SEVEN AGES OF PARIS: PORTRAIT OF A CITY.

UK,thick 8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn,and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated,colour pictorial illustrated dw/dj; with negligible shelf-wear to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top+ fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright,tight and near pristine.Bright,clean, publisher's plain,dark blue cloth boards with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain maroon endpapers.UK,thick 8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,vii-xxipp+1-520pp [paginated] includes contents+illus lists/tables,foreword,preface,a note on money,an introduction,7 sections comprising 21 chapters, an epilogue,24pp mixed b/w+colour contemporary illus/ photographs in 3 blocks of 8pp apiece interspersed throughout the text and the book,a bibliography,source notes,an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages and dedication. With an Introduction by the eminent French Academician Maurice Druon,'Seven Ages of Paris' tells the dramatic story of one of the world's most beautiful and best-loved cities,and in doing so offers a rich and colourful insight into French history. Horne has chosen seven ages around which to construct his account.He opens with an Introduction which takes us fom Paris's Roman origins to Louis VII,whose reign (1137-80) saw the construction of the first Gothic church,Saint-Denis,and the start of work on Notre-Dame.Horne's first age is that of the ruthless Philippe Auguste,who greatly expanded the Caperian kingdom before devoting himself to the development of Paris,erecting a wall around the city and beginning the Louvre castle in 1202.During the Hundred Years War,which began in 1337,Paris was occupied by the English,but recovered in time to benefit from the architectural genius of the Renaissance. The second age,that of Henri IV,inflicted the first of the four great sieges on the capital she has endured.Religious turmoil continued through the years of the great ministers Richlieu and Mazarin to the age of Louis XIV,whose long reign witnessed the royal move to Versailles and the centralization of national affairs on Paris.Then the revolution swept the ancient regime away and ushered in the age of Napoleon.Paris became the setting for celebrating the Emperor's military triumphs.But it was left to the Emperor's nephew Louis-Napoleon and Baron Haussman to beat down the slums of medieval Paris and create the ordered and greatly expanded city we know today. The frivolity of the Second Empire,however,provoked another siege of Paris,by Bismarck's Prussians,while revolutionary elements set up a rival regime in the capital known as the Commune.Tens of thousands died in the Semaine Sanglante when the Third Republic re-established control. The age of the Commune was followed by the optimistic Belle Epoque,when electricity illuminated the city streets and the Art Nouveau entrances to the new Metro stations were built.Most visibly of all,The Eiffel Tower went up in 1889 to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution.But this was also the age of the Versailles Treaty,and the hubris of the Belle Epoque led straight into the Great War.The Armistice and the Paris Peace Conference brought no more than a phoney peace,and when war resumed the city suffered four years of occupation and was visited by Hitler himself. Liberation brought the last of Horne's seven ages,that of de Gaulle,which came to an end in 1969,in the wake of the violence of les Evenments the previous year.Closing his magnificent book with an elegiac description of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery,Horne brings to an end a stunning,brilliantly written history of this most remarkable of cities. Please contact rpaxtonden@blueyonder.co.uk ,because of the heavier weight of this item,for correct,insured shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page!