"Spain 1469 - 1714" by Henry Kamen

Spain was unified under the joint monarchy of Ferdinand of Aragon and devout Isabel of Castille. Their rule was so unified that everything was officially done jointly, even if they were apart: one day it was reported that "the king and queen ... gave birth to a daughter". The secret of their monarchy was that they travelled ceaselessly: their mediaeval style of monarchy depended upon the visibility of the monarch(s). In their annus mirabilis of 1492 they completed the Christian reconquest of the peninsula by capturing Granada, they expelled the Jews, and Columbus discovered America on their behalf.

But their only surviving daughter, Juana, had married a Habsburg and was mentally unstable. On the death of her husband she went completely bonkers. So the throne passed to her 17 year old son Charles who was also Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Naples and the Netherlands. With Spanish America, Spain was now a super-power, although one whose empire was inherited rather than deserved. The heartland of Castille was simply not rich enough to sustain the imperial demands. Gold and Silver from the Americas helped Charles balance the books but a financial disaster was waiting to happen.

When Charles' son Philip (who had once been married to Mary of England) became king he immediately restructured his debts. Although he no longer ruled the Holy Roman Empire, which had been passed to Charles' brother, Philip still ruled the Netherlands which now revolted. The costs of fighting this rebellion spiralled. Despite adding Portugal to his realm (another dynastic inheritance although one he had t, briefly, fight for) Philip went bankrupt. More than once. The destruction of the Spanish Armada didn't help.

Financial instability continued under his heirs; the country continued to decline. The last Habsburg king was the victim of genetic in-breeding: his jaw protruded so much that he found it difficult to eat and he was probably infertile and possibly impotent. He had no legitimate heirs of his own body so he bequeathed the throne to the French Dauphin and so started the War of Spanish Succession. This ended with the loss of most of the rest of Spain's European possessions so the new Bourbon dynasty was able to concentrate on rebuilding the land.

Thus a patchwork of mediaeval states became an accidental empire which declined into a nation state. This fascinating tale rarely flags. There is so much of interest; much is relevant today. The concept of convivienza, for example, in which Spanish Moors and Jews coexisted with the Catholic population was replaced with the racist limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood); even converted Moslems and Jews were persecuted. The medieval monarchy was based upon personal rule but the Hapsburg Empire had to develop bureaucratic and ministerial rule. And a country receiving previously unheard of wealth from the New World plunged into debt and inflation.

A wonderful tale, well told. August 2013; 275 pages

"William the silent" by C. V. Wedgwood

This is a wonderfully old fashioned history with a narrative that rattles along like a thriller. I found myself at one stage reading about the siege of Leyden and desperate to know whether Leyden was relived or whether it fell, as excited as if the battle was today.

William the Silent, Prince of Orange, grew up in the Netherlands after their Duke, Charles, had become Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain; William was on the side of the disunited Dutch provinces when they began their rebellion against Charles' son Philip II of Spain and became leader of the Netherlands' revolt.

Of course the book has faults. Biographers are often in love with their subjects and, while Wedgwood recognises flaws within the personality and policies of hers, she clearly adores him. "There have been politicians more successful, or more subtle; there have been none more tenacious or more tolerant" she concludes. And she dislikes or despises all those against whom William battled. The Dutch are dim-witted Bruegel peasants. The Spanish are almost all bigots, fanatics and evil persecutors. The French are a little shifty. Like so many writers of the thirties and forties, Wedgwood appears to believe that character is written in a face: both Philip of Spain and William have a "determined" chin although Philip is also damned with a "bulbous forehead and the anxious blue eyes, the turned-up nose and the loose, thick mouth." Williams bastard son Justin is "rather bovine". Usually she is not explicit in her assumptions that physical or racial features define characters; occasionally she is, to modern ears, outrageous: Don John, the illegitimate son of Charles V, feted across Europe as the victor of Lepanto, "had failed, all his life, through a certain egocentricity, an uncertainty of himself masked in arrogance, the common failing of the bastard" (my italics). Thus she damns all those born out of wedlock! This is in a book dedicated to a man who fought for (religious) tolerance.

But you have to read old books as a product of their time. What if her story presents a very one-sided view of the birth of Holland and Belgium? What if the pace of the narrative allows almost no time for analysis in any depth? She can certainly tell a great story. And I love her device of summarising where we are with a few words at the top of each right hand page: "A proud people"; "The sea beggars"; "Antwerp dissatisfied". These helped me keep up with the yarn.

And I learnt lots of little things:

• Antwerp once "controlled exclusively the money market of the world."
• The Knights of the Golden Fleece were Dutch nobles who were allowed, in chapter, to criticise their sovereign
• William once tried to romance Mary Queen of Scots
• Peter Paul Rubens the painter would never have been born if William the Silent had not pardoned his father John from the expected death sentence after Mrs Rubens had not begged for forgiveness for her husband after John had committed adultery with William's wife
• William founded the University of Leyden
• William's third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon, was an ex-nun
• William's fourth wife's father and husband were both murdered at the same time during the St Bartholomew's Day massacre
• William was the first head of state to be assassinated by a handgun (and he had been shot a couple of years earlier so he could have been even more the first)

Flawed but great fun. May 2013; 257 pages