Empress Theodora in a Byzantine Mosaic This series ran on UK television a couple of years ago.  The photography is truly stunning.  I am going to be reminding myself with this YouTube edition, which by my calculation must sadly be missing some of the footage that was originally screened.  It is probably not going to

When someone finds a Roman coin in a field, they often imagine that they have stumbled across something of great value.  It is after all old, rare and made of a precious metal.  The reality is that only the first of those things is true.  Roman coins can be bought on Ebay for a pound

If you want to follow this series it starts with the reign of the first Roman emperor Augustus.  