Ghost Empire

by Richard Fidler

Ghost Empire is a rare treasure—an utterly captivating blend of the historical and the contemporary, narrated by a master storyteller. The story is a revelation: a beautifully written ode to a lost civilization combined with a warmly observed father-son adventure far from home.


In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire—centered around the legendary Constantinople—we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history. The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, murder. Turbulent stories from the past are brought vividly to life at the same time as a father navigates the unfolding changes in his relationship with his son.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Historical, Memoir, Audiobook, Middle East

512 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 2016

About the author

Richard Fidler is one of ABC's (Australian Broadcasting Commission) most popular presenters, best known for his hour-long interview program, Conversations with Richard Fidler. The program is ABC Radio's most popular podcast, downloaded more than 1.5 million times per month. It features local and international guests from all walks of life, engaging in in-depth interviews.

He first came to prominence in the 1980s as a member of the Doug Anthony All Stars (DAAS), an Australian musical comedy group also comprising Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott. The group disbanded in 1994.

Richard began his broadcast career on TV, and presented shows including: Race Around the World; Aftershock; Mouthing Off, and Vulture.

In 2011 Fidler was awarded a Churchill Fellowship[2] to investigate new forms of public radio in the United States and the United Kingdom.

He is the immediate past-President of Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA) and a member of its board of directors.

He is married to Khym Lam and has 2 children.


. DAAS Book / by the Doug Anthony All Stars (released censored in the UK in 1989, uncensored in Australia in 1992) – co-authored with Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott
. DAAS Kapital / by the Doug Anthony All Stars (1993) – co-authored with Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott
. The Insider's guide to power in Australia / by Jack the Insider (2007) – co-authored with Peter Hoysted

Reviews

['Aussie Rick' · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished “Ghost Empire” by Richard Fidler and what a delightful read it was! Basically it’s a popular, easy to read, history of Constantinople. The narrative is mixed in with a personal account of the modern version of this city that the author and his son, Joe, experienced and observed during the trip from Rome to Istanbul in 2014.

I have read both John Julius Norwich’s masterly and detailed trilogy on Byzantium and the various volumes of the “History of the Wars” by the Byzantine historian Procopius, both excellent accounts in their different ways. However if you want just one good book to read on this subject then I reckon you can’t go past “Ghost Empire”.

I am sure once you finish the book you will want to rush out and find more titles on the subject. The story is full of accounts of battles and skirmishes with the various enemies the empire faced until its fall in 1453 to Sultan Mehmed II, ruler of the Ottoman Turks. There are also accounts of palace intrigues, Constantinople’s relationship with old Rome and the West and the role of religion in the city and empire.

We hear of great Byzantium generals like Belisarius and palace eunuchs like Narses who also led armies in Italy against the enemies of the empire. We read tales of great empresses like Theodora and Irene of Athens amongst others. The book never gets boring or stale, I found myself riveted to the page, flicking through the 453 pages of narrative (492 pages in total) in a matter of days.

Like I said earlier, this is a easy to read book full of great history on Constantinople and commentary on the modern city of Istanbul. If you have been to the city it will bring back fond memories of your visit and if you haven’t been to the city I am sure that after reading this account you will be going sometime soon.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This digest of 1000 years has resolved some questions for which answers were only vague in my mind: Was Constantinople still (part of) the Roman Empire when it fell to the Ottomans? Why does the Catholic Church have a separate “Orthodox” church? What (anything!) about the Crusades attack on Christian Constantinople?

Richard Fidler does a big job in cutting through the labyrinth (byzantine may be the more descriptive term, but I’ve learned it is a pejorative) to present the story about which the author says in his introduction “Why didn’t I know this before?”

The style and content remind me of Becoming Leonardo: An Exploded View of the Life of Leonardo Da Vinci which is also written by a lay historian. It could be that without the onus of appearing scholarly both are freer to inject casual terms and/or personal anecdotes. Both writers have studied their subject and know what general readers need/want to know.

The result is that Fidler has created a highly readable condensed history. Important trends and turning points are put in context along with the human drama. For instance Constantine in converting his subjects to Christianity is responsible for the religion’s prevalence today on 3 continents, but while doing this he is killing off his sons thereby eliminating competition for his crown.

The book follows the centuries from emperor to emperor and the palace intrigues gave them their thrones. After the empire’s re-centralization under Constantine I you see its fragmentation. Constantinople had become so set apart from what had been its Empire that it was fair game for the Fourth Crusade which fully breached the link. In the isolation that followed, territories slipped away and the Muslim conquest nearly surrounded this city, the last vestige of the once mighty empire. The Roman Empire’s last stand is told in detail, maneuver by maneuver and finally the ghastly mayhem that followed.

There are some surprising roles for women. Justinian’s love for Theodora, his bear-keeper’s daughter and an actress, spurred him to create a new law to allow him marry her. He recognized her as a co-partner as they waged wars of offense and defense together and built the Hagia Sofia. The Empress Irene seized power when her “iconoclastic” husband died of a head infection from too heavy a crown (so she said) and ruled in the name of her son through a eunuch. Princess Honoria wrote to Attila the Hun to save her from an arranged and loveless marriage. There is Anna Comnena who almost followed her father to the throne, which was taken by her brother, chronicled their father’s life in the “Alexiad” from the convent to which she was banished. More traditionally there is Theophanu the 13 year old bride to a later Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire who introduced the fork (and spaghetti twirling) to western Europe.

