FICTION HARDBACKS
Last
weekWeeks in
top 101
Better Off Dead
Lee Child and Andrew Child
(Bantam Press £20)
Jack Reacher comes to the aid of an army
veteran searching for her twin brother
(22,665)122
The Man Who Died Twice/Richard Osman
(Viking £18.99) Stolen diamonds worth £20 million
cause chaos for the Thursday Murder Club (18,535)283
The Judge’s List/John Grisham
(Hodder £20) Investigator Lacy Stoltz pursues a
cunning serial killer who is a serving judge (8,085)324
The Promise/Damon Galgut
(Chatto £16.99) Booker-winning tale of the decline of
a white family in post-apartheid South Africa (6,140)—15
Silverview/John le Carré
(Viking £20) A bookshop owner in a small seaside town
receives a proposal from an enigmatic visitor (5,365)446
Lore Olympus/Rachel Smythe
(Del Rey £20) The myth of Hades and Persephone
retold in romantic graphic novel form (4,700)—17
Three Sisters/Heather Morris
(Zaffre £16.99) Three sisters reunited at Auschwitz-
Birkenau are determined to survive (4,415)838
Beautiful World, Where Are You/Sally Rooney
(Faber £16.99) The lives and loves of a group
of four young friends in Ireland (4,285)599
Over My Dead Body/Jeffrey Archer
(HarperCollins £20) William Warwick is on hand when
a suspicious death occurs aboard a cruise liner (4,115)7410
Sharpe’s Assassin/Bernard Cornwell
(HarperCollins £20) As the dust settles after the Battle
of Waterloo, Richard Sharpe is ordered to Paris (3,625)96FICTION PAPERBACKS
Last
weekWeeks
in top 101
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman
(Penguin £8.99)
Four friends in a retirement village team
up to solve a murder on their doorstep
(15,500)1262
The Christmas Escape/Sarah Morgan
(HQ £8.99) Secrets unravel and unexpected romance
blossoms at a spa retreat in Lapland (12,305)523
A Gambling Man/David Baldacci
(Pan £8.99) Aloysius Archer probes a blackmail case
involving a married mayoral candidate (11,970)924
Left You Dead/Peter James
(Pan £8.99) A man reports his wife has vanished
without a trace; a Roy Grace thriller (10,720)345
Dune/Frank Herbert
(Hodder £9.99) Factions battle for control of an
inhospitable planet and its valuable resource (8,665)236
All That Glitters/Danielle Steel
(Pan £8.99) The hard-working but naive child of rich
parents inherits their considerable fortune (8,580)16 17
Girl A/Abigail Dean
(HarperCollins £8.99) A lawyer reconnects with her
siblings to execute their abusive mother’s will (7,865)468
Shipyard Girls Under the Mistletoe/Nancy Revell
(Arrow £7.99) The 11th novel in the series set in the
northeast of England in the Second World War (7,330)10 29
The Midnight Library/Matt Haig
(Canongate £8.99) A magical library allows a young
woman to live life’s endless possibilities (7,050)83810
Winter Wedding/Dilly Court
(HarperCollins £7.99) Pregnant and alone, Rosalind
Blanchard turns to her brother-in-law for help (6,885)64MANUALS
1
Last
week
2
Weeks
in top 10
8Guinness World Records
2022
(Guinness £20)
New edition of the record
book with environmental
issues front and centre
(18,595)2
Last
week
1
Weeks
in top 10
2Mrs Hinch: Life in Lists
Mrs Hinch
(M Joseph £12.99)
Lists to help readers
organise and plan
their days
(9,395)3
Last
week
9
Weeks
in top 10
2Private Eye Annual 2021
(Private Eye £9.99)
Cartoons, jokes, parodies
and sketches from the
satirical news and current
affairs magazine
(6,660)4
Last
week
3
Weeks
in top 10
2Love to Cook
Mary Berry
(BBC £26)
A collection of new
no-fuss recipes from the
chef’s BBC series
(6,235)5
Last
week
4
Weeks
in top 10
14Jane’s Patisserie
Jane Dunn
(Ebury £20)
Baking blogger’s
collection of recipes for
cakes, bakes and sweet
treats (5,635)out of his way to woo the
merchants and barge masters.
He knew where the future lay.
At the heart of Van Loo’s
narrative are the dukes, a
succession of characters just
as strange and flawed as the
Roman emperors. Philip’s
son John the Fearless spent
much of his reign in a deadly
feud with his cousin, Louis
of Orleans, whom he
suspected of sleeping with
his wife. Eventually, in 1407,
John arranged for some
thugs to murder Louis
with axes as he was riding
through Paris. Twelve years
later, however, John was
bludgeoned to death by the
French dauphin’s men during
a parley on a bridge.
So now Burgundy passed
to his son Philip the Good,
whom Van Loo describes as
an “erotomaniac”. Philip
married three times, had 25
mistresses and fathered at
least 26 children, remarkable
even by the standards of the
day. He was also an
enormously gifted
administrator, absorbing
modern-day Holland and
Luxembourg, and presiding
over the most glittering court
in Europe.Van Loo calls this the
“Burgundian Dream”, a
zenith of artistic and
economic achievement,
buttressed by a sophisticated
apparatus of auditors
and bookkeepers. Even
royal banquets seemed
breathtakingly modern, with
all kinds of automatons and
wonders: a gnome riding a
wild boar, a fire-breathing
dragon, a pie containing
28 musicians, or a table
fashioned into a church tower
with room for four singers.
At its peak in the mid-1450s,
the idea that Burgundy might
soon melt away would have
seemed utterly ridiculous.
But its success had always
depended on two things —
dynastic good fortune andFrench weakness,
and within 50 years both
had evaporated.
When Philip’s successor
Charles, a morbidly violent
and repressed man, was killed
by Swiss mercenaries at the
siege of Nancy in 1477, the
duchy passed to his daughter
Mary. But a mere five years
later she died in a riding
accident, aged just 25.
So now control fell into
the hands of her husband,
the Habsburg emperor
Maximilian. With that,
Burgundy was sucked into the
wider Habsburg orbit. Soon
Bruges and Ghent were
eclipsed by Antwerp and
Amsterdam, and the
Burgundian dream was over.
A complicated story, then
— but a thrillingly colourful
and entertaining one too.
Stuffed with elaborate feasts
and bloody battles, Van Loo’s
book has been an enormous
success in his native Belgium
and it’s easy to see why.
He has clearly done his
research, but wears his
learning lightly and keeps
the emphasis firmly on story
and character. If there’s any
justice, a blockbuster TV
series awaits. cPhilip the
Good had
25 mistresses
and fathered
26 children
world of city councils, cloth
halls, print shops and brokers’
markets, the “Silicon Valley
of the Middle Ages”. Even the
word “bourse” comes from
the Van der Beurze family,
who owned an inn in Bruges
where people bought and
sold securities.
It’s telling that even whenPhilip the Bold rode into
Ghent for that crucial
wedding alliance, he went
PAPERBACK
OF THE WEEK
The Crocodile Hunter
by Gerald Seymour
Hodder £8.99The MI5 risk
analyst Jonas
Merrick is
charged with
spotting
jihadis
re-entering
Britain, and
tracks one such fighter after
he comes ashore in Kent
in a boat full of migrants.
Merrick’s meticulous
detective work is enthralling,
and this topical tale shows
that Seymour hasn’t lost
his journalist’s eye for the
stories behind the news.
John DugdaleST DIGITAL
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CHOICE OF THE BEST OF 2021,
GO TO THESUNDAYTIMES.
CO.UK/CULTURE