Roger Crowley (born 1951[1]) is a British historian and author known for his books on
maritime and
Mediterranean history.[2]
Life and career
Roger Crowley was educated at
Sherborne School and read English at
Emmanuel College Cambridge. As the child of a naval family, early experiences of life in Malta gave him a deep interest in the history and culture of the Mediterranean world, which has remained the major subject of his work. He has travelled widely in the Greek-speaking world, taught English in
Istanbul and walked across Western Turkey. He worked for many years as a publisher before pursuing a full-time writing career. He is married and lives in England in the Gloucestershire countryside.[3]
He has a reputation for writing compelling narrative history based on original sources and eyewitness accounts combined with careful scholarship. He is the author of a loose trilogy of books on the history of the
Mediterranean: Constantinople: The Last Great Siege/1453 (2005), drawing on his interest in Istanbul, Empires of the Sea (2008) about the contest for the Mediterranean between the
Ottomans and Christian Europe, which was a
Sunday Times (UK) History Book of the Year in 2009 and a
New York Times Bestseller – and City of Fortune on
Venice’s maritime empire (2011).[4] These were followed by Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire (2015), an account of early Portuguese activities in the
Indian Ocean. His latest book, Accursed Tower: The Crusaders' Last Battle for the Holy Land (Yale, 2019) chronicles the end of the crusades and the fall of
Akko in 1291. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.[5]
"The First Global Empire" History Today (2015) 656#10 pp 10–17
online
Books
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West. New York: Hachette Books, 2005.(US edition)
ISBN9781401308506[7]
Great Constantinople: The Last Siege. London: Faber, 2005.(UK edition)
ISBN9780571298204[8]
Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World. New York: Random House, 2008. (US edition)
ISBN9780812977646[9] (UK edition) London: Faber, 2008.
ISBN9780571298198[10]
Accursed Tower: The Crusaders' Last Battle for the Holy Land. London: Yale University Press, 2019 (UK edition)
ISBN9780300230314[17] (US edition) Basic Books, 2019.
ISBN9781541697348[18]