Four Points of the Compass

A brilliant writer and historian – William DalrympleSurprising, entertaining and original – Sathnam Sanghera, author of EMPIRELAND and EMPIREWORLDFour Points of the Compass is breathless as well as breathtaking … Brotton offers what might be framed as a history of the cultural politics of the cardinal directions [and] makes pertinent interventions in those politics … fascinating titbits, provocations to thought and further inquiries abound … – Robert Mayhew * Times Literary Supplement *A unique and observant history … well written, measured and precise … points lucidly at where we have come from. – Chris Allnutt * Financial Times *Mr. Brotton’s evocative book investigates those shifting meanings, drawing from religion, history, literature and geopolitics to argue that north, south, east, and west now function more as loaded ideological terms than as navigational aids … He establishes that they remain potent in fascinating and surprising ways – Barbara Spindel * Wall Street Journal *

Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London. He is a regular broadcaster and critic as well the author of The Sale of the Late King’s Goods- Charles I and his Art Collection (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the Hessell-Tiltman History Prize), This Orient Isle- Elizabethan England and the Islamic World, and the bestselling and award-winning A History of the World in Twelve Maps, which has been translated into twenty languages.