The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South 1016-1130 and the Kingdom in the Sun 1130-1194

In 1016 a rebel Lombard lord appealed to a group of pilgrims for help-and unwittingly set in motion "the other Norman Conquest." The Normans in the South is the epic story of the House of Hauteville: of Robert Guiscard perhaps the most extraordinary European adventurer between Caesar and Napoleon; his brother Roger who helped him win Sicily from the Saracens; and his nephew Roger II crowned at Palermo in 1130. The Kingdom in the Sun vividly evokes this "sad superb half-forgotten kingdom cultivated cosmopolitan and tolerant " which lasted a mere 64 years. It concludes with the poignant defeat of the bastard King Tancred in 1194 bringing to a close this extraordinary chapter in Italian history. With a comprehensive listing of all of Sicilys surviving Norman monuments the result is a superb travelers companion and a masterpiece of the historians art.