And why he’s my favourite author. — Few authors inspire at much dread in Western audiences as the Russians. I gave up on Tolstoy’s War and Peace as a teenager, when, as I was reading bed, dropped it on myself one too many times from the sheer weight of the thing. …

The stories we love and what they say about us — When I was a child, I really enjoyed a series of books called The Inheritance Cycle, of which Eragon was the most popular. Looking back, it wasn’t an amazing story. A knock-off of Lord of the Rings, with hints of Brandon Sanderson where (spoilers) the big bad is eventually defeated…

History’s most iconic era — Ask a modern historian what and when the Middle Ages or Medieval period is and you’ll get a variety of answers. Traditionally it has been defined as the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and before the Renaissance in the 15th century —…

Stories to take us to the stars — I love mythology. It’s part of the reason I studied history. To understand the complex people, societies, and cultures you need to understand their mythologies too. For example, what kind of culture creates a pantheon as violent and incestuous as the Greek Pantheon? …

Including mine… — History is a difficult endeavour. We tend to imagine it as a science offering us immutable facts about the past, but it’s more complicated than that. Part of the problem has to do with how we like to teach and understand history. …

When our historical perspectives play tricks on us — Global history has been a buzzword for many years now, and it has its drawbacks, but it is amazing at recognising the interconnectedness of the world we live in. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and we ignore our broader histories at our peril. …

Our ancestors knew how to care for the planet, why don’t we? — The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) has recently wrapped up and it should come as no surprise that the promises made there are already withering on the vines. The political resolve, at least here in the UK, to fix this issue remains as strong as a wet napkin. …

A history of a societal dependence Russia has fascinated me as a state for a long time. It’s been a pariah on the world stage for more than a hundred years now, and it’s safe to say that few countries have had such a dramatic effect on the world in…

So much more than carpe diem… — Latin is seen as a stuffy language today and it’s fair to say that beyond academia, it has few uses. My own adventures with the language have given me a passing knowledge of some basic vocabulary that I regularly use, mostly to add a little gravitas to an otherwise uneventful…