Giles Milton - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

The Riddle and the Knight

Bernard Hamilton, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, noted: 'Although he makes no claim to be writing an academic study... he has clearly done a good deal of research into published sources and unpublished records.' He adds: 'Were Sir John alive today, I am sure he would have read Milton's book.'

Anthony Sattin, writing in The Sunday Times, said of the book: 'In the style of true medieval quest, each answer poses another question.' He added: 'The one thing that is irrefutably clear by the final page is that Mandeville's argument that the world was round had an enormous influence on the age of exploration.'

Jason Goodwin, reviewing the book in Punch magazine, concluded: 'We travel with him in the end because he has done his research in the British Library... Milton has scaled a mountain of research, and the twist he gives Mandeville's story is made with elegance and conviction.'

But Philip Glazebrook, writing in The Spectator, felt that Sir John Mandeville remained a shadowy figure, in spite of Milton's best efforts. 'The trouble is, I never really believed in Sir John, could never visualise him, never feel an intriguing presence at the heart of the book.'

Nathaniel's Nutmeg

Martin Booth, writing of Giles Milton’s book in The Times, concluded: ‘His research is impeccable and his narrative reads in part like a modern-day Robert Louis Stevenson novel.’

Nicholas Fearn in The Independent on Sunday wrote: ‘This book is a magnificent piece of popular history. It is an English story, but its heroism is universal. This is a book to read, reread, then, aside from the X-rated penultimate chapter, read again to your children.’

In The Spectator, Philip Hensher wrote: ‘To write a book which makes the reader, after finishing it, sit in a trance, lost in his passionate desire to pack a suitcase and go, somehow, to the fabulous place – that, in the end, is something one would give a sack of nutmegs for.’

Time Magazine said of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: ‘Milton spins a fascinating tale of swashbuckling adventure, courage and cruelty, as nations and entrepreneurs fought for a piece of the nutmeg action.’

Big Chief Elizabeth

Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, commented: ‘In an exceptionally pungent, amusing and accessible historical account, Giles Milton brings readers right into the midst of these colonists and their daunting American adventure... there’s no question that Mr Milton’s research has been prodigious and that it yields an entertaining, richly informative look at the past.’ 23 November 2000.

Many reviews – among them those published by the above-mentioned The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Financial Times The New Statesman and The Observer – singled out Milton’s exceptional talent in making use of original source material.

In Britain’s Daily Mail, Peter Lewis wrote: ‘This grippingly told true adventure story is made all the more immediate by using lavish quotations in wild Elizabethan spelling.’

The Spectator also praised the author for bringing history to life. ‘Milton has a terrific eye for the kind of detail that can bring the past vividly to life off the page,’ wrote reviewer, Steve King. ‘He revels in the grim realities of the early colonists’ experience. There’s disease, famine, torture, cannibalism and every kind of deprivation imaginable. Milton’s findness for the faintly off-colour vignette makes for stomach-turning but compelling reading.’

The Sunday Times concluded: ‘Milton has amassed an impressive amount of information from original sources, and it is evidence from Elizabethan journals that makes this such a vivid story.’

There were a few detractors. Writing in The Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu expressed admiration for Milton’s writing talents. ‘It’s almost impossible to summarise Milton’s book, from which marvelous, vivid stories spill out like swagsack booty.’ But he noted that the book did little to deconstruct the realities in Imperialism. ‘He is in love with deeds not discourse, harking back to popular 19th century historians like J A Froude.

And John Adamson, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, also had reservations about the book. In an article entitled, ‘’History: the director’s cut’’, he argued that the book did not place enough demands on the reader. ‘All you have to do is sit back with your tub of popcorn and let the story unfold.’

Samurai William

Matthew Redhead, writing in The Times, said: ‘Giles Milton is a man who can take an event from history and make it come alive.... He has a genius for lively prose, and an appreciation for historical credibility. With Samurai William, he has crafted an inspiration for those of us who believe that history can be exciting and entertaining.’

In The Sunday Times, Katie Hickman concluded: ‘Giles Milton has once again shown himself to be a master of historical narrative. The story of William Adams is a gripping tale of Jacobean derring-do, a fizzing, real-life Boy’s Own adventure underpinned by genuine scholarship.’

Writing in The New York Review, the scholarly critic Jonathan Spence was impressed by Milton’s use of documentary source material. ‘Giles Milton presents with undisguised gusto. His notes and bibliography make it clear that he has absorbed much of the voluminous secondary literature on this period and on Adams himself.’

Anthony Thwaite, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, agreed that the book strength lay in its source material. ‘Giles Milton has been assiduous in searching through all the published sources ... if it brings more readers to the marvelous story of how West discovered East, and East discovered West, that’s good.’

In The New York Times, Susan Chira said that Milton had written ‘a vivid, scrupulously researched biography ... it is a sheer pleasure to read Milton’s vivid portraits of the small corps of foreigners who traded at the sufferance of Japanese feudal lords.’

