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“... Venice is an elegant and distinguished first book. Like its predecessor The Rise to Empire, John JuliusNorwich’s The Greatness and the Fall has the modest aim of providing ‘a straightforward record of the main political events of Venetian history, for the general non-academic reader’. This second volume ...”

“... 17th-century English peal out amid the High Street mix, creating acute problems of harmonisation. John JuliusNorwich pointed out that St Paul can sound like Nancy Mitford (‘How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?’), but dropped beside a Benetton hoarding on the Divis Road the Apostle might ...”

“... Christmas Crackers, the entertaining commonplace chapbooks he compiled yearly from 1969 to 2019, John JuliusNorwich established as a principle that each quotation, however short, must appear alone on a page. If it couldn’t stand up to that spotlight, it shouldn’t be included. Offill’s marooned paragraphs are ...”

“... rather Buñuelesque) by Duff C. and Lady W. being so middle-aged and ultra respectable. John JuliusNorwich puts his father’s sexual success down to his ability to write bad sonnets to his lady-friends but one wonders if it was a more basic attraction. The moustache is hardly a plus, the photograph on the ...”

“... Caraffa, Pope Paul IV, a ‘power in Rome’. And in the conclave which eventually elected Julius III, Pole was offered the papacy by acclamation on the night of 4 December 1549, and next day came within one vote of formal election. There is every reason to think that had he survived the flu epidemic of 1558 he would have been a strong contender to ...”