Threads of Empire

A History of the World in Twelve Carpets

By: Dorothy Armstrong

Narrated by: Alix Dunmore

A spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets

Beautiful, sensuous, and enigmatic, great carpets follow power. Emperors, shahs, sultans and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world's 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status. And yet these seductive objects are made by poor and illiterate weavers, using the most basic materials and crafts; hedgerow plants for dyes, fibres from domestic animals, and the millennia-old skills of interweaving warps, wefts and knots.

In Threads of Empire, Dorothy Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world's most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great. She shows why the world's powerful were drawn to them, but also asks what was happening in the weavers' lives, and how they were affected by events in the world outside their tent, village or workshop.

In its wide-ranging examination of these dazzling objects, from the 5th century BCE contents of the tombs of Scythian chieftains, to the carpets under the boots of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1945 Yalta Peace Conference, Threads of Empire uncovers a new, hitherto hidden past right beneath our feet.©2025 Dorothy Armstrong (P)2025 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Critic reviews

'A revelation, about the making of carpets, and of markets, and of aesthetic taste. This beautiful book balances Dorothy Armstrong's expertise and her enthralling storytelling perfectly. The tale of each carpet as she tells it is untidy and tragic and comical all at once' (Tessa Hadley, author)

'Who knew that carpets contained such a wealth of fascinating history? Dorothy Armstrong for one, and she shares a lifetime's passion with enviable elegance, weaving her way across centuries and continents. The vocabulary of storytelling is threaded with metaphors straight from the loom; this book shows us why' (Oliver Soden, author)

'Beautifully written and ceaselessly entertaining. If you read one book about carpets this year, make it this one' (Alexander Larman, author)

'A wonderfully conceived and very engagingly written window onto global culture, history and politics through the prism of carpets. Products of unknown, unnamed and often illiterate artists of the highest skill, especially from the continent of Asia, these textiles have formed the home-settings of nomadic and settled peoples from lowly farmers to the highest aristocracy, across the world. Armstrong's enthusiasm, historical and technical command of her field, and her deep knowledge of so much of world history shines through like a bolt of enlivening sunshine' (Jaś Elsner, author)

'A carpet has many stories to tell, from the time and place where it was woven by hand through to the time and place where it was used and cherished. This book helps us to locate that object in a unique way thanks to the many layered perspective that the author offers interweaving the personal and global, the political and the cultural, the historic and the intangible into a narrative that puts carpets, perhaps unknowingly, at the centre of the human experience' (Ben Evans, editor)