The Mediterranean has nurtured three of the most dazzling civilisations of antiquity, witnessed the birth or growth of three of our greatest religions and links three of the world's six continents. To the peoples living around its periphery, it has served at various times as a cradle and a grave, a bond and a barrier, a blessing and a battlefield. It has inspired writers from Homer and Virgil to Norman Douglas and Patrick Leigh Fermor. Geographically, it is unlike any other sea in the world; in historical importance also, it stands alone.
John Julius Norwich has visited every country around its shores; he has written histories of Norman Sicily, of Venice and of Byzantium. Now at last he tells the story of the Middle Sea itself - a story that begins with the Phoenicians and the Pharaohs and ends with the Treaty of Versailles.
He takes us through the Arab conquests of Syria and North Africa; the Holy Roman Empire and the Crusades; Ferdinand and Isabella and the Spanish Inquisition; the great sieges of Rhodes and Malta by the Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent; the pirates of the Barbary Coast and the Battle of Lepanto; Nelson and Napoleon; the Greek War of Independence and the Italian Risorgimento.
The story ends with the tragic Gallipoli campaign and the war in the desert which brought fame to the enigmatic T.E. Lawrence.
Chapter 4. Rome: The Early Empire
Chapter 7. The Christian Counter-Attack
Chapter 10. The End of Outremer
Chapter 11. The Close of the Middle Ages
Chapter 12. The Fall of Constantinople
Chapter 13. The Catholic Kings and the Italian Adventure
Chapter 14. The King, the Emperor and the Sultan
Chapter 15. Barbary and the Barbarossas
Chapter 17. Lepanto and the Spanish Conspiracy
Chapter 18. Crete and the Peloponnese
Chapter 19. The Wars of Succession
Chapter 20. The Siege of Gibraltar
Chapter 21. The Young Napoleon
Chapter 22. Neapolitan Interlude
Chapter 23. Egypt After Napoleon
Chapter 24. The Settlement of Europe
Chapter 25. Freedom for Greece
Chapter 26. Mohammed Ali and North Africa
Chapter 29. The Queens and the Carlists
Chapter 30. Egypt and the Canal