Memoirs of a Millennium

Memoirs of a Millennium is an engaging and unconventional history of the last millennium, told through the lives of ten individuals across ten centuries. The characters and their compatriots are brought vividly to life by eyewitnesses both sympathetic and unsympathetic, and a colourful cast of subsequent commentators. In this insightful and entertaining book, Ted Pocock uncovers complex webs of humanity in a narrative that moves effortlessly from connection to connection across countries and continents, and from the past to the present and back again.

The ten chapters explore the lives and times of the following individuals:

1000: Vladimir of Kiev (Russia)

1100: Godfrey of Bouillon (Palestine and the Holy Land)

1200: Jayavarman VII of Angkor (Cambodia)

1300: Devorguilla of Galloway (England and Scotland)

1400: Tamburlaine of Samarkand (Central Asia)

1500: Marcantonio Raimondi of Bologna (Italy)

1600: Toyotomi Hideyoshi of Osaka (Japan)

1700: Sophie Charlotte of Prussia (Germany)

1800: John Ledyard of Connecticut (USA)

1900: Yuan Shikai of Beijing (China)

The scholarship is dazzling, the prose elegant and witty, the rich digressions into related themes irresistible. The successive eras come alive and the compelling text keeps the reader in thral.' Dr Helen Ibbitson Jessup