<p><b>A <i>Sunday Times</i> History Book of the Year 2019</b><br><b>Shortlisted for The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award</b><br><br><b>'No Briton has written better than Winder about Europe' - <i>Sunday Times</i></b><br><br>In AD 843, the three surviving grandsons of the great Emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited what became France, another Germany and the third Lotharingia: the chunk that initially divided the other two. The dynamic between these three great zones has dictated much of our subsequent fate.<br><br>In this beguiling, hilarious and compelling book we retrace how both from west and from east any number of ambitious characters have tried and fai
