China's history

Jonathan Spence (Quercus, £20)

This is the year of China and thus no better time to appreciate its celestial history. My shelves are weighted down by the Yale historian Spences' forays into its traditions, including his epic The Search for Modern China and God's Chinese Son, about the Taiping Rebellion. Now he tackles the 17th-century scholar Zhang Dai who lived during the Ming dynasty.

Just as Japan had its epoch of cultural glory - the Heian era in the 12th century - the Ming left a shining heritage. Zhang was its chronicler. His life in a golden age of elegance reflected the beauty of Chinese porcelain that has become so revered. It was a life of flowing wine and heavenly art, of poetry and romance, of wondrous teas and silks. All was brutally shattered by the Manchu invasion in 1644.

Through Zhang's passion, Spence unravels the history of the Ming empire and its savage destruction that ushered in the Qing dynasty, which lasted until 1912. While Europe forged ahead with global exploration and industrial revolution, the dragon slept for centuries until its awakening in the 20th. But at the time of the Ming the Chinese could rival any advance in the world and Spence brings the era alive.

Finally, it is a story of one man's quest to survive in the anarchy of conquest. Zhang enlists in the Ming resistance under a dissolute leader but ultimately seeks solace in his memories of a lost age, leaving a rich and vivid portrait of a society that reached a height of power and grace.

Spence's absorbing study links well with an overall view of the nation's history by Arthur Cotterell, The Imperial Capitals of China (Pimlico, £20), a colourful rendition of the various dynasties, the civil wars and political turmoil that marked the country's progress from the time of the first emperor. The Forbidden City in Peking, with its 15th-century imperial palace, remains a poem to Chinese cultural architecture. Colin Gardiner