This book put important pieces of history together for me and I now have the background to read more thoroughly. The weaknesses of this book are its unreadable maps and the very small B&Ws of places of interest. I did not need to use the index because of the seamless text. The footnotes show the (amateur) author has done his homework with primary sources.

If you feel, like I did, that you have only a vague sense this history and want a better understanding I know of no substitute: this is a must read book for you.

[Andrew McMillen · Rating 4 out of 5]

With this extraordinarily ambitious book, Richard Fidler throws himself into telling one of the world’s great stories: the rise and fall of Constantinople, the magnificent eastern Roman city that endured for 1000 years and saw every aspect of human nature unfold within and outside its imposing walls.

Fidler is wonderfully fond of storytelling. As host since 2005 of the hour-long ABC radio program 'Conversations', he has listened as hundreds of people from all walks of Australian life have told him their stories, helped along by his warmth, curiosity and good humour.

He is a master interviewer, which is why 'Ghost Empire' appears at first to be a strange and unexpected story for him to attempt to wrap his arms around. Reading the opening pages, I came to realise that Fidler’s voice is one that is part of my life. In addition to its substantial live radio audience, Conversations is popular as a podcast, and in this book it is impossible not to hear the author speaking the words into a microphone somewhere.

Far from being a dry jaunt into ancient history, however, the conceit of this book is that, several years ago, Fidler travelled to Italy and Turkey with his son Joe, then 14, whom he describes as “thin, with hair like mine, wavy to the point of curly. Joe wishes it were straight. He likes history and he’s always asking questions”. In just a few words he sketches an outline of his inquisitive progeny that plants itself firmly in the mind, and endures throughout this tale.

Viewed in this light, 'Ghost Empire' is as much about their relationship as it is about the emperors who ruled Constantinople through times of war and peace. Fidler alternates between historical storytelling and conversations with Joe during their month-long journey.

He strikes a fine balance between these two narrative threads: just when my eyes were beginning to glaze over at the mention of yet another close relative of a soon-to-be-deposed ruler, Fidler snaps his fingers by offering a snippet of conversation, or by drawing a parallel to Istanbul, as Constantinople is today known.

Sometimes these digressions are no longer than a paragraph, but the timing is consistently good. Often, Fidler’s detailed and passionate retellings of these ancient tales of power, deception, seduction, violence and devotion are framed as the father sharing knowledge with his son. It’s a device that works well, and offers self-deprecating humour as well as striking, true insights such as this: “For some reason, men and boys tend to talk more freely side by side, rather than face to face. So when Joe was little, I often took him on long walks with me.”

So it was on their trip together, which ends with a day-long trek on foot along the length of the remains of the mighty Theodosian Walls, which repelled invading armies until falling to the Ottoman Empire in 1453.

The easy relationship between the author and his travel companion provides several moving moments, but none more so than when Fid­ler recounts witnessing Joe’s birth, where he surprised himself with an emotional outburst he had not known since childhood:

Until that moment, every new dad I’d met had said something glib about the change in life that was coming. They would chuckle and tell me to prepare for Phase Two: a life of no sleep, shitty nappies and not hanging out with the guys anymore. I think this banter is an act of concealment, a way of papering over the powerful and unsettling surge of love that fatherhood brings.

Fidler has a knack for such cutting, weighty observation, at once light yet loaded with meaning and emotion. We already know he is an interviewer of great empathy; now we know he mirrors that skill on the page, too.

The beauty of this book is its accessibility. It has been written by a man who sits near the centre of Australian culture, and his name on the cover will draw many new readers to this old tale. It certainly attracted me.

I did not study ancient history in high school and would not ordinarily find myself reaching for a book about the Byzantine Empire. But this complex account is so vividly and thrillingly related that it feels like the beginning of a path for further reading; a book that leads to more books.

For the author, history has always seemed like a trove of riches and a shield against boredom and melancholy. Having absorbed his words, I can only agree.

“The story of how Constantinople flourished into greatness and expired in terrible violence is one of the strangest and most moving stories I know,” Fidler writes in the introduction. He wanted his son to have that story — and now we do, too.

Review originally published in The Weekend Australian, August 6 2016: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...

[Kate Forsyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love listening to Richard Fidler on the radio. He is always so warm and funny and curious about people, and he has a knack for drawing out the personal and the unique in every story. I have also been increasingly interested in Constantinople (now known as Istanbul), having read several novels set there in recent years. After hearing Richard speak about his book at the Brisbane Writers Festival last year, I bought a copy and finally read it last month. Normally I read non-fiction slowly over a few weeks, reading several novels in between chapters. But Ghost Empire was so engaging and readable, I whizzed through it in just a few nights.

The book combines the personal memoir of a journey Richard and his son Joe made to Istanbul in 2014, with stories from the city’s long and bloody history. Constantinople was built on the foundations of Byzantium in the early 4th century and became the new capital of the Roman empire in 330 AD. From the mid-5th to the mid-13th century, it was the largest, richest and most powerful city in the world, and the guardian of the most sacred relics of Christianity, the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross.