The Washington Times agreed: ‘He recounts in graphic detail – much from primary sources – the astounding hardships and hardihood of those explorers of a dangerous unknown.’

White Gold

Writing in The Independent, Benedict Allen picked it as one of his Books of the Year (2004). 'A romping tale of 18th-century sailors enslaved by Barbary seafarers and sold to a Moroccan tyrant. It has all the usual Miltonian ingredients: swift narrative and swashbuckling high-drama laid on a bed of historical grit.’

In his review in The Observer, Dan Neill, felt the strength of the book was its use of contemporary documents. ‘Drawing on letters, journals and manuscripts written by the slaves.... Milton has produced a disturbing account of the barbaric splendor of the imperial Moroccan court, which he brings to life with considerable panache... White Gold is an engrossing story, expertly told.’

In The Daily Mail, Peter Lewis called the book an ‘extraordinary, eye-opening and most readable revelation of a dark place and shameful episode in our history.’

Tim Ecott, writing in The Guardian, said the strength of the book lay in its two magnificent central characters, Thomas Pellow and Mulay Ismail. He concluded: ‘Milton has ingeniously retrieved and polished a hidden nugget from the remarkable treasure house of British history.’

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s review in The Sunday Times concluded: ‘Milton’s story could scarcely be more action-packed and its setting and subsidiary characters are as fantastic as its events... Milton conjures up a horrifying but enthralling vision of the court of Moulay Ismail.’

In The Sunday Telegraph, Justin Marozzi wrote: ‘White Gold is lively and diligently researched, a chronicle of cruelty on a grand scale... an unfailingly entertaining piece of history.’

Philip Hensher, writing in The Spectator, was sceptical of Milton’s portrayal of Moulay Ismail’s court, which he felt was too consonant with Western ideas of orientalism: ‘It is all a little too much like a fantasy by Ingres,’ he wrote. But he praised White Gold for being ‘extensively researched’ and concluded that it was ‘an exciting and sensational account of a really swashbuckling historical episode.’

Paradise Lost

Jeremy Seal, writing in The Daily Telegraph, called Paradise Lost: 'A compelling story... Milton's considerable achievement is to deliver with characteristic clarity and colour this complex epic narrative, Milton brings a commendable impartiality to his thoroughly researched book.

William Dalrymple, writing in The Sunday Times, praised the book for both its impartial approach and its use of original source material written by the Levantine families of Smyrna.

'It is the lives of these dynasties, recorded in their diaries and letters, that form the focus for Giles Milton’s brilliant re-creation of the last days of Smyrna ... Milton has written a grimly memorable book about one of the most important events in this process. It is well paced, even-handed and cleverly focused: through the prism of the Anglo-Levantines, he reconstructs both the prewar Edwardian glory of Smyrna and its tragic end. He also clears up, once and for all, who burnt Smyrna, producing irrefutable evidence that the Turkish army brought in thousands of barrels from the Petroleum Company of Smyrna and poured them over the streets and houses of all but the Turkish quarter.

The Spectator and Literary Review also praised the book for its even-handed approach to the controversial sack of Smyrna.

Writing in the Spectator, Philip Mansel called the book 'an indictment of nationalism ... Milton has gone where biographers of Atatürk and historians of Turkey, who often want Turkish official support, have feared to tread. He has reproduced accounts by individual Armenian, Greek and foreign eye-witnesses, as well as British sailors’ and consuls’ accounts. It is a much needed corrective to official history.

Adam Le Bor, writing in the Literary Review, said: ‘Milton brings the past alive in this vivid, detailed and poignant book by drawing on family letters and archives, and first-hand interviews with those elderly survivors who remember Smyrna’s glory days.’

Alev Adil, writing in The Independent, said 'Giles Milton's engrossing account of the events leading up to the destruction of the city in 1922 is based largely on the previously unpublished letters and diaries of these Levantine dynasties. Milton's book celebrates the heroism of individuals who put lives before ideologies.'

Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War

James Delinpole writing in The Daily Mail called the book ‘idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating... what this book captures well is how, little by little, ordinary Germans were bullied and cajoled into acquiescing with Hitler's insane plans.’

For Daily Express reviewer Christopher Silvester, Milton shows how ‘insidiously Nazism encroached on the daily lives of German citizens... as a portrait of how these civilised individuals were able to survive, this is invaluable.’

Hester Vaizy’s review, ‘A Conflict of Loyalty’ published in The Spectator, 21 May 2011, favourably compared the book with standard histories of Nazi Germany: ‘Milton’s account reveals that Germans, too, experienced real suffering in wartime... without forgetting or denying the crimes perpetrated in Nazi death camps, Milton’s close analysis of the experiences of Germans demonstrates that they too could be victims of the war.’

In his BBC History Magazine article, Roger Moorhouse called Wolfram ‘a very valid and interesting book, which offers an illuminating insight into the experience of ‘ordinary’ Germans living in ‘small-town’ Germany.’