A terrifically colourful and compelling narrative history... A hugely impressive achievement, bustling and sizzling with life on every page... This is now simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages there is'

Sunday Times

Excellent... Combines [Jones's] usual narrative exuberance and playfulness with the authority and span to bring together an amazing masterly gripping panorama'

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Empires come and go, religions form and break up, ideas clash and mingle – 1,100 years, 16 sweeping chapters, 700 pacey pages... Masterly, muscular and direct'

Ed Smith, New Statesman, Books of the Year

A badass history writer... to put it mildly

Duff McKagan

A great achievement, pulling together many strands with aplomb

Peter Frankopan, Spectator, Books of the Year

An audacious, entertaining page-turner. Dan Jones covers a thousand years of history with elegance and panache

Dan Carlin, Hardcore History