“In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth.” The familiar opening of the King James Bible.  Being able to read the Bible is something we take for granted. It was the first thing that rolled off the newly invented printing press and most households will have at least one somewhere in the house.

After the defeat of Zenobia, Aurelian could not return directly to Rome. He had also to deal with a revolt in Egypt. A local businessman called Firmus with a large fortune used it to raise an army and declare independence for Egypt. You can’t help but think that Firmus just hadn’t been paying attention.  What

The city of Palmyra originated as a simple settlement around an oasis in the middle of the desert.  The name comes from the same root as our name for Palm tree.  Its wealth and fame came about as a result of the silk trade making it a vital stopping point. Being equidistant between the Roman

Aurelian became emperor with only some very limited opposition.  The brother of Claudius made a claim, but it lasted only 17 days before he committed suicide rather than face the undoubted skill at arms of Aurelian.  This averted a civil war which could easily have undone all of the good work of Claudius. Like Claudius, 

I agonised for ages about whether or not to get a Kindle. I had a couple of pretty serious misgivings about it.  For a start I wasn’t keen on the way Amazon seemed to be locking the content.  I didn’t want to spend money on a book that relied on a particular bit of electronic

Its easy to be condescending about the past.  We look back with the benefit of hindsight, scholarship and having watched well made documentaries, and assume that we know better what was going on than the people actually involved.  But I doubt we are justified.  People usually know exactly what is going wrong. As the crisis