Trieste

Sylvain Tesson’s White unfolds the story of a gruelling ski journey across the Alps during which the author aims to fulfil ‘a long-held dream of transforming travel into prayer’. Born in Paris in 1973, Tesson is a well-known adventure writer whose previous books include The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga, which won awards on both sides of the Channel and was made into a film. As a public figure associated with the far right, Tesson remains divisive in his homeland. His political views do not seem to have dented book sales or literary coverage: one wonders if the same would be true if

The role of personality and charm in running a state is one theme of Richard Bassett’s superb book, the first English biography of the Empress Maria Theresa since Edward Crankshaw’s in 1969. The different parts of the Habsburg monarchy – Austria, Tyrol, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia and Milan – had little in common except dynasty, geography and Catholicism. Yet, partly owing to Maria Theresa’s force of character, this complex tapestry of nationalities remained a great power After she came to the throne in 1740, she felt ‘forsaken by the whole world’. Encouraged by France, Austria’s neighbours Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria invaded the monarchy in order to divide it between them. By