ALAN PALMER

Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Jerusalem, King of Bohemia, King of Dalmatia, King of Transylvania, King of Croatia and Slovenia, King of Galicia and Illyria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Bukovina, Duke of Modena, Parma, and Piacenza and so on, another thirty or so titles could be added. Was ever a monarch so festooned as Emperor Francis Joseph? He ruled from the Year of the Revolutions, 1848 until his death in 1916. His empire was the most multi-national state ever. An ethnic map of 1910 shows there to be Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Italians, Jews, Muslims, Ladins (in the Tyrol) and Roumanians. What is more, even together the Germans and the Magyars constituted a minority. And yet, as Alan Palmer observes no other European monarch exercised full sovereignty for so long. Unlike Queen Victoria he ruled rather than merely reigned. That alone suggests he was something more than the humourless bureaucrat he is commonly thought to have been, and Alan Palmer is successful in providing a more rounded and sympathetic portrait of him both as head of an empire and head of a family.His personal life was punctuated with tragedy: his brother, Maximilian was executed y Mexican republicans; his only son, Rudolf shot himself and his mistress at Mayerling; his wife, Empress Elizabeth, was stabbed to death in Geneva, and his nephew and heir, Francis-Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo. This was the first biography of Francis Joseph by an English writer and was acclaimed when originally published in 1994.With great skill Mr Palmer blends in the Emperors private life with the story of the Empire. . . This is an important book; also an entrancing one. Allan Massie, Daily TelegraphA compelling read Lawrence James, Evening Standard

The Gardeners of Salonika as Clemenceau contemptuously labelled them, could well be called the forgotten army of the First World War. Yet the Macedonian Campaign was, in Lord Hankeys words, the most controversial of all the so-called sideshows. In his definitive The First World War (1999) Sir John Keegan hailed Alan Palmer for having written the best study of the Macedonian Front in English. Palmer tells the story of this extraordinary polyglot army (it included, at various times, contingents from seven countries) from the first landing at Salonika in 1915 to the peace in 1918. He also illuminates the political and strategic background: the ceaseless argument in London and Paris over the armys future and the maze of Greek politics within which it and its commanders were enclosed. A masterly and colourful account of this, the most controversial and neglected sideshow of them all.GuardianNot only a valuable contribution to history, but also an enthralling bookSunday Times

The East End as an idea is known to every Londoner, and to many others, though its boundaries are vague. Alan Palmers historical overview of the area (first published in 1989 and revised in 2000) takes its extent to be the traditional limits of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, Hoxton and Shoreditch, the docklands and their overflow into West Ham and East Ham. And at the heart of the East End lies Spitalfields, home to a transient, often radical and hard-working population. Though it is often seen as Londons centre of industry and poverty, in comparison to the well-to-do West End, the East End has always been a diverse place: in the seventeenth century, Hackney was a pleasant country retreat; Stepney and the docklands a bustling world of sailors and merchants. The book traces the development of the area from these roots, through the nineteenth century - when the East End became notorious as the home of radicals, exiled revolutionaries and the very poor, its crowded streets the scene of murder, riot and cholera -to the bombing of the first and second world war; and the subsequent decline and regeneration of the twentieth century.

As Alan Palmer himself writes in his preface, Alexander 1, ruler of Russia for the first quarter of the nineteenth century, is remembered today mainly on three counts: as the Tsar who refused to make peace with the French when Moscow fell in 1812; as the idealist who sought to bind Europes sovereigns in a Holy Alliance in 1815; and as the Emperor who died - or gave the impression of having died - at the remote southern seaport of Taganrog in the winter of 1825. Recent interest has concentrated , perhaps excessively, on the third of these dramatic episodes akthough it is natural that the epic years of the struggle with Napoleon should continue to excite the historical imagination.He has been dubbed The Enigmatic Tsar. There are many contrasting opinions of him. Thomas Jefferson declared A more virtuous man, I believe, does no exist, nor one who is more enthusiastically devoted to better the condition of mankind. Castlereagh thought well of him, too, but both Metternich and Napoleon considered him inconsistent and untrustworthy. And Pushkin famously described him as a Sphinx who carried his riddle with him to the tomb. an assessment even more piquant if it is true, as some maintain, his tomb in empty.With his customary blend of meticulous scholarship and agreeable writing, Alan Palmer provides the most balanced and engaging portrait imaginable.A pleasure to read and unlikely to be replaced for many years Philip Ziegler, The TimesExcellent . . . a major biographical achievement, a notable contribution to our understanding of this still enigmatic monarch Robert Blake, Spectator

