Christ’s Death must have been hard to cope with for his followers “Imagine no religion, it’s easy if you try.” So sang John Lennon.  I miss you John.  It would be really nice to think you were up there somewhere and could know how much we all love you.  I imagine that the followers

In the past Empires were built on the demand for spices. What was so special about spices?  Basically it was that they were valuable, imperishable and portable.  Before modern technology, in particular modern transport, they were just about the only commodity which it was technically feasible to trade on a global scale.  But as technology has

Where Bilbo lives is a very comfortable and law abiding place.  As we get further away from home things get wilder.  The Hobbit is of course a children’s book and Tolkien makes things as simple for his youthful audience.  He designates this area as ‘the Wild’.  This is fairly easy on the brain and gets

I am indebted to the highly followable  @TLockyer on Twitter for drawing my attention to a fascinating paper available via the marvelous Medievalist.net resource. http://www.medievalists.net/2011/05/01/franchise-conflict-the-tide-of-antipopes-in-the-aftermath-of-the-eastern-schism/ This looks at the idea that the Church can be thought of as a franchise in quite a lot of detail and uses this idea to interpret so key historical

First off – they may by satires but they aren’t really laugh out loud funny. There are a few mildly funny stories, but nothing that a modern stand up comedian could do anything with. But there are times when they bring a smile to your face, and as you read more and get to know

I have given quite a lot of coverage to the individual episodes of Niall Ferguson’s series Civilization, Is the West History?, so I thought it made sense to round it all off with a review of all six programmes as a whole.   Each of them explores a particular aspect of how the West has