King of the World

Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Middle East; he has lived in Paris, Beirut and Istanbul, and now lives in London. His books on French history include Louis XVIII (1981); The Court of France 1789-1830 (1989); Paris between Empires (2001), a history of Paris as a European capital under the restoration and the July Monarchy; The Eagle in Splendour: Inside the Court of Napoleon (reprint 2015); and most recently King of World: The Life of Louis XIV (2019). On the Middle East he has written Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire (1995) ; Levant (2010) on Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut; and Aleppo: the Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City (2016). They emphasise the importance of France and French culture for those cities. His books have been translated into several languages including French, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish and Arabic. He has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The International Herald Tribune, The Spectator; History Today; the TLS; and Cornucopia.

In 1995 he was a co-founder of the Society for Court Studies (www.courtstudies.org), designed to promote research on courts and dynasties, and in 2010 of the Levantine Heritage Foundation, dedicated to the study of the history and cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean (www.levantineheritage.com). In 2012 he received the London Library Life in Literature award and in 2019 the Franco-British Book Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature, and President of the Conseil scientifique of the Centre de Recherche du Chateau de Versailles.(CRCV).