This volume, the sixth to be published, covers the age of Louis XIV, when France played the leading role not only in the political and military sphere, but also in culture, literature and art.
Francis Ludwig Carsten was a British historian who specialised in the study of Central Europe. Born in Germany and of Jewish heritage, he fled across the Dutch border to Amsterdam after he was tipped off that the Gestapo was after him. He eventually moved to the U.K. in 1939, after receiving the offer of a fellowship at Wadham College, Oxford. He became a British subject in 1946.