Month: November 2013

This is a novel that works on several different levels – Dan Brown style pot-boiler, girlie relationship stuff, ghost story, thriller.  But I am going to ignore all that and just talk about the historical bit.

Alaric may well be the best known German barbarian in Roman history.  He was a Goth of high rank and bizarrely for someone who is mainly remembered for wrecking the empire, his role model was probably the man who was for a time to become his great enemy: Stilicho, whose military expertise had given him effective control of the Empire in the West.

I had a couple of glasses of wine and decided to review a Victorian

Things are just crazy in my house sometimes.  Anyway here is the video – there is no script as I was extemporising like the hell raiser that I am.  

Some time ago I decided to stop following the news on the grounds that I would be better informed if I didn’t.  This has worked very well and now even though I have only the vaguest notion of what is going on I feel I have a better grip on current affairs than I did when I was a news junkie.

While the east was in the hands of the scoundrel Rufinus, in the west a very different man came to prominence.  This was Stilicho.  Stilicho’s father was a Vandal, but his mother was a Roman and he lived his entire life in the empire and in service to it.  Neither he nor his contemporaries seem to have regarded his German heritage as remotely important so I suggest we don’t either.  He was married to the niece of Theodosius, but this was the result of his rise to power rather than the cause of it. He owed his position to his ability not his birth.

I was born in Eastbourne on the south coast of England, which is the location of a Napoleonic fortifcation called the Redoubt. When I was growing up it was the home of an exceptionally kitsch model village and a rather charming aquarium called the Blue Grotto. This was an eccentric use for an historic monument, and the council decided to turn into something more appropriate. There was, as there always is in small towns, an outcry about the change to a much loved local amenity. The argument went on until some vandals broke in one night and smashed the model village up.

Theodosius was both a good soldier, and just the kind of soldier the empire needed at the time.  He was decisive when the need arose, but was cautious generally. He was basically fighting defensively – the game plan was survival not conquest. Typical of his initiatives was improving the defences of Constantinople, adding the Golden Gate to the walls built by Constantine.  This project was taken up by his grandson Theodosius II, who rebuilt the walls completely making the city virtually impregnable.  These were to stand the empire in good stead over the centuries.  Built to last, they are still there.  Only the invention of the canon finally rendered them useless.