For almost a thousand years the city was the centre of extraordinary true tales of greed, murder, violence and betrayals, and Richard entwines these stories with anecdotes from his own life and his life-changing journey with his son. The result is utterly fascinating.

[Tim O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began this book thinking I needed a good overview of Byzantine history, which I've read about mainly as a student of western medieval history, the Crusades and early Christian history generally. As it turned out, 35 years of studying that background actually gave me a pretty good insight into the Eastern Empire, but Fidler's easy-going narrative was worth the price of admission anyway.

That's partly because of his conversational style, his comedian's eye for amusing anecdotes and quirky details and, particularly, the way he used the story of his trip to Istanbul with his teenage son Joe as a frame narrative. Telling a connected series of stories within the frame of a tale about a journey has a long pedigree in English - Geoffrey Chaucer used it to good effect in The Canterbury Tales 600 years ago after all. But Filder's story of his father and son holiday adds an intimate and humanising dimension to what could otherwise be a sequence of palace coups and people being exiled, blinded or having their noses cut off. The framing narrative's Joe is someone Fidler the narrator can explain things to, create analogies for or use to challenge his own thinking about what he's depicting. I already liked Fidler but early in the book I decided I really liked young Joe.

Perhaps a professional Byzantine scholar would have more quibbles, but I was happy to forgive Filder when he dwelled on some of the more legendary versions of the stories he relates. He notes why he does this in his forward and his retellings are punctuated with enough "so the story goes" caveats to make this material distinct from more certain historical material. Any popular writer who is also a non-specialist will, of course, get a few things wrong, so I can also forgive little things like the reference to the Varangian Guard carrying "double-bladed axes", when their axes were the single-bladed variety used in Scandinavia and Viking England (double-bladed axes being more liked by Hollywood directors and fantasy authors than actual historical warriors). Other mistakes are less trivial. For example, Fidler assures his readers that:

"Almost as an afterthought, Justinian ordered the closure of the Academy of Athens, a school founded by Plato himself, terminating a thousand years of philosophical education and inquiry in a stroke."

This is incorrect. Justinian passed a series of edicts that limited the public funding of pagan schools, but did not act against any school in particular. The local authorities in Athens then carried out those edicts and the Neoplatonic school there had to close up shop as a result because it could not support itself without state funding. But that school was not "founded by Plato himself" - Plato's Academy had ended back in the first century BC thanks to Sulla's sack of Athens in 86 BC. The tiny school in question was a mystical salon founded in the fourth century by Plutarch and bore very little resemblance to anything Plato would have recognised. So this closure was not ordered by Justinian, it did not end "a thousand years of philosophical education" (that continued in the great academies of Gaza, Alexandria, Antioch, Beirut and Constantinople) and it was not Plato's school. Getting these things right is important because getting them wrong creates a very different and erroneous impression of events.

In places the historical mutual dislike of Byzantines and their western Catholic neighbours did seem to creep into Fidler's descriptions. It's true that Constantinople dwarfed any city in western Europe in size and splendour for most of the medieval period, but in places the "crude westerners vs sophisticated Greeks" elements got a bit heavy handed. After all, many of the Normans who interacted with the Byzantines were not from northern Europe, but from Naples and Sicily and their cities were every bit as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as those of the Byzantines, if not on the same scale as Constantinople.

But these are mostly quibbles (mostly). Filder manages to tell an accessible and entertaining story that spans 1000 years and never lets us lose track of its continuities or its connections to the present. The final chapters' blow-by-blow account of the fall of Constantinople made me wonder why no-one has made a big budget movie of these remarkable events. But its the framing story of his trip with Joe that brings the grand sweep back to a human scale - feeding street cats, discovering Turkish delicacies (and overrated fish rolls) and discovering nondescript but historically significant ruins in back streets - that makes this book worth curling up with. Fidler is an excellent and personable guide.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Fidler is careful to point out that he’s not a historian, but a history lover. He is a marvellous story-teller, though. He takes us on a roller-coaster of a ride, telling the history of The Byzantine Empire. And what a story - from the glory days, with Constantinople flourishing as the centre of the empire, through the rise and fall of civilisations, through the new ideas, the violence and the decay. And, embedded in this, descriptions of the city of Constantinople, as it was, and Istanbul, as it is today.

Although he has provided a careful bibliography, Fidler has also delighted the reader with little anecdotes, rumours rather than history, but adding so much colour to his story. The little cameos of some of the main players are fascinating.

Interwoven with this is the relationship between Richard and his teenage son, Joe, growing closer together as they explore the history of a lost civilisation.

This is a marvellous book, telling not just the history of the Byzantine empire, but the story of its peoples, tribes and cultures. Fidler's love for history in general, and the Byzantine Empire in particular, shines through.

