James Chambers (1) (1941–2012)

An attractively illustrated overview of the Norman kings of England, from Willie the Conq to Stephen the Inept.

It's part of a series published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the 70s and 80s, edited by the redoubtable Antonia Fraser, authoress par excellance. The *popular* kings and queens got their *own* books, but W&N decided that the Saxon and Norman kings should get piddly little compendia of rumor and innuendo and downright condescension. Oh, excuse me...William the Conqueror has his own show more book, and the largely legendary Alfred the Great does too. Must be fair in my dismissivness.

Here's my problem with these sorts of books. They're all working from the same source material as each other, so there's really very little difference in the stories they can tell. What is different is the animus or slant each writer brings to the fete...I mean party. Opinion is all, really, and so the question becomes: "How well supported is the author's opinion? And do you, o reader, agree with it?"

Chambers and I do not see eye to eye.

His vituperation of William Rufus follows in the footsteps of the "great" nineteenth century Rufus biographer E.A. Freeman, whose Reign of William Rufus has always been the Gold Standard of the homophobes who inveigh against Rufus for his supposed sodomiticalness. So Chambers, writing in the "enlightened" 70s and 80s, offers a *better* idea...Rufus was impotent, not perverted! His sentences exactly:
"So he may have been homosexual...William's ostentatiously virile behavior...could as easily be used to deduce that he was impotent. On such evidence as there is, the atmosphere in William's household appears to have been more like a degenerate officer's mess than a perverted brothel."

Where do I begin...oh hell, two sentences and it's SUCH a target-rich environment!
1) Men of whom we have records in this era are prolific fornicators. They, married or not, left heaving seas of bastard children behind. (Willie the Conq a notable exception...all six feet of him seems to have loved his 4'2" queen to the exclusion of all others.) None of them merits the condemnatory word "degenerate" in decribing their courts full of fellow woman-screwing and bastard-leaving men.
2) Impotence, the *inability* to achieve erection, is preferable to homosexuality in this construction...it's offered as a *step up* from it. Dunno about y'all, gents, but I'd rather have been queer than limp back in the days when there was no hope for the impotent (and thank GOD those days are gone!). So it wasn't his fault that he ever married, left no children...it was nature's cruelty, not perversion! How insulting to the man!
To be completely fair, the author says he's relying on the chronicles of the churchmen for his information, and these witnesses had good, solid reasons to be anti-Rufus, but I note that the author is still glad to be judgmental....
3) "Ostentatiously virile behavior," is it? Rufus was a passionate hunter, and a good one. So was his father, so were his brothers, none of whom (producers of bastards and babies at a prodigious rate) merit the condescension of "ostentatiously virile."

I'm on record elsewhere as opposing the unhealthy sense of self-congratulation inherent in "outing" people in history as gay before such an identity was conceptualized. It's an entirely different thing to look at the evidence, assess a person's probable sexual nature, and judge them harshly for it as part of a complex of other "undesirable" characteristics as Chambers does. It's still outing, I suppose, but with minatory intent. "He was a rotten king, he hated the Church (go Rufus!), AND he was a shirt-lifter! EWWW!"

So...the other kings...well, honestly, I stopped trusting the author after Rufus and pretty much read the text as it broke up the illustrations. Not recommended for text, but the pictures are nice. show less

This is a VERY good book with some minor shortcomings. The most glaring is the mention of many Mongol characters without an introduction as to who they were (and there is not a listing of major characters in the Appendix). But that is a minor quibble.

Chambers provides a fascinating summary of the ways of both the Mongol empire and way of war. He does this by interspersing with chapters about the events that led up to the invasion of Europe and ends with the crushing of the Mongols by the show more Mamluks at the battle of Ain Jalut. As Chambers notes, the Mongols didn’t leave a legacy behind (like Rome or Greece) and therefore their direct (or should I say, credited) imprint on history is not as obvious as something like the Roman legal system. However, this was one incredible empire. The sheer amount of land mass that they conquered is amazing and makes the Roman Empire look comparatively small.

Their civilizational commitment to preparing themselves for military conquest is rivaled by no one (except maybe Sparta). They were extremely brutal, and their episodes of mass slaughter and rape of nuns (for example) create quite the mental image. They are certainly not the only civilization to practice barbarity, but the scale on which they did is probably unmatched.

This book was written in 1979. While Chambers does not say this directly, I wonder if the events of the Iranian Revolution were on his mind as he neared completion of his work. In two places he mentions just how close Islam came to its extermination. Of course, the Mongols almost brought about the end of Christianity as well. However, several Mongol Khans were sympathetic to Christianity. Regarding the Mongol conquest of Syria, and the subsequent prostrating of local Muslims to the Christian cross (the Christians had aided in the conquest), Chambers writes: “It was a poignant image of a Christian world that so nearly might have been.” Had St. Louis and other Christian leaders made some different judgments what happened in Syria might have happened everywhere else in the Muslim world.

Instead they were beaten back and the legacies they left were nothing in comparison to Rome or Greece. Rather, many of their territories suffered for centuries and were left ripe for even worse atrocities to come. Namely Communism. show less

I love military history, and this book is a great introduction to Genghis Khan. It starts with the history of his clan before delving into the different struggles that he encountered in life which lead to his rise as the military genius that he became. It doesn't have much to say about his tactics, mostly overview of military objectives and conquests.

James Chambers has written a solid, thorough and readable biography of Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston. In his preface, he praises Palmerston’s career as having been long, entertaining and internationally influential, and states his intention to “embrace all that in one volume and at the same time reassess the man.” Given the length of Palmerston’s career, it is impressive that he manages to achieve his aim in little over 500 pages. Paying particular attention to his early show more years, Chambers focuses on Palmerston’s long political career, and portrays him as essentially an eighteenth century man, who became culturally out of step as the nineteenth century progressed. I found this biography to be accessible, well-written and authoritative: but being unfamiliar with previous works on Palmerston, I consulted the published reviews. The consensus among historians seems to be that it is an admirable achievement, but not particularly challenging, innovative or original. Based on this and my own sense that this is a very good but not brilliant book. show less