The First Crusade by Peter Frankopan

Of all the crusades that left Europe in a euphoria of religion and military prowess, the first was the one that fires the imagination, not least because of its capture of Jerusalem and triumph of Christianity. Only the fourth crusade, with its heretical storming of Constantinople, can match it in sheer drama.

Frankopan, an Oxford University history don, has revisited the first crusade with a new perspective, bringing us into the world of Byzantium, particularly Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Earlier books have mainly pursued the “holy war” concept from the viewpoint of the West, but Frankopan looks east for the underlying cause of the first war — with good reason.

There is a lot to distrust in the medieval — and subsequent — assessments of the crusades and Frankopan, with tremendous literary verve, tears apart many of the familiar themes while not denying the fantastic endurance of the crusaders in an expedition that surmounted hardship and hunger. In doing so, he links the arena of the Pope and the West to Alexios and the East with a “voracious appetite”.

Pope Urban II galvanised the religious masses in France to launch the first pilgrimage — one of the most electrifying speeches in history, according to Frankopan. This cry to free Jerusalem has never been better expressed. Although it “idealised the concept of the devout knight, fighting for God”, the author strips layer by layer the intrigues of Byzantium, beset by Turks, but in the end rescues Alexios from centuries of odium.

This could have been a complex subject, but Frankopan’s creative revisionism pierces the armour of medieval history with a new weapon: the call of the East.

The author will be at the Oxford Literary Festival on Thursday, March 29. Box office 0870 343 1001.