In the authors own words this is a book about chaps and maps. More formally. The Chancelleries of Europe is a study of traditional diplomacy at its peak of influence in the nineteenth-century and the first years of the twentieth. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 the five Great Powers - Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and Russia - established a system of international intercourse that safeguarded the world from major war for exactly a hundred years. The successive crises that challenged this supranational system - the unification of Italy and Germany, the scramble for colonies in Africa, and for trade concessions in Asia, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Japan - are well-known. Less attention has been given to the way the system functioned and to changes imposed on its character by the spread of speedier communications. It is these gaps in our understanding of the international politics of the century that the author seeks to fill.The book therefore studies the clashes of personality between crowned heads of the old empires and between rival statesmen and ambassadors seeking advancement. It compares the growth of personnel and specialist departments in the various foreign ministries, assesses the impact of domestic politics on external affairs, the power of the pressure groups like the (British) China Association and the (Russian) Far Eastern Committee, the proto-spin fed to favoured newspapers and, in contrast, the growing unease of press and public at hidden negotiations and the concealment of diplomatic expedients and alliances. But the book also notes changes in the way diplomacy was conducted in the wake of technological inventions such as the semaphore towers of the early years and the electric telegraph and undersea cables of the second half of the century. Moments of high drama, skullduggery and bathos prove that the reading of diplomatic history is not the dull, dreary drudge many abhorred in their schooldays.

Like Charles II, the sick man of Europe was an unconscionable time dying. Time and time again from the seventeenth century observers predicted the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, yet it outlived all its rivals. As late as 1910 it straddled three continents. Unlike the Romanovs, Hohenzollerns or Habsburgs, the House of Osman was still recognised as an imperial dynasty during the peacemaking which followed the First World War.This book offers a fascinating overview of the Ottoman Empires decline from the failure to take Vienna in 1683 to the abolition of the Sultanate in 1922 by Mustafa Kemal, after a revolutionary upsurge of Turkish national pride. It deals with constantly recurring problems: competing secular and religious authority; acceptance or rejection of Western ideas; greedy neighbours; population movements; and the strength or weakness of successive Sultans. The book also emphasises the challenges of the early twentieth century, when railways and oilfields gave new importance to Ottoman lands in the Middle East. Recent events have put the problems that faced the later Sultans back upon the world agenda. Names like Basra and Mosul again make the headlines. So, too, do the old empires outposts in Albania and Macedonia in the west and the mountainous Caucasus in the east. Alan Palmers narrative reminds us of the long, sad continuity of conflict in the Lebanon. We read of the Kurdish struggle for survival, of Armenian aspirations for independence, of the lingering interests of the Ottomans in their Libyan provinces, and of the Muslim character of Sarajevo in the troubled country that was once Yugoslavia. The Ottoman past has great relevance to the changing patterns of eastern Europe and western Asia in the twentieth century.

A glib assessment of Metternich might not be a favourable one, he was not without his ridiculous qualities, and yet he survived, more than survived, in fact, with the Age of Metternich lasting for more than a generation, and giving Europe a measure of peace, albeit repressive, that was much needed after the Napoleonic convulsions.Alan Palmer describes well Metternichs extraordinary longevity. Clement von Metternich held continuous office at the head of Europes affairs for a longer period of time than any other statesman in modern history: he became foreign minister of the Austrian Empire in the autumn of 1809 and he did not resign until the spring of 1848. For thirty-three of these thirty-nine years his statecraft and philosophy of government determined the political pattern of the continent. The Age of Metternich , though often impatiently dismissed by historians as a mere interlude, lasted for twice as long as the Age of Napoleon which preceded it and for half as long again as the Age of Bismarck which followed in the closing decades of the century.Metternich was a statesman to his fingertips, practising the skills of diplomacy with greater fluency than any contemporary Talleyrand, from whom he had learnt many of the refinement of the game.How would he fare today? Probably quite well as he was, again in Alan Palmers words, an early champion of federalism and a good European ...As a work of history (it) cannot be faulted. A. J. P. Taylor, ObserverWell-written, well-researched, lucid and witty. Philip Ziegler, The Times

Napoleón y María Luisa es la historia de un periodo fundamental en la vida del Emperador. • Napoleón, un divorciado de 40 años. La novia, María Luisa, una inocente joven de 18. Se unían así la dinast