Lotharingia

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What to expect

A Sunday Times History Book of the Year
Shortlisted for The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award

'No Briton has written better than Winder about Europe' - Sunday Times

In AD 843, the three surviving grandsons of the great Emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited what became France, another Germany and the third Lotharingia: the chunk that initially divided the other two. The dynamic between these three great zones has dictated much of our subsequent fate.

In this beguiling, hilarious and compelling book Simon Winder retraces how both from west and from east any number of ambitious characters have tried and failed to grapple with these Lotharingians, who ultimately became Dutch, German, Belgian, French, Luxembourgers and Swiss. Over many centuries, not only has Lotharingia brought forth many of Europe's greatest artists, inventors and thinkers, but it has also reduced many a would-be conqueror to helpless tears of rage and frustration.

Joining Germania and Danubia in Simon Winder's endlessly fascinating retelling of European history, Lotharingia is a personal, wonderful and gripping story.

Critics Review

  • A master of the art of making history both funny and fun . . . Once again he brings Germany bouncing back to life

    Simon Jenkins, author of A Short History of Europe

  • Winder is our guide with delicious festive wit, and equal erudition

    Tablet

  • Weird and wonderful . . . No Briton has written better than Winder about Europe

    Sunday Times

  • There is so much fascinating detail in this book that it is hard to put down . . .

    Michael Burleigh, author of The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: A History of Now

  • Winder looks afresh at the long arc of European history, with its perpetual interplay between defiant local units and grandiose attempts at unifying schemes

    Guardian

  • The high plateau of my year was my catching up with Simon Winder. Danubia and Germania are an idiosyncratic, often funny fusion of history writing, travel writing and disrespect

    TLS

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