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Article: A voyage on the gong-tormented sea
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- October 7, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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"O City, city, eye of all cities, cried the chronicler Nicetas
Choniates in agony, contemplating the sack of Constantinople in
1204. "Thou has drunk to the dregs the cup of the anger of the
Lord". A lament no less heartfelt runs all through this elegy for a
civilization, the third and final volume of Lord Norwich's noble
history of Byzantium. The book is full of pity and regret, is
infused with a kind of worldly tenderness, and ends in a display of
tragic glory when at last, on Tuesday, 29 May 1453, the Muslims
storm the walls of Constantinople and put an end to it all - an
end, in the author's view, to "the most spiritually-oriented
temporal state the Christian world has ever known".
Not ...