Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
by Bettany Hughes, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £25
‘Rome never fell, it simply moved 854 miles east,” is just one of the many startling ideas that pepper Bettany Hughes’s fiery and magnificent new biography of Istanbul. It is a testament to the city’s importance that the book’s 600 pages are teeming with kings and sultans, priests and relics, riots, coups and wars. At times, it can seem as if the whole of history has happened within its imposing walls, while at others, Istanbul appears a unique hybrid of East and West, Christianity and Islam, the debauched and the sacred.
