The Norman Achievement

Sidgwick & Jackson Great Civilizations Series

by Richard F. Cassady

Covers the period 1016 to 1195 in England, France, Sicily and southern Italy.

Genres: History, Medieval, Italy, British Literature

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

An OK, fairly light, volume about the Norman conquests in England and Southern Italy and what became of them. Some line drawings. Not scholarly, but neither is it popular, say in the easy reading style of J.J.Norwich's The Normans in the South and so occupies an awkward position. It's ideal reader distrusts the jaunty narrative of one of Norwich's books, feels the need for a well illustrated book, and doesn't have much if any interest in the Normans in Syria and Spain.

[styx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did appreciate how concentrated Cassady honed his focus devoting time between the traditional historical narratives versus discussion on the creation and role of the architectural feats in France, Italy, Sicily, England etc.

[Edmund Bloxam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of those big, fat books that look impressive on your shelf, but should never actually be read. Or even picked up, since the front cover is dreary and the photographs and sketches inside amateurish.

The main thing that kept me going was that the lion share of the book is history, so I'm hoping some details creep through into memory that I won't find always elsewhere. My main response to these historical nuggets was, however, 'I want to go a read a different book about each of these things.'

The second thing that kept me going was how laughably pathetic much of the prose was. The pomposity and verbosity were ridiculous, and often had me laughing out loud. Most of the time, you could seperate out the crap from the actual history. 'They must have enjoyed the stunning, earth shattering beauty as it majestically settled over the...' eearugh. That's just made up though. There were other more subtle suppositions which required a little more concentration to weed out.

I think this was supposed to marry straight history with architecture. The links between the history and the building are rarely successfully made though, so it often comes across as reading two different books at once. There is A LOT of architecture. But the author does us the mercy of separating this out into paragraphs, making it much easier to skim. If you are interested in Norman architecture, though, this is definitely not the book for you. The paroxysmal, portents of 'poetical' palaver completely obscure sensible description. Apparently, Norman architecture is 'manly' and 'earthy', whatever the fuck that means.

There's also a bit of him waffling in a touristy manner. Frankly, these were at least faintly amusing, especially when he patronises whatever local he's co-opting in his mad trips to the middle of nowhere to see old ruins in his little Fiat.

Do yourself a favour. Go pick up literally any other book on the Normans in Europe. Or even Norman architecture if that floats your longship.

[W. Nicol · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great on historical detail so worth wading through the florid prose for an occasional gem or snippet.