Lead Review

• Book: City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire
• Location: Venice
• Author: Roger Crowley

The grand story is enlivened by a wealth of well-chosen quotations and by Crowley’s evident ambivalence toward his subjects. He admires the corporate spirit that led women, servants and priests to become small-time traders, but he cannot quite bring himself to see merchants as heroes. Venice, he writes, was a “joint-stock company” run by unromantic opportunists for a “frighteningly consistent” purpose: the ruthless pursuit of material gain. He is happier returning to the sea, its heroes and privations, and a scrappy, tight-knit “republic of wood, iron, rope, sails, rudders and oars.” (New York Times)
I have spent the best part of my last 20 summers touring around the Venetian lagoon;I never looked properly !I have learnt more from reading this wonderful book at home than from my unfortunately misguided visits.
(Michel Boucaud)

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