Item category 1: Alf O'Brien

The author reveals how the medieval papacy grew from modest beginnings into an impressive institution in the Middle Ages and deals with a wide field. It charts the history of the papacy and its relations to East and West from the 4th to the 12th centuries.

Children of the Revolution is a wonderful account of how the French repeatedly tried and failed to come up with a new, stable regime for themselves. For those who lived through the quarter-century from the storming of the Bastille to Napoleon’s final defeat, these events left such a profound mark...