“I think that the period is interesting because of its sheer gaudy complexity – its baroqueness — and difficult to write about for the same reason. One cannot really make sense of all the wars and intrigues without a wall-sized family tree of the royal houses of Europe. I cheated by making the book long, which gave me space to explain at least some of these complexities. Other eras are simple by comparison; one can simply write ‘Napoleon had conquered most of Europe and wanted to invade Britain’ and the stage is set. But trying to set up the War of the Spanish Succession is a nightmare of forensic genealogy.

Setting those difficulties aside, this period is fascinating because so much was going on, and so much of it was brilliant and dramatic. The Turks at the gates of Vienna, the Barbary Corsairs and other sorts of pirates, gold-galleons on the Spanish Main, the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, the invention of modern science and finance, the Mogul Empire in Hindustan—all of this was happening at one time. I don’t think there was any other period of history to compare with it…” (Guardian.UK)