Table Of Content

‘Throughout his book, Asbridge resists the temptation to provide a simple, seamless narrative. Instead, he builds up his account of critical moments by leading the reader through the various (sometimes contradictory) layers of contemporary evidence . . . If this approach provides the text with a vivid directness, so too does the author’s (for once, literally) foot-slogging research. Asbridge has walked large tracts of the crusader’s route through Syria and Palestine, and his sensitivity to topographical detail – and its tactical importance to the campaign – gives his account the tightly focused immediacy of travelogue’ John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph ‘[A] substantial book, [in which] there is plenty to discover . . . Asbridge [tells] of astonishing heroism, together with rapidly escalating sadism and atrocity . . . His pace is tremendous, and he has a remarkable feel for place. It certainly helps that, like so many Crusaders nine centuries ago, Asbridge has himself walked 350 miles from Antioch towards Jerusalem: his book is all the better for it’ Diarmaid MacCulloch, Guardian ‘Nuanced and sophisticated . . . The first, very considerable, merit of [this] book . . . is that Thomas Asbridge, while fully aware of the modern perspectives, presents the story to us from the point of view, principally, of the Crusaders themselves . . . Thoroughly documented and academically respectable, [it is an] admirable example of narrative history written with the general reader in mind. Nobody can read [The First Crusade] without acquiring a better understanding of the Middle Ages and the medieval mind; nor, I would think, without developing an admiration for the courage, tenacity, and even the idealism of the Crusaders. To that extent, [it] may be called revisionist history’ Allan Massie, Literary Review ‘Salutary reading . . . the first book on the subject to get us close to the way the crusaders thought and felt, when they mistook massacre for charity and bloodshed for penance’ Felipe Fernández Armesto, The Times ‘Asbridge’s outstanding new history eyes with understanding and unsqueamishness the mixed motives of the Crusaders . . . The savagery of the triumphant Christian warriors seemed to shock and delight contemporary commentators in equal measure. It is this duality of passion, religious and murderous, that Asbridge analyses with such skill . . . Asbridge’s tactful and sympathetic approach to the fragmentary and partial nature of the primary sources, his ability to sustain a gripping narrative, to develop the personalities of the principals, to inspire both admiration and regret for the achievements of these medieval adventurers, all combine to make this one of the most distinguished books yet launched on the current wave of enthusiasm for history’ Graham Anderson, Oxford Times ‘Although well-researched, the book wears its scholarship lightly and reads like a work of fiction, complete with vivid characters such as Stephen of Blois and Godfrey of Bouillon. This will, no doubt, become required reading on many a university’s history course,