It is good to be clear about how the world really is, rather than how we would like it to be.  One easy mistake to make is to conflate radical Islam with Islam.  Islam does not have a moderate form and an extreme form.  Indeed, neither do Christianity or Judaism.  All three religions are large

Britain’s military agreements with France just prior to the First World War were basically a gentleman’s agreement between the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey and the French military.  It is perhaps understandable that the details were not made public by revealing them to parliament.  It is a bit more surprising that the Cabinet were kept in

The idea of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine would have made perfect sense in the nineteenth century.  Nationalism was all the rage.  Everyone wanted to be in a nation.  The British and the French were there already.  The Germans and Italians were working on it.  Nationalism was opposed to hereditary monarchs and their empires

The Romans fought three wars against the Carthaginians.  The first two were deadly battles between great empires, but the third was simply a siege.  The Romans found a pretext and used their superior forces to surround Carthage.  The encirclement lasted four years.  The Carthaginians defended themselves for as long as they could. But it was

  The Byzantine court during the reign of the ineffectual Arcadius in the late fourth century was run by two men.  The emperor’s favourite at court was the corrupt and worldly Eutropius who ran the civil administration of the empire largely for his own benefit.  The army was run by the Goth Gainas.

I am working my way through an extended review of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I have reached the point at which we can start thinking of this as being a history of the Byzantine Empire.  The term Byzantine to describe the Eastern Roman empire wasn’t commonly used in Gibbon’s time, though