The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660-1789 - Tapa dura

This is an excellent cultural history. Tim Blanning's book explores the architectural, literary, artistic and musical features of old regime Europe and elegantly sets them within the wider landscape of domestic politics, international rivalry and the challenges and opportunities posed to rulers and states by the rise of public opinion ... impressive in scope, beautifully written and full of the jibes and wry asides which make the relentlessly growing body of work by this author so enjoyable to read ... (Mike Rapport, French Studies)

handsomely produced, clearly written and vigorously argued, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture is full of things to admire, ponder and quarrel with. (German History)

This book is a work of synthesis, built on the author's impressive command over the vast scholarly literature on eighteenth-century politics and culture. But while the contours of his historical landscape are familiar enough, Blanning offers a variety of original insights, stimulating analyses and critical comments on other interpretations. (German History)

His [Blanning's] prose remains as terse and lively as ever. (English Historical Review)

Well-written and interesting ... Blanning's work rests on wide-ranging reading, and is theoretically acute and attractively priced. Art and music are both capably covered ... Few have Blanning's range. He is particularly interesting on developments in France and is good at capturing the changing character of attitudes towards the monarchy. Blanning offers one of the best short accounts available of the coming of the Revolution ... first-rate work. (History)

For sheer boldness of scale and ambition, I encountered nothing better this year. (John Adamson, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph)

As a lucid and readable general survey, as a concise presentation of the results of new research (especially German research), and as a serious and successful attempt to integrate the history of music into general history, this book deserves a warm welcome (Peter Burke, History Today)

Wide ranging and accessible. (The Economist)

A bravura display of broad scholarship, interpretative originality, and literary panache. (John Adamson, Literary Review)

This book sets new standards for historical writing by demonstrating the fallaciousness of the arbitrary division between political and cultural history (still extensively maintained within the groves of academe), and by magnificently exemplifying the truth that neither can be properly understood without the other'. (John Adamson, Literary Review)

In this fascinating new account of Old Regime Europe, T.C.W. Blanning explores the cultural revolution which transformed eighteenth-century Europe. During this period the court culture exemplified by Louis XIV's Versailles was pushed from the centre to the margins by the emergence of a new kind of space - the public sphere. The author shows how many of the world's most important cultural institutions developed in this space: the periodical, the newspaper, the novel, the lending library, the coffee house, the voluntary association, the journalist, and the critic. It was here that public opinion staked its claim to be the ultimate arbiter of culture and politics. For the established order this new force was to prove both a challenge and an opportunity and the author's comparative study of power and culture shows how regimes sought to keep their balance as the ground moved beneath their feet. In the process he explains, among other things, why Britain won the 'Second Hundred Years War' against France, how Prussia rose to become the dominant power in German-speaking Europe, and why the French monarchy collapsed.