[Ruth Bonetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a challenge! To condense the massive history of Byzantium from 657 BC-1453AD in readable, accessible prose that shares a deep love of history.
Richard Fidler begins with the disclosure "I learnt nothing about Byzantium in school." While I loved both Ancient and Modern History in school I retained only sketchy knowledge of the story of Constantinople. I revelled in awe-inspiring recognitions on first visiting the Colosseum, Pantheon, and numerous cathedrals during seven years in Europe, but never travelled so far east as Istanbul.
This book might be tossed aside as boring history if Fidler had not inserted the human touch: he counterpoints the past with the present, and shares personal insights of son Joe on his rite of passage travels. He agonises when Joe is slow to board a tram and left behind on the platform; muses on the role of parenting and accepts this will be reversed with Joe's maturity. Meanwhile he rues that his offspring "lump us into the same age brackets as their grandparents, which is simply 'old'...It's a though we weren't paying attention one day and stupidly left our youth on a bus."
Vignettes of father-son discoveries and ribbings rescue the reader just when eyes glaze over at thumbnail portraits of numerous emperors and empresses: Theodosius, Theodore and Theodora; Justinian and Justin; Constantine The Great (#1) through to Constantine XV. Such is the sweep of history that Fidler must sketch many character studies in a page or so.
After macho propensities for eye-gouging and execution, readers can welcome strong yet refined females, like Anna Comnena, the world's first-known female historian; Helena, the former tavern girl, discarded consort then honoured mother of the supreme Augustus, who was made a saint, partly for saving holy relics during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She brought the Holy Nails and piece of the True Cross to Constantinople. Theodora, the bear-keeper's daughter, burlesque dancer and prostitute who entranced Justinian and became a craft empress, and instigated a program of law reform to improve the status of Roman women. Theophanu of the daily bath, who introduced her golden fork to table of western Europe, "...Which is why, whenever you pick up pasta with a fork, you enact, in a very small way, a symbolic union of Rome with Constantinople, and a reunion of the eastern and western empires."
Given the spread of Byzantium influence Fidler sweeps wide around the world from Russia to the impact that led to a wave of trade route exploration and hence new lands like America. There's Harald of Norway and Viking graffiti, little stick figures that say: 'Halfdan carved these runes' so "For several days Joe and I refer to ourselves in the third person as 'Halfdan', as in, 'Halfdan hungry'...'Halfdan want to go back to room and watch Turkish TV now'."
Events are often blood curdling but then comes relief in folk tales of Melusine or the resonance of male voices raised in Byzantium chant. Fidler gives new insights to this professional musician by contrasting the ison underlying heavy drone, which doesn't move as it exists out of time, with the melody that moves up and down through time.
In the poignant later pages a glorious civilisation tumbles inexorably downhill: "As Ottoman power flourished, Constantinople shrank further into its own skin..." Yet Mehmed must fight waves of tough resistance from the once-great metropolis until "The city was desolate, lying dead, naked, soulless, having neither form not beauty".
This absorbing book spreads its wings around the world, past the Byzantium realm into its influence on philosophy and religious belief systems. It helps us understand the perplexing tenacity of Muslim expansion. Above all, it expands the minds and horizons of readers.

[Liam || Books 'n Beards · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this - as someone who knows frightfully little about Roman history (East Roman history, at least, I've got a passing knowledge of the Republic and early Imperial), it was quite a good biography of a fascinating and important city.

Fidler goes through the entire history of Byzantium come Constantinople come Istanbul through its entire history as a capital of the world from 300AD - 1453AD, an incredible eleven century journey laden with tragedy and destruction, interspersed with anecdotes from his son Joe and his trip to Istanbul in the early 2010's.

Though written largely as pop history, and a fairly skeletal overview of some fairly major European events, it does a good job of giving an overview of an incredible range of time. I found the asides regarding their trip interesting and heartwarming, but they also jarred slightly with the historical text - I would be turning the page desperate to know what the next horror to befall the great city was only to find a few pages of describing how his son likes a particular Turkish warm coffee.

Regardless, very enjoyable and consumable and has done its job sparking interest in the history of the Queen of Cities.

[Mick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent telling of the history of the Byzantine empire & a modern tale of exploring the history of Constantinople in modern Istanbul. Well written & the audiobook version is read by the author. Worth your time.

[Ron Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am writing this review as the news is coming through that Donald Trump has just been elected POTUS. Intriguing times! I guess comparisons could be made between the Byzantium empire and the American Empire and its respective leaders. However, I doubt that the American empire will last 1123 years!
I found Ghost Empire a fabulous read. The narrative held my attention for the 500 pages.
The book has three woven stories, a history of Constantinople, a travelogue and a love note to his son. Fidler is not a trained historian but he certainly has the writing talents of a great storyteller. He has undoubtedly done some deep and comprehensive research. he has told the story of a city and its inhabitants for over eleven hundred years in an interesting and coherent manner.
It’s a fascinating tale that journeys through 1100 years of murder, eye gouging, garroting and courtly intrigue.
I had some knowledge of Byzantium history and this publication certainly adds to that knowledge. Because the Roman and Sasanian empires had become tired and weak after centuries of conflict and it was at this time that the Muslim/Arab fighters charged out of the Arabian peninsular and conquered great slabs of both empires.
I thought the author weaved the travelogue of him and his son, Joe, most effectively into the story of the empire. I think he did this so that he did not have to make claims of being a trained historian.
Overall a rewarding and enjoyable read and if you have even the slightest interest in this part of history do have a read of this book.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book in sections while driving to and from work. I found it enormously hard to get out of the car on quite a few occasions. This is a 500 page book so there is a lot of listening and it was worth it. I knew quite a bit of the history of Constantinople before this book but loved Richard Fidler's approach.

