2724 August 2019 THE WEEKARTS“Few names resonate in Europe like
that of Charlemagne,” said Levi Roach
in the Literary Review. In the eighth
and ninth centuries, the great medieval
ruler built up “one of the largest land
empires in the continent’s history”. He
was already fêted during his lifetime
aspater Europae(“father of Europe”),
and the legend of “Charles the Great” (as Charlemagne means in
Old French) has lingered in European memory ever since. In the
12th and 13th centuries, this “man for all seasons” was held up as
“Europe’s first crusader”. In the 19th and 20th centuries, he was
seen asaproto-nationalist. More recently, he has become “the
poster boy of the European project”. Yet for all Charlemagne’s
prestige, English-language biographies have been in short supply,
which makes this book, by the eminent medieval historian Janet
L. Nelson,a“welcome” addition. Formidably researched but also
“deeply human”,King and Emperoris a“superb” biography.
“Whatalife it was,” said David Crane in The Spectator.
Charles, son of Pippin, was born in 748 intoawarrior family that
had “moved from being the power behind the Frankish throne to
the throne itself”. When Pippin died
in 768, he divided his kingdom between
Charles and his brother Carloman–an
“infallible” recipe for strife. Handily,
though, Carloman died of natural
causes three years later; rather more
sinisterly, his wife and sons then
followed suit. Charles spent the next
four decades dramatically expanding
his territory, said Dan Jones in The
Sunday Times: by his death in 814,
it encompassed an area roughly
equivalent to France, Germany, the
Low Countries, Austria, Switzerland,
Italy and Slovenia. In 800, he earned
the “most precious reward”: Pope Leo
III crowned him Holy Roman Emperor.
Charles wasn’t justaruthless expansionist, said Noel Malcolm
in The Daily Telegraph. “Freakishly” tall (he was well over six
foot), he wasa“hands-on ruler”,apatron of the arts andakeen
huntsman and swimmer. “And there was one other physical
activity that he seems to have enjoyed. He had 19 children, by
his five wives and seven or so other partners.” Experts will rightly
hail this asamajor work, but some of its features may tax the
patience of non-medievalists: the “little side debates with other
historians”; the untranslated Latin terms. Those who “stay the
course” will learnahuge amount, however, and come away
withastrong sense of two things: the “sheer dynamism of this
exceptional man”, and the “sheer difficulty of working out, from
such distant records, what he really felt and thought”.King and Emperor
by Janet L. Nelson
Allen Lane 704pp £30
The Week Bookshop£24.99 (incl. p&p)
Review of reviews: BooksBook of the week“Gallons of ink have already been spilled” on
the question of what turns people into terrorists,
said Raffaello Pantucci in the Literary Review. In her
“stimulating” new book, Joan Smith presentsanovel
take on the issue. Instead of seeking economic,
ideological and geopolitical explanations, we should,
she argues, pay more attention to domestic violence.
Her basic point is that if you dig into the background
of virtually any male terrorist–whether of an Islamist
or far-right persuasion–you’re likely to findalife story littered with “abuse
at home” and “misogynistic behaviours”. Smith marshals an impressive array
of evidence in support of this thesis, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday
Times. Ina“crisp, cool tone”, she documentsa“sickening” array of gendered
violence–from the 2016 Bastille Day attacker in Nice, who used to urinate on
his wife’s feet, to the 2014 café-siege terrorist in Sydney, who had been charged
as an accessory to the murder of one of his ex-wives. Smith is rightly incredulous
that such links haven’t been discussed more, and that they have been widely
ignored by the security services. Understanding the “close link between private
and public violence”, she writes, would providea“new way” of identifying
potential terrorists.
While Smith is right to highlight the connections between terrorism and
misogyny, she comes close to making toxic masculinitya“catch-all
explanation”, said Edward Lucas in The Times. She skates over other factors
in violence–notably, heavy cannabis use–and fails to “fully deal with the fact
that women can also be terrorists”. Above all, she is surely wrong in her opening
contention: that terrorism is the “scourge of her age”. In fact, other things matter
far more–not least the “unpunished domestic violence” she so rightly abhors.
Home Grown
by Joan Smith
Quercus 320pp £16.99
The Week Bookshop£13.99
Novel of the weekDucks, Newburyport
by Lucy Ellmann
Gallery Beggar Press 1,020pp £14.99
The Week Bookshop£12.99Lucy Ellmann’s latest novel is “a work
resplendent in ambition, humour and humanity”,
said Catherine Taylor in the FT. Its 1,020
pages–“mostly constructed in one continuous
sentence without full-stops or paragraph
breaks”–present the innermost thoughts of
amother-of-four from Ohio whose mind flits
constantly between the “quotidian” (piles of
laundry, children’s meals) and the intractably
large (the state of America, climate change).
A“wisecracking, melancholy Mrs Dalloway
for the internet age”, she’sacompelling–and
frequently hilarious–character.
Ellmann has sometimes been criticised for the
whimsical, experimental bent of her writing,
said Ian Sansom in The Guardian. But it’s clear
that she couldn’t care less: here she “doubles
down, doubles up and absolutely goes for
broke”. Bringing together elements from all her
previous books (a love of wordplay and lists;
endless references to popular culture),Ducks,
Newburyportis a“dauntless cataloguing of
desires and hopes and fears” which reads like
an Anne Tyler novel written by Gertrude Stein.To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweek.co.uk/bookshopor speak toabookseller on020-3176 3835
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