PHILIP MANSEL

Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Ottoman Empire, courts and monarchs.  He was born in London in 1951 and educated at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern History and Modern Languages.  Following four years' research into the French court of the period 1814-1830, he was awarded his doctorate at University College, London in 1978.

His first book, Louis XVIII, was published in 1981 and this - together with subsequent works such as Paris Between Empires 1814-1852 (2001) - established him on both sides of the Channel as an authority on the later French monarchy. Six of his books have been translated into French.

Altogether Philip Mansel has published eleven books of history and biography, mainly relating either to France or to his other main area of interest, the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East: Sultans in Splendour was published in 1988 and Constantinople: City of the World's Desire 1453-1924 in 1995. Philip Mansel's latest book, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (John Murray), was published in November 2010 in Britain and in April 2011 in America.  The Turkish edition was published in November 2011. Greek, Italian and Russian editions will also be appearing.

Over the past 30 years he has contributed reviews and articles to a wide range of newspapers and journals, including History Today, The English Historical Review, The International Herald Tribune, Books and Bookmen, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Apollo.  Currently he writes reviews for The Spectator, The Art Newspaper and The Times Literary Supplement. 

In 1995 Philip Mansel was a founder with David Starkey, Robert Oresko and Simon Thurley of the Society for Court Studies, designed to promote research in the field of court history. He is the Editor of the Society's journal and the co-organiser of the biennial conferences (held in conjunction with the Victorian Society) on Courts and Capitals 1815-1914, the fourth of which will be held on 8 October 2011.

He has travelled widely, lecturing in many countries - including the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey - and has made a number of appearances on radio and television, including in the two-part Channel 4 documentary "Harem"  and in "Croatians on the Bosphorus", shown on Croatian Television on 8 May 2011. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature, the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) and the Royal Asiatic Society, and is a member of the Conseil Scientifique of the Centre de Recherche du Chateau de Versailles. In 2010 he was appointed Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Philip Mansel lives in London.

RECENT AND FORTHCOMING ACTIVITY

The paperback edition of Prince of Europe: The Life of Charles-Joseph de Ligne (1735-1814) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) came out in March 2005, and early in 2006 the book was published in a German translation, Der Prinz Europas: Charles-Joseph Fürst de Ligne 1735-1814 (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta).  In October 2005 John Murray published a new edition of Louis XVIII with a fresh introduction containing previously unpublished material. John Murray brought out a new paperback edition of Constantinople, City of the World’s Desire 1453-1924 in October 2006 and this book, already available in French, Turkish, Italian and Greek, has also recently been issued in a Spanish translation, Constantinopla, la ciudad deseada por el mundo (Granada, Almed, 2006).

He has contributed to many edited volumes, including recently a long biographical article to Thomas Hope: Regency Designer (Yale University Press, 2008) and an article on Paris under Napoleon III to The Great Cities in History (ed. John Julius Norwich, Thames and Hudson 2009). He has also written introductions or prefaces for eight books, including Lesley Blanch’s biography, Pierre Loti: Travels with the Legendary Romantic (I.B. Tauris, 2004); the reissue of A Girl in Paris: A Persian Encounter with the West by Shusha Guppy (Tauris Parke, 2007); the second edition of Three Kings in Baghdad: The Tragedy of Iraq's Monarchy by Gerald de Gaury (I.B. Tauris, 2008); and Lord Stuart de Rothesay by Robert Franklin (Book Guild Publishing, 2008).

Philip Mansel has co-edited (with Torsten Riotte) Monarchy and Exile: The Politics of Legitimacy from Marie de Medicis to Wilhelm II (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), which includes his article “From the Exile to the Throne: The Europeanisation of Louis XVIII”. He is currently working on a biography of Louis XIV.