He chooses to describe parts of his 2014 trip to Istanbul with his son, Joe, and intertwine what he sees with a 1000 period of history of the city. He starts with the Roman Emporer Constantine, who builds Constantinople and makes it the capital of the Roman Empire instead of Rome. He finishes with it's final fall to the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. He tells wonderful stories all the way through and breaks it up beautifully with his own experiences and reflections which both illuminate and contrast with some of the action.

He is clear that he has chosen to tell stories that are not necessarily factual because they illustrate the times, or other points, so well. I thought his choice of stories were excellent and I enjoyed them all thoroughly. He is so good at story telling! Who knew? Usually I've heard him interviewing.

I am a great fan of Richard Fidler's work and I particularly enjoyed listening to this story told in his own voice. Unfortunately, I did find that there were some production value issues and on a few occasions I found that I was distracted by his 'performance' but given how many hours I was listening to him this isn't much of an issue.

Well worth reading and highly recommended.

[Thom Gibney · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars; the owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab ‘

With the somber recital of Persian verse one thousand years of Byzantine domination had come to a bitter end, the indomitable Theodosian walls shattered and fallen to the weight of modern advances. But the legacy of Richard Fidler’s ‘Ghost Empire’ endures.

Constantinople was both a literal and spiritual bridge between east and west, north and south a thoroughfare by which all the world’s wealth and ideas flowed. While it served as a bastion to Europe against the endless hordes of the steppes of Central Asia allowing the continent to flourish at the empire’s expense. Finally it too was a bridge of sorts from antiquity to the modern, a thoroughfare for universal ideas of Ancient Rome and Greece.

This is the essence of Richard Fidler’s Ghost Empire, the Empire whose influence is still felt. The fall of Constantinople seems to have inadvertently started the renaissance, discovery of the Americas and a new chapter of European world empires which was only made possible by oft forgotten Second Rome.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great narrative non-fiction about the 1000+ year existence of the Roman empire of Byzantium, centered in Constantinople. George R.R. Martin FOR SURE based Kings Landing on Constantinople.

Fascinating history, well told by Fidler. I liked especially all the thematic historical ironies and some of the odder/more interesting characters(including women), but was less interested in all the specifics of inter-family assassinations and successions (there were a lot).

Reading this, it is clear that human nature has not changed much in 2000 years, and that history does indeed repeat itself. It just wears different clothes.

[Kerry Hennigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Fidler's Ghost Empire is simply one of the best popular histories I have read in a long, long time.

Of course it helped that it was about one of my favourite topics of study - the Byzantine Empire.

The snippets of travelogue of the author's trip to Istanbul with his then 14-years old son made it resonate even more with me. I've loved Istanbul since my visit in 2002, and loved the idea of it (as Constantinople - capital of the Byzantine Empire, that is, Rome in the East) long before that.

This is important moments in history told through some of the prominent (and the occasionally forgotten) personalities.

The blend of people and places, as well as the mores of the times in the East and the West (and the Church) results in the best yet introduction to the subject of Byzantium that I can imagine.

Would that all my periods of historical study had a corresponding Richard Fidler volume to make them more interesting, and easier to relate to. That's what ALL history studies should be.

Review by Kerry Hennigan
24 Nov 2016

[Calzean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fidler is well known for his radio interviews and podcasts. While reading his book I could hear his voice, the way he excitedly tells of a new fact or event or throws in a cheeky but intelligent aside.
His book of Constantinople, inspired after he and his 14 year old son visited Istanbul, is a very readable, entertaining and informative tale of the city from it's formation to the arrival of the Ottoman Empire. Fidler has a way of words, a way of highlighting the not so known people and events. There are lots of books on Istanbul and Constantinople and this is one of the best.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an amazing piece of work. The research and history put together is incredible and so much from primary sources going back to very early years. The stories are all really interesting and mostly gruesome! The Richard Fidler personal recounts were the best and I craved more of those.
I feel very knowledgable now and I have an interest in visiting Istanbul now, but sometimes the history was long winded and at times I really struggled to stay interested.
Well worth the read though.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving this work three stars might seem harsh, it is immensely readable and as an introduction to the history of the Eastern Roman empire it is engaging but, there is always a but with weak praise, the author's account of the empires thousand years existence is suffused with old fashioned narrative thrust that owes almost everything to old popular historians such as John Julian Norwich and a little bit to Steven Runciman and a very 'great man' view of history. This is not an academic work, which is fine as it allows Richard Fidler to write compulsive prose, but his approach to the Eastern Empire is displays an ignorance of a vast range of sources, particularly archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic along with the new insights provided by historians looking at that period in economic, feminist, gender and even food provide. Someone without language skills, or academic training is only going to produce a pastiche of Steven Runciman's fine but dated work. Simply consulting a few modern authors like Tom Holland, Judith Herrrin or Anthony Kaldellis is not enough and not having consulted any of the recent fascinating works on the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 published in the decade before his is just bizarre.

The real problem with this narrative history is that Mr. Fidler recognises everyone's failures towards Byzantium but doesn't see the Byzantines' failures to help themselves. The Latin west may not have sent an army to save Constantinople in 1453 (probably just as well if you look at what happened at Nicopolis in 1396) but then no help came from emperor Constantine XI relatives in their Morea strongholds or from the rival Comnena dynasty in their stronghold at Trebizond. I have no intention of defending the indefensible, like the fourth Crusade, but again treachery requires two players and if Mr. Fidler had read any of the extensive literature about Manzikert he might realise that there are arguments that there had been no real empire since then. It was a ghost on life support and nowhere does Fidler look at the complex relationship between Byzantium and its Seljuk neighbours.

