The Burgundians takes the reader on a journey through a thousand years of Western European history, ridden by war and interlinked marriages even involving England, calling at cities such as Dijon, Paris, Lille, Ghent, Bruges and Delft, up to the time when the Seventeen Provinces rose up and the Burgundian Empire came to an end.
Recommendation
Recommendations from
Her Majesty The Queen of the Belgians
Her Majesty The Queen of the Belgians shared three books that have inspired her with The Queen’s Reading Room.
1
The Burgundians
By Bart van Loo
Belgian author Bart Van Loo brings the powerfully evocative middle ages to life. In a very colourful and entertaining style he tells the reader how the dukes of Burgundy shaped what we know as the Low Countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the north of France. He succeeds in transforming the historical characters into real flesh-and-blood people you would love to have known. Do not be put off by the 600 pages; this book reads like a thriller. -
2
Celebration of the Everyday
By Colette Nys-Mazure
Colette Nys-Masure’s wonderful book invites us to appreciate the little things in our lives, because in the routine of everyday life, we are often elsewhere, absent from ourselves, deaf to the continuous miracle that is our ordinary life. I hope her lesson in hope appeals to you as much as it did to me. -
Sometimes described as a poetic essay, Celebration of the Everyday represents a confluence of genres. Written in prose, it possesses distinctive poetic qualities. Colette Nys-Mazure proposes a certain art of living, a search for the beauty and pleasures to be found in the simple things of everyday life, and also for the strength to cope with hardships and accept our mortality.
3
Those Who Forget
By Géraldine Schwarz
In 'Those Who Forget', Géraldine Schwarz dares to evaluate her family tree by retelling her family history. Winner of the European Book Prize 2018, this book questions our European past and present. It invites us to reflect upon how nations should deal with collective guilt, and how to ensure we remember. This is a book you are likely to discuss with family and friends, or in class. -
Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family history – from Nazi Germany to Vichy France – with that of Europe’s process of postwar reckoning, Géraldine Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology, how they were overcome by a fog of denial after the war and how, eventually, they confronted the past.