Elizabeth Drayson

The essential history of an iconic European city, by Cambridge academic Elizabeth Drayson. “An admirable achievement... [Drayson has] expertise as a scholar and command as a storyteller” BBC History Magazine “A glittering homage to one of the world's most beautiful and storied cities” Dan Jones “Beauty built on blood and brutality... A fascinating new tome” Daily Mail From the early...

Rethinking the history of the last thirteen centuries, in Crucible of Light, Elizabeth Drayson pulls together the epic interwoven history of the Muslim and Christian worlds. Focusing on major turning points, individual stories and key places, from Mecca to Cordoba, from Damascus to Venice, and from Vienna to Istanbul, Drayson tracks the themes that unite us—classical learning preserved in Islamic...

In Crucible of Light, Elizabeth Drayson pulls together the epic interwoven history of the Muslim and Christian worlds over an 800-year span. This journey encompasses the conquest and re-conquest of Spain, the meteoric rise of Arabo-Norman Sicily, the Ottoman renaissance of the 16th to 18th centuries, the ebb and flow of Balkan history, and the fate of contested islands like...