But for me the most unsatisfying part of the book (and I am deliberately not commenting on the tales of the author and his teenage son exploring Istanbul including a particular the heart warming story of leaving the 14 year old behind on subway platform?!) is the pervasive Hellenic nostalgia for the vanished Greek empires of the past. A ghost empire before its disappearance in 1453 it remained a ghost one afterwards but much as I enjoy seeing Yeats great poem 'Sailing to Byzantium' it is a poem about Yeats getting older and perhaps his realisation that he was a member of doomed people (after all were are the Anglo-Irish today? as absent as the Byzantines.) but whatever the poem is about, it is not about the Greek empire.

The ugly side of this romantic folie de grandeur was the attempt to resurrect a new Greek empire in Asia Minor centred on Constantinople in the aftermath of WWI. This misbegotten spawn of Western cultural prejudice caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and at least three or more generations of fractured lives lived in exile, mourning a home that could never be returned to. The nightmare this idiocy caused as Greeks and Turks tore themselves apart in pogroms and then population swaps impoverished not simply both countries economies but their imaginative cultural heritage of both countries, if not the world's, irreparably. (I heartily recommend reading, amongst numerous works dealing with this subject Mark Mazower's 'Salonica: City of Ghosts' but I could easily list dozens of non fiction and fiction works).

My first reaction to such poisonously simplistic twaddle was to give this work one star but, in fairness, it easily could encourage a first time reader to read further and my carping over nostalgia or cute father son stories shouldn't discourage them. I would much rather anyone with a real interest to read Anthony Kalldellis's 'The New Roman Empire: A history of Byzantium' published in the USA in 2023 and scheduled for UK publication in 2024.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did you know that the Roman empire continued to exist and thrive in the East, despite most people thinking it had long since fallen? Want to know where the Starbucks logo comes from ? Or how the Russians became Orthodox Christians? Are you interested in where the Japanese car 'Mazda' got its name ? Or the famous sports brand Nike? THEN THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU!

If i'm being honest with myself, before reading this book I hardly knew anything about the Byzantine Empire or Constantinople, for that matter. I vaguely knew that Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor and that he had obviously established Constantinople (hence the name), but other than that I was not much acquainted with this epoch of history.

I found this book to be so engaging. For a 400+ page book it did not take me long to read and I thoroughly enjoyed every chapter. The book is written from when the author, Richard Fidler, went on a trip to Istanbul with his son to show him the ruins of the 'Ghost Empire' of Byzantium. It features many pictures of ancient sites and various other interesting things. The way Fidler interweaves his trip with the history as they travel to all the different places in Istanbul is what kept me engaged throughout the whole book.

If you tend not to read history books I still recommend you pick this up! I think if there is one history book you should read it would be this. It's very accessible and easy to follow along. It is not boring at all and doesn't read like a long, chunky history book. It has interesting pieces of history interspersed throughout.

Before reading this book I had wanted to travel to Istanbul just because I think it's such a vibrant and exciting city full of history, now It has made me want to go even more!

Highly recommend! 4/5 stars.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting history in this book, stuff I found particularly interesting:
- Attila the Hun was the cause of the city of Venice
- The crusades we’re kicked off by a pope lying his head off/propaganda
- Women almost 2000 years ago were campaigning to change laws to allow women to own property, 😔
- The Roman Empire ended up in eastern and western parts and the eastern side kicked off the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches - who knew?

Stuff I didn’t find interesting:
- the slog of detail on the siege of Constantinople under its final emperor - so much boring detail about a cannon and walls and soldiers fighting over the best looking women

Other observations: George R R Martin has definitely plundered loads of storylines for a song of ice and fire from Constantinople - the harbour chain, the army of boys taken when they are toddlers to become soldiers, the fighting with greek fire - and lots of other detail I can’t remember because this book was a huge slog and far too long. Would have preferred if it was a bite sized part of the story rather that 1,500 years long.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable - and readable - history of my favourite city in the world, Istanbul.

I liked the way Fidler threads his journey with his son through the narrative, breaking up what are quite large swathes of time. Unsurprising, considering the book looks at 1,000 years of history.

There are a lot of names to remember and a little repetition as various rulers, or foes, take or defend the same cities and regions over and again down through the centuries. It doesn't help that often the emperors have the same names.

The eventual destruction of the Constantinople by the christian Crusaders & Venetians is heartbreaking, making the fall of the denuded city to the Turks almost, but not quite, an anti-climax. I suspect the world would look very different today if the Catholics had been able to keep their hands off Constantinople's riches.

[Rob Weedon · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gem! Prior to reading this I had thought of the Byzantine Empire as a sort of footnote to the history of the Roman Empire, a small oriental vestige of the glory that was Rome. How wrong can you be! Rome might have fallen but the empire continued for another thousand years.
In 500 easy to read pages Richard Fidler manages to bring Constantinople vividly back to life as he and his teenage son explore it in its modern form, Istanbul.
Reading this book gave me the strength to go back and finish Charles Freeman's "The closing of the Western Mind" and the desire to go back and explore Istanbul with clearer eyes.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a valuable reminder of how short human memory is, and why it's such a shame that the more things change the more they stay the same. And in the end I can't help but wonder what the Middle East and Europe would look like if the unholy crusader mob hadn't been so greedy and inhuman when they sacked Constantinople.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Im going back and forth between a 3 star and a 4 star review. It was a 4 star to begin with but by the end it was a 3.

On the one hand I loved learning more about the history of this region however at times I got confused by all the different political and religious leaders.

On a nerdy side note, I personally loved many of the early chapters as I play a computer game where all the military commanders are taken from ancient history - so it was interesting to actually find out what their namesakes did in the past to warrant their legendary status.

Fascinating in some parts, but also tedious and bogged down in complex info at other times.

Such a MAMMOTH book to read, I really enjoyed the first half of the book but the second half was quite repetitive - after a while it just felt like a continuous loop of change of emperor, sacking of the city, some sort of religious troubles, gain some territory, lose some territory then rinse repeat and repeat some more for good measure.

I had used up all my interest at the start so by the time the final assualt began (some 400 pages later) I just could not muster any more enthusiasm for battle tactics and had to really skim read to get myself to the end.

[Olaf Koopmans · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐️

sympatheticly writen overview of the complicated and violant History of Constantinople and it's Byzantine Empire.
For someone like me, who's not familiair with it, it's a nice enough Introduction. Although his attempt to make it into something of travelogue, based on a trip he made with his 14 year old son, doesn't work for me. The history part and the travel part just don't connect.
Interesting is that, although he accuses Historians through the ages, amongst others Edward Gibbon, for simplifying the city's history to a degenerate, decadent times of inbreed and palace revolutions, that's just kind of the image he left me with as well.
There's probably more to Byzantium and Constantinople then that, but in the end Fiddler doesn't do a convincing job trying to show just that.
Still an enjoyable read.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part travelogue, all history. Fiedler doesn't present a new narrative but as he travels through modern Istanbul with his 14 year old son, the echoes of ancient Constantinople haunt both the writer and his reader. This is the writing of a true lover of history, not pretentious but full of curiosity and the pleasure of learning. I highly recommend it. It reads fairly slowly, but so many delights it is well worth it.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed learning about the "Romans" - brutal!

I quite enjoyed the interludes re: the authors holiday to Istanbul, however sometimes the anecdotes seemed only very vaguely connected to the subject matter.

On a mission to learn about history with a scattergun approach... Recommendations welcome!

[Timothy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a very good book. It is a very Anglo-Australian book, if one might be honest. That is to say, it is written by somebody without expertise, without any form of knowledge regarding its topic, and handles the subject matter without the slightest clue of cultural nuance or knowledge of how civilisations and people evolve. It takes next to no care in how it represents people or portrays them. The very idea of continuity is foreign to this author, who assumes far too much, and knows far too little.

What is quite disturbing is how Byzantium, one of the pillars of Greek civilisation, is treated as some great ‘unknown’ by the author, who for some reason thinks that people don’t know of it. Quite the contrary, if he were not so typical. That he goes out of his way to downplay the Greek element of Byzantium by stating in the opening pages that he uses Latinised forms to promote the ‘Roman-ness’ is borderline erasure of history and ethnic heritage. I cannot imagine what Greeks (and the erudite in general) must think of this.

The book goes into no detail whatsoever to really cover what was going on at the time, outside of the blindingly obvious. It does not cover the evolution of the Greek East, the cultural differences and developing hatred and mistrust of the Latin West, but does manage to focus on bizarre interludes with the author and his son who traipse around Turkey without a hint of irony. This work does nothing to enlighten the mind nor realise the horrors that faced the Byzantine Greeks in their struggles and most dire hours. Further still, the author made no actual effort to engage with the cultural inheritors of Byzantium, especially their most learned on Mount Athos, for example, to truly understand their culture and way of life.

In another blow of ignorance, the author manages to hand-wave away the extreme contributions of the learned Greeks who fled to Italy and absolutely helped to birth the renaissance, after the Islamic invasion of their homelands. Of course, if the author had actually studied at all, he would have realised that Greeks had been interacting with their western counterparts for centuries, educating them in the classics. One need only look at even late philosophers such as Plethon or Bessarion.

One cannot help but imagine some sort of bias in the mind of the author, who does all he can to diminish the Hellenic within these pages, yet curiously does not direct ire towards the Holy Roman Empire or Charlemagne, the consecrated Emperor of the Romans by the Pope.

That such a shoddy book was published is a blow to the prestige of publishing houses, one should think. The author has no real knowledge of the topic and speaks no languages other than English, and despite being so open with his ignorance seeks to write a book that does little but confuse and present seeds of disbelief to the erudite. Thus, we can imagine that this is not a book for them. Please, avoid this book. There are a great number of titles regarding Greece, Byzantium and even the Crusades that will elucidate you far more than this ever will.

[Dr G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have slightly mixed feelings about this book. I acknowledge that my lack of enthusiasm leaves me amongst a tiny minority.

In general, I am irritated by histories written by "celebrities". Fidler is a broadcaster with Australia's public broadcaster, an operation that does not have to worry about the messy business-sense which is required of commercial media. I have no objection to Fidler as a broadcaster: I have only rarely listened to him and, when I have done, I have found him reasonably measured and sensible, if not untypical of the world-view of his employing corporation.

He claims to be not a historian but a history-lover. This is a modest designation but one which leaves open the question of why he would be writing a book which is, essentially, a history book. This is a history of Constantinople from about the time of Constantine's establishment of it as the centre of his Roman empire, up until the time the Turks took it over, a period of roughly a thousand years.

So, why has the book been written? What does it contribute to our knowledge or understanding? My answer would be that it has been written because the author, through his broadcasting connection and his profile, is a saleable writer. Supposedly the book arose from a trip he took with his adolescent son, a grand tour allowing the bonding of father and son. This context has encouraged the interspersing of brief references to the interactions of the pair as they perambulated. Personally, I found these unhelpful, not really giving any significant psychological insight and not illuminating the historical narrative either. Fairly often, I found the son's supposed questions rather contrived, allowing Pater to expatiate on some element of the story. (I think I would have become profoundly impatient with my father in similar circumstances.) And I found these anecdotal elements usually gratuitous, other than as variations to the pace of the factual information.

Does the whole thing increase understanding or knowledge? No, I don't think so. Fidler has obviously read widely for the task but the exercise really just adds all the information together. There is an eccentric use of footnotes and endnotes which make it difficult to separate Fidler from his sources. I am familiar with a few of his authorities and I found myself wondering how they would feel about how their work had been absorbed into this opus. In one sense, I think it is bad history: it is a relentless listing of events. There is remarkably little effort made to find patterns in the whole thing. It is just fact after fact after fact.

This returns me to my earlier question: why has it been written? There are other accounts of the history of Constantinople, written by people who have studied and are expert in the subject. This goes no further at all. It has the folksy, but relatively shallow, inclusion of a father-son story, and it has nothing new to offer about any of the facts or our understanding of them.

It is comfortably written, easy to read. And most people enjoy it and appreciate it much more than I do.

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fidler opens this book with a soliloquy about how bizarre and sad it is that the story of the Romans of Constantinople is largely lost to modern Westerners. "Why," he remembers an acquaintance asking after he regaled them with some story of a Byzantine potentate doing something suitably Byzantine to a defeated rival (an impotentate?), "Did I not learn this in school?"

I suppose that's a worthy question to ask of any interesting bit of information. I don't doubt that schools could do better. It is a bit of a poser, though, coming from a self-described "Westerner" born, raised and still living in Australia—further east than China, from the perspective of the Western world—where even quite important information about the local past doesn't figure in the curriculum. Why don't more people know about the Romans of Constantinople? Mr. Fidler asks. Because who cares?

Ghost Empire, for all Fidler's storytelling flair, does a poor job of answering that question. Toward the end of the book he quotes a nineteenth-century historian dismissing the history of Constantinople as "a monotonous story of priests, eunuchs and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude". Fidler clearly doesn't approve of this opinion, but frankly it could do as a serviceable description of his book. I don't doubt—in fact I now know, because I just read a book about it—that the post-Rome history of the Roman Empire is quite interesting, in the "interesting doesn't mean anything" sense of the word. I just don't, and this coming from someone with a long and deep history of caring about history, really care.

In this book people put out other people's eyes, slit their noses, kill each other in gruesome ways and otherwise make the descent of a once-mighty polity into irrelevance quite colourful. All of this is told quite compellingly (Fidler's masterful hour-by-hour account of the final fall of Constantinople very nearly makes the rest of the book worthwhile all on its own), but ultimately falls flat. Without context, as I've observed before, history is just facts.

Perhaps the most enlightening thing to come out of this book was that despite his strenuous insistence that the Romans of Constantinople are worth knowing about in their own right, Ghost Empire is tightly focused on Constantinople insofar as it was relevant to the west. There is no mention of the late-Roman influence on India, and little regarding the same influence on Arabia. There is nothing about the role that Rome played in the fortunes (and fall) of the Nestorian Christianity that flourished and generated a "second Christendom" centred in Ctesiphon and Persia. This is a book insisting that the West isn't all that matters, look at how important Constantinople was... to the West.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only in Australia could a failed comedian reinvent himself - and be taken seriously - as a pop-historian.

The majority of people, I have no doubt, will enjoy this poorly researched and messy mixture of history and fiction. However, those who are familiar with the source material will be astounded at the poor quality of Fidler's interpretation of that material and will be left to wonder if this is a result of laziness, shallow research, ineptitude, or purposeful distortion.

I think it's symptomatic of our times that it's now considered acceptable for writers to artfully reveal certain aspects of their personal lives so as to be "engaging" and "vulnerable". This is incredibly manipulative. If you lack the critical abilities to understand that you are being sold a lot of nonsense in this regard, then you richly deserve to read dreck like this book.

If Peter FitzSimons is the inferior Australian version of Bill Bryson, then Fidler is the second-rate version of Peter FitzSimons. So, not even second-rate in terms of literary prowess.

As I mentioned earlier in this review, if you are like most Australians then you will probably enjoy this mashed-together attempt at history and travelogue and family soap-opera. So, you might as well buy it, read thirty-two pages, and then tell all your poorly educated acquaintances at your next unimpressive dinner party how wonderful it was.