How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are

The Edge of the World

An epic adventure: from the Vikings to the Enlightenment, from barbaric outpost to global hub, this book tells the dazzling history of northern Europe's transformation by sea. 
 
'Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps 
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This is a story of saints and spies, of anglers and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know. 
 
When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this transformation to the tides and storms of the North Sea. 
 
Boats carried food and raw materials, but also new ideas and information. The seafarers raided, ruined and killed, but they also settled and coupled. With them they brought new tastes and technologies - books, science, clothes, paintings and machines. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of learning and packed with human stories and revelations, this is the epic drama of how we came to be who we are. 
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'A closely-researched and fascinating characterisation of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea' Chris Wickham, author of The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 
 
'Elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship . . . Miraculous' Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Periodic Tales and Anatomies 
 
'Bristling, wide-ranged and big-themed . . . at its most meaningful, history involves a good deal of art and storytelling. Pye's book is full of both' Russell Shorto, New York Times 
 
'For anyone, like this reviewer, who is tired of medieval history as a chronicle of kings and kingdoms, knights and ladies, monks and heretics, The Edge of the World provides a welcome respite' Prof Patrick J Geary, Wall Street Journal

It's fascinating to understand [these] historical trends and ideas

An utterly beguiling journey into the dark ages of the north sea. A complete revelation . . . Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent

Jerry Brotton, author of 'A History of the World in Twelve Maps'

A closely-researched and fascinating characterisation of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea. A real page-turner

Chris Wickham, author of 'The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000'

Elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship . . . Miraculous

Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of 'Periodic Tales' and 'Anatomies'

Splendid. A heady mix of social, economic, and intellectual history, written in an engaging style. It offers a counterpoint to the many studies of the Mediterranean, arguing for the importance of the North Sea. Exciting, fun, and informative

Michael Prestwich, Professor of History, Durham University

Brilliant. Pye is a wonderful historian . . . bringing history to life like no one else. Who knew that the Irish invented punctuation?

Pye has a great journalist's eye for a story and the telling anecdote as well as a great historian's ability to place it in the bigger picture. Here he fuses those talents in a hugely eclectic study of the very first stirrings of modernity in northern Europe

Pye draws on a dizzying array of documentary and archaeological scholarship, which he works together in surprising ways . . . He advances on several fronts at once, following the overlapping currents of customary, religious and empirical ways of thinking. He writes about difficult concepts with vivid details and stories, often jump-cutting from exposition to drama like a film. It's complicated, but fun

Hugely enjoyable. it is the measure of Pye's achievement that he can breathe life into the traders of seventh-century Frisia or the beguines of late-medieval Flanders as well as into his more celebrated subjects . . . Grey the waters of the North Sea may be; but Pye has successfully dyed them with a multitude of rich colours

An extraordinary book . . . Pye makes astonishing discoveries. Brevity is the bane of the reviewer; the best books are impossible to summarise in just 900 words. That's especially true with a treasure chest like this one . . . The end result is brilliantly illuminating. Pye's creativity brings light to this once dark time

A multi-layered book that demands time to read and be digested but rewards by giving one plenty to chew on

Excellent. The Edge of the World does what good non-fiction should, in making the reader see the world in a different light

An inspiring book, full of surprises . . . this is the kind of book that can open up new vistas. It might just rekindle a sense that Britain really is a North Sea nation and not just a rootless post-Imperium searching for a niche in the global emporium

Bristling, wide-ranging and big-themed ... Pye's view of the North Sea and European history succeeds in reorienting our thinking about the past

A joy to read and reread. Pye challenges all our notions of the Dark Ages and shows the vast accomplishments completed long before the Renaissance. This book must be ranked right up there with the works of Mark Kurlansky and Thomas Cahill as a primer of the steps that led to modern civilization

An eye-opening reexamination of of Europe during the Dark Ages, and delightfully accessible. Pye's style is leisurely yet authoritative, scholarly but engaging; his approach resembles that of a docent leading a group through a vast museum, with each section devoted to a different aspect of society

Refreshing. Pye excels at painting a unique portrait of the political, economic, and cultural transformation that has occurred on the shores of the North Sea. His frequent use of primary sources as well as fictional literary works gives the work an ethereal nature

Wonderful - well researched and beautifully written; he weaves in glorious anecdotes that show the Viking world as it should be seen

Dr Peter Frankopan, Director, The Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research

Michael Pye has written eleven previous books, translated into eleven languages, including two British bestsellers and two New York Times 'Notable Books of the Year'. He took a First and various prizes in Modern History at Oxford, and was then for many years a highly successful journalist, columnist and broadcaster in London and New York. He now lives between London and rural Portugal.

Between the fall of Rome and the dawn of the Enlightenment, northern Europe went from barbaric outpost to being the centre of everything, building the world we know. We have ignored its impact, but the reason is the North Sea: boats carried food and raw materials but also new ideas and information. Seafarers raided and killed but also settled and coupled, bringing the tastes and technologies that would make us modern. This is the story of the saints and spies, fishermen and pirates, traders and marauders whose journeys changed everything.

Michael Pye

Antwerp is the star of this charming and rather lovely history ... Pye writes beautifully, has a lovely eye for detail and an obvious affection for this period of Antwerp's history.

In the 16th century Antwerp was Europe's marketplace, a tolerant, secular city governed by money. It was a spectacular place, a rogue's paradise where everything seemed possible. The city's story is as convoluted as its streets. There is no single plot and there are no straight narrative lines. Michael Pye is the perfect chronicler of this extraordinary place, being a writer of deep complexity, immense imagination and opulent prose. His cornucopia of Antwerp's abundant delights is as voluptuous as the city itself.

wondrous ... a book of imaginative historical reconstruction that reads as brilliantly as a novel by Hilary Mantel

in his exhilarating new history of Renaissance Antwerp ... Pye captures Antwerp's greatest decades in character studies, stories and vignettes, encompassing not just trade but buildings and books too. It is pieced together with great skill and art, and the effect is dazzling. If you want a linear history of 16th century Antwerp, stay away. But if you want a sense of the city's anarchic splendour, its potent, unsustainable originality, then this is the book for you. Pye conjures up exactly the glamour that drew people to Antwerp's gates in its pomp: the city as idea; the city as improvisation; the city as possibility.

Antwerp, Pye's galloping and flavoursome account of the city's heyday [is] a lustrous gem of a book. Studded with racy anecdotes but firmly embedded in archival research, it shows why the city that nurtured "a pragmatic kind of tolerance" rose so fast - and why, almost as rapidly, it fell ... Pye unrolls a sparkling string of stories rather than a heavy tapestry of contexts, hinterlands and aftermaths ... In this swarming fresco, which merits a place near Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches or Robert Hughes' homage to Barcelona, Pye not only rescues Antwerp's lost "world of liberty", he leads entranced readers through its grubby, glittering streets.

Capturing the essence of 16th-century Antwerp is difficult; its story is as convoluted as its streets. That story does not lend itself to linearity; there's no single plot, no straight narrative lines. Michael Pye - journalist, broadcaster and prolific author - is the perfect chronicler of this extraordinary place, since he revels in complexity and never hesitates to use his abundant imagination. His prose is as opulent as the city itself. ... Pye provides a cornucopia of Antwerp's abundant delights.

Pye offers a master class on how to tell the story of a city. Fascinating and gloriously good fun.

Now a museum-like gem, for much of the 16th century, Antwerp thrived as Europe's most vibrant center of commerce, intellectual life, and free thought. Pye offers a colorful depiction of the city's 'exceptional years.' Entertaining. An impressionistic portrait of its institutions and great men (Bruegel, Erasmus, et al.), emphasizing the lives of now-obscure traders, bankers, entrepreneurs, officials, printers, and booksellers, including a surprising number of successful women and Jews. A vivid look at a great Renaissance city.

In a highly readable new book, Michael Pye argues that, during Europe's ages of discovery, it became one of the earliest genuinely global cities too ... If we understood more about Antwerp, though, we might understand more about ourselves and our long umbilical links to Europe.

exuberant ... Pye creates a thematic mosaic, drawing on a mass of accounts and original sources, from wills and inventories to doodles and self-help books. The book is dense with stories ... [which] reflect Antwerp's volatile, opportunistic, profit-grabbing ethos, loose ends and all ... Antwerp was, Pye claims, "the emporium for ideas as well as goods." Its trade in knowledge and its deals in art, books, and luxury goods were renowned across Europe.

The Glory Years

A rich history of Antwerp from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Edge of the World 
 
Even before Amsterdam there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp. 
 
Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual. 
 
In Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave Antwerp a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe. 
 
Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as The Tower of Babel. 
 
But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. The city that unsettled so many now became conformist. Mutinous troops burned the city records. Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters and the archives of Venice, London and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague and violence, but learning how to be a power in its own right in the world after feudalism. 
 
This is the Antwerp which was the proud 'exception' to all of Europe.

Michael Pye

Praise for Antwerp

Antwerp is the star of this charming and rather lovely history ... Pye writes beautifully, has a lovely eye for detail and an obvious affection for this period of Antwerp's history.

In the 16th century Antwerp was Europe's marketplace, a tolerant, secular city governed by money. It was a spectacular place, a rogue's paradise where everything seemed possible. The city's story is as convoluted ...

wondrous ... a book of imaginative historical reconstruction that reads as brilliantly as a novel by Hilary Mantel

Antwerp is the star of this charming and rather lovely history ... Pye writes beautifully, has a lovely eye for detail and an obvious affection for this period of Antwerp's history.

In the 16th century Antwerp was Europe's marketplace, a tolerant, secular city governed by money. It was a spectacular place, a rogue's paradise where everything seemed possible. The city's story is as convoluted ...

wondrous ... a book of imaginative historical reconstruction that reads as brilliantly as a novel by Hilary Mantel

Antwerp is the star of this charming and rather lovely history ... Pye writes beautifully, has a lovely eye for detail and an obvious affection for this period of Antwerp's history.

In the 16th century Antwerp was Europe's marketplace, a tolerant, secular city governed by money. It was a spectacular place, a rogue's paradise where everything seemed possible. The city's story is as convoluted ...

wondrous ... a book of imaginative historical reconstruction that reads as brilliantly as a novel by Hilary Mantel

Books by Michael Pye

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