“Millennium ranges far in both time and space yet always returns to its central theme: the right ordering of Christendom. It is narrative history in the grand manner, written with the panache and confidence we associate with the great historians of the 18th and 19th centuries. Holland's research has been prodigious… It is a marvellous, enthralling read, and gives a lively sense of these turbulent centuries that were so crucial in the making of western civilisation. Read it, and be thrilled, amazed and enlightened.”
Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph
“Mind-boggling… wry humour and thrilling tale-telling.”
The Times
“Tom Holland is a gifted narrator who covers the field with panache… Before reading Millennium, I would have said that to write a compelling narrative, for a non-specialist readership, about this difficult and rebarbative period of our history was well-nigh impossible. Obviously it isn’t.”
Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator
“A fast and lively lesson in that period which school so often misses out… another blockbuster.”
Jenny Diski, The Sunday Times
“Since we stopped reading Gibbon, we know all too little about the centuries between the Romans and the Normans. Tom Holland sets out to fill it with a book that is far more accessible to moderns, but awesome in the authorities it has consulted… Holland excels at narration, never jogging when he can gallop, using generous quotations to convey the mindset of centuries hagridden with millennial rumours of the end of the world. His highly individual road map to the hitherto “dark ages” is written with forceful – and convincing – panache.”
Christina Hardyment, The Independent
“Superbly researched… an original and eloquent book.”
Andrew Lynch, The Sunday Business Post
“It is perfectly right for Holland to claim a great deal for the 11th century, of which his book is a splendid, highly coloured canvas.”
Norman Stone, The Guardian
“A tremendously good read, which will no doubt gain more accolades and many more readers.”
Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph
“As a stirring, vivid and formidably learned analysis of the events surrounding the Millennium, this will hardly be equalled. Extraordinary insights and lapidary phrases abound.”
Murrough O’Brien, The Independent on Sunday
"A rip-roaring sweep through history history from the fjords of Greenland to the marshes of Hungary and the plains of Anatolia, filled with outsized historical figures and written in a voice simultaneously ironic, wry or sardonic."
The Asian Review of Books
“Nobody believes in the Dark Ages any more, but Holland’s brightness and clarity makes this account of the year 1000 exceptionally pleasing.”
The Scotsman
“This was the era when dragons were still thought to stalk the Earth; when daredevil noblemen would cover their bodies in honey and allow it to be licked off by ravening bears; when Polish rapists would be nailed to a gate, handed a knife and given the choice of auto-castration or suicide… Mightily readable – far more than the stories of Greeks and Romans, this is your history.”
James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday
“Holland tells a cracking tale, vividly bringing this neglected era of monks, popes, knight and serfs back to life.”
David Sinclair, Tribune
“Holland’s remarkable book prompts many reflections on our own day, when pluralist states such as Britain are again faced with the problems of the fault lines of Church and State, religion and the secular, as well as the competing truth claims of different world creeds. Millennium is both a vastly entertaining read, with grandiloquent Gibbon-like sweep, as well as deeply intelligent: it constitutes a major contribution to some of the most crucial issues of our time.”
John Cornwell, The Tablet
“I relished the blood-and-thunder historical narrative of Tom Holland’s Millennium – the work of a great storyteller at his best.”
Dominic Sandbrook, ‘Books of the Year’, Evening Standard
“Tom Holland’s Millennium puts weird Christian thinking about the millennium centre-stage in the cultural development of the concept of Europe: a tour de force.”
Andrew Roberts, ‘Books of the Year’, Evening Standard
“An exhilarating sweep across European history either side of the year 1000; riveting.”
Allan Massie, ‘Books of the Year’, The Spectator
“Tom Holland’s searchlight beam into the dark ages.”
Sue Arnold, ‘Books of the Year’, The Guardian
“The year’s most readable book on medieval history is undoubtedly Tom Holland’s epic Millennium, a sweeping panora of the years around 1000 AD, complete with murderous popes, arrows in the rectum, and blatant rip-offs from Tolkien.”
'History Books of the Year', The Daily Telegraph
"In the year 1000, Western Europe was no more than a primitive and fearful region in the shadow of Byzantium and Islam. Yet as Tom Holland demonstrates in this fascinating history it was also the crucible for the creation of the Europe we know today. From the age of Canute and William the Conqueror, Pope Gregory VII and the Vikings this vivid and bloodthirsty history is a riveting insight into what made us the people we are."
'History Books of the Year', The Daily Mail
"Tom Holland's Millennium is a superb, fascinating and erudite medieval banquet of slaughter, sanctity and sex, filled with emperors, whores and monks."
Simon Sebag-Montefiore, The Evening Standard
"Fresh from his triumphs in Rome and Persia, Tom Holland turns his brilliant narrative spotlight on the so-called "dark ages" that followed the Western Empire's decline. Global in reach, this book sweeps thrillingly over the troubled centuries that saw the triumph of Byzantium, the ascent of Islam – and the lingering disaster of the Crusades. With a focus on the emerging "Christendom" of the years around 1000AD, Millennium shows the forging of the medieval West in a moral and political quagmire of mud, blood and superstition. Unlike other blockbuster histories, this one takes as much care with beliefs as with the battles they provoked. We all live in the feverish aftermath of these events, which makes Holland's galloping guidance all the more timely."
'History Book of the Year', The Independent
