Thornton, Brian books

The Book of Ancient Bastards (2011)

( A.D. 958–1025) Basil was ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, totally philistine and almost pathologically mean. He was, in short, profoundly un-Byzantine. . . . He cared only for the greatness and prosperity of his Empire. No wonder that in his hands it reached its apogee.”—John Julius Norwich, Byzan...