THE
SUNDAY
TIMES
BESTSELLERS
GENERAL HARDBACKS
Last
weekWeeks in
top 101
Windswept & Interesting
Billy Connolly
(Two Roads £25)
Memoir by the comedian who rose to
fame after an appearance on Parkinson
(18,445)242
The Storyteller/Dave Grohl
(Simon & Schuster £20) The Nirvana and Foo
Fighters rock star shares stories from his life (13,470)453
And Away.../Bob Mortimer
(Simon & Schuster £20) The Shooting Stars and
Gone Fishing funnyman’s autobiography (12,665)584
The Lyrics/Paul McCartney
(Allen Lane £75) The songwriter recounts his life
and art through the prism of 154 songs (12,215)—15
Immune/Philipp Dettmer
(Hodder £25) An illustrated journey through the
human body and its immune system (11,335)—16
Reflections/Holly Willoughby
(Century £20) An exploration of what it means to
live a beautiful life inside and out (10,640)727
This Much is True/Miriam Margolyes
(J Murray £20) The Bafta-winning star of stage and
screen reflects on her life and career (9,240)978
Celebrating the Seasons with the Yorkshire
Shepherdess/Amanda Owen (Macmillan £20)
Stories, photographs and recipes (8,750)329
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse/Charlie
Mackesy (Ebury £16.99) An iIllustrated
fable containing gentle life philosophy (6,900)10 10910
Don’t Laugh, It’ll Only Encourage Her/Daisy May
Cooper (M Joseph £20) Autobiography by the
creator and star of the BBC’s This Country (6,420)12GENERAL PAPERBACKS
Last
weekWeeks
in top 101
The Power of Geography
Tim Marshall
(Elliott & Thompson £9.99)
An examination of ten regions that could
define global politics in the future
(4,920)162
Entangled Life/Merlin Sheldrake
(Vintage £10.99) Biologist’s examination of the fungal
world and its importance to the planet (2,420)4103
Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day/Tom Moore
(M Joseph £8.99) The life of the inspirational
centenarian who raised millions for charity (2,350)21 14
Empireland/Sathnam Sanghera
(Viking £9.99) The British Empire and its
fundamental influence on modern Britain (2,325)255
Good Vibes, Good Life/Vex King
(Hay House £10.99) How positive thinking, self-love
and overcoming fear lead to lasting happiness (2,305)5906
Tall Tales and Wee Stories/Billy Connolly
(Two Roads £8.99) A selection of anecdotes
and illustrations from the popular comedian (2,220)6287
A Del of a Life/David Jason
(Arrow £8.99) Life lessons learnt during the TV
star’s years in the entertainment business (2,195)388
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
Philippa Perry (Penguin Life £9.99) Psychotherapist’s
parenting wisdom, free from judgment (1,700)8329
The Body Keeps the Score/Bessel van der Kolk
(Penguin £12.99) Understanding psychological trauma
and an alternative approach to healing (1,555)13 810
An Innocent Baby/Cathy Glass
(HarperCollins £7.99) Foster carer’s story of Darcy-May,
a baby abandoned at just two days old (1,480)78BOOKS
kingdom in its own right,
but an autonomous grey
area, uneasily poised
between France, England
and the Holy Roman Empire.
Perhaps it’s no wonder,
then, that in the British
imagination the Burgundians
remain largely off stage:
artistic patrons, useful allies
and dangerous enemies,
but somehow impossible to
pin down.
Three cheers, then, for
Bart Van Loo’s rollicking
history of the “Burgundian
century” after 1369, which
throws in as many mad kings,
knights and jesters as any
reader could want. One
moment you are reading
about how Burgundian
soldiers captured Joan of Arc
and sold her to the English
for £10,000. Then you’re
reading about people eating
“pork in the shape of a fish”,
a chicken’s head attached to
a rabbit’s body, or “a dozen
gigantic eggs in porkFlemish altarpieces, with
a glittering heyday in the
mid-15th century. The guilds
of Ghent and the burghers of
Bruges, the painters Jan van
Eyck and Rogier van der
Weyden, the dukes Philip the
Good, John the Fearless and
Charles the Bold — these were
the Burgundians.
To most English-speaking
readers, this has always been
a slightly impenetrable
subject. The Duchy of
Burgundy, based around
Dijon and part of the kingdom
of France, was not the same
thing as the County of
Burgundy, which was based
around Besançon and was
part of the Holy Roman
Empire. Then there was
Flanders, which was united
with the two Burgundies in
1369 when Philip the Bold
walked into St Bavo’s Abbey,
Ghent, to marry the Flemish
count’s daughter Margaret.
Yet, even in its prime,
Burgundy was never aHISTORY
Dominic Sandbrook
The Burgundians
A Vanished Empire: A History
of 1111 Years and One Day
by Bart Van Loo, translated by
Nancy Forest-Flier
Head of Zeus £30 pp590
Who were the Burgundians?
Today most of us associate the
word “Burgundy” with the
rural region in east-central
France that produces some
of the world’s most prized
chardonnays and pinot noirs.
Yet to anybody familiar with
medieval history, the name
conjures up one of Europe’s
great vanished states,
stretching from the modern
Netherlands to the shores
of Lake Geneva — a rich,
bustling, blood-soaked world
of quays, merchants and
moneychangers, brutal family
feuds and magnificent
ALAMYbladders”. Then you’re
reading about how Van Eyck
reinvented the art of
portraiture, or how the mad
French king Charles VI went
about calling himself
“George the Aggrieved” and
became convinced he was
made of glass. This is that
sort of book.
What explains Burgundy’s
rise to greatness? Perhaps the
simplest answer is that itcame at the moment when
neighbouring France was a
basket case, crippled by civil
strife, English invasion and
a succession of mad, bad or
simply inept kings.
Yet it was also driven, Van
Loo shows, by the remarkable
economic and cultural energy
of the towns of Flanders,
notably Ghent and Bruges.
This was western Europe’s
most urbanised region, alA Booker win will alwaysaffect sales, so it comes as no
surprise that Damon Galgut’s
The Promise has jumped
into the fiction hardback
bestsellers. But it will have to
go some way to surpass the
past two years’ winners.
lSometimes price points
don’t matter. Paul
McCartney’s The Lyrics may
be £75, but that hasn’t
stopped Beatles fans from
coming out in their droves to
buy it. Expect this to stick
around on the charts as a
Christmas gift.
The lists are prepared by and
the data is supplied by (and
copyrighted to) Nielsen BookScan,
and are taken from the TCM for
the week ending 06/11/21.
Figures shown are sales for
the seven-day period.
A colourful
story Philip
the Bold’s
troops are
victorious at
the Battle of
Roosebeke
in 1382A thrilling look at a lost empire called ‘the Silicon Valley of the Middle Ages’
The dukes of hazard