David Crane

Vain, inbred and inept: how could the Habsburgs have survived so long?

Their empire once extended over half the known world — yet there has rarely been a dynasty less fit to rule

A portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder of Charles V — ruler of ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’. Getty Images.
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  • The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power

    Martyn Rady

    Allen Lane, pp. 400, £30

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