defined the city... Many chapters begin with an anecdote about a random spot in Istanbul, described in intimate detail, and then connected to a time of grandeur in the past ...Hughes’ conversational tone makes the book extremely approachable, regardless of one’s familiarity with the city. Peeling back layers of time and fantasy, she shows us why this city is such an integral part of humanity’s story.
Not surprisingly, this volume is written chronologically. Each chapter covers an ostensibly significant period from prehistory to the 20th century and each includes virtually all of the important and influential personages and events therein. However, there is some tendency at times to jump around somewhat and provide relevant side information outside the designated period ... Be prepared to learn as this book is chock full of such data ... This is a large tome of 800 pages, including index. Do not expect to read it in one sitting. Spend considerable time and thought ruminating on the influence that such a venue has had on world and human history in particular.
But Hughes’s proclivities also mean that the book is cleverly organized around descriptions of various artifacts from Roman times that have been uncovered in the recent digging for one of Erdo?an’s megaprojects, the underwater tunnel across the Bosphorus connecting Asia to Europe.
Bettany Hughes, a prolific British broadcaster and classical scholar, and Thomas Madden, an American professor of history, take up that challenge in new books about Istanbul, and in both cases the result is impressive ... In Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities Ms Hughes plays intriguing, sophisticated games with time and space: both those concepts, in her view, need to be reconsidered when contemplating something so vast and fluid as Istanbul’s historical pageant ...by making unlikely connections between well-described locations and events separated by aeons, she gives voice to those witchy, diachronic feelings in a spectacular fashion. What could have been a failed literary conceit succeeds ... One of her recurring themes is that through an endless succession of despotic emperors and sultans, the city’s underdogs have always had their say in its destiny. That includes the female sex.
Her fascination with the city inspired prodigious research as well as travels throughout the Arab world, Central Asia, and Europe as she engaged in 'an archaeology of both place and culture' to chronicle the city’s evolution from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul ... Hughes argues that the city’s development was fueled not only by commercial and political motivations, but also by humans’ 'fundamental desire to share ideas' ... Hughes vividly details both the reality of the harem and its fantastical rendering by Western writers as a place of wonder, licentiousness, and sexual desire. The author’s history teems with individuals and events, sometimes overwhelming her usually lively narrative, especially once she focuses on the Ottoman Empire and its roiling succession of rulers ... A panoramic cultural history of a fascinating place.
