A delightful world history, told through influential families

Lockdown, for Simon Sebag Montefiore, was not a time for baking or box sets. Instead he set about recounting the history of the world through the lives of its most influential families. He begins over 4,000 years ago with the rape and vengeance of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, the self-made ruler of the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia. He ends with the Trumps and the Xis. Sargon’s family faced the same problems that afflicted nearly every dynastic empire that followed: “The bigger it grew, the more borders had to be defended; the richer it was, the more tempting a target it became for less settled neighbours—and the greater was the incentive for destructive family feuds.”