Quotes from John Julius Norwich

More than once, during the Sicilian campaign, he put the whole operation at serious risk.

Whether or not the Mafia was able to make much difference is not easy to judge; resistance to the invaders was certainly greater in the east, where the Honoured Society was a good deal less powerful.

Pope Alexander's most fateful decision was taken in 1493, when he made the all-important adjudication between Spain and Portugal over their recent territorial discoveries in Africa and

The Mafia, meanwhile, had benefited greatly from its collusion with American intelligence

At this time, too, many Mafia bosses were appointed to responsible positions in the administration simply because there was no one else.

Gaul was, to quote Caesar's famous opening line 'divided in three parts'

Three Roman governments were established, for the provinces of Gallia Celtica (with the headquarters of the Governor General in Lyon), Gallia Belgica, corresponding roughly to what is now Belgium, and Aquitania in the south-west corner;

for the Byzantine Empire, absolute monarchy though it might be, ran its economy on socialist lines. Private enterprise was rigidly controlled: production, labour, consumption, foreign trade, public welfare, even the movement of population were all in the hands of the State. The consequence was a vast horde of civil servants, imbued by the Emperor with one overriding principle: to curb if not actually to destroy the power of the army.

In 1870, the throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Had the Prince rejected the offer at once, there might have been no Franco-Prussian war, and Napoleon III might have ended his days still on the throne. Alas, he accepted. France was appalled, how possibly could she accept being the sausage the middle of a German sandwich.

In little over a month, a handful of poorly armed and largely untrained men had brought one of the greatest royal houses of Europe to its knees.

Only then were the doors of the basilica opened, and the assembled company proceeded in state for prayers at the high altar before going on to Mass in the Sistine Chapel—all except the pope, who, as one of the Venetians explained in his report, "never attended these long services.

Of the early history of Romanus Lecapenus – or, as we must now call him, the Emperor Romanus I – all too little has come down to us. His father, known universally to contemporaries as Theophylact the Unbearable, was an Armenian peasant

Uruk retained a certain importance, but it never recovered its former political power. Its ruins now lie isolated in the deserts of Iraq.

unwinding all six foot five of him.

consistency, a virtue I have always deplored.