Philip Mansel: King of the World

<div>In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is the historian Philip Mansel. We talk about his new biography <em>King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. </em>He tells me what really drove the great megalomaniac, whether he was a feminist <em>avant la lettre, </em>how his depredations in the Rhineland anticipated Putin’s in Ukraine – and why, if he hadn’t revoked the Edict of Nantes, the first man on the moon might have been speaking French.</div>