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

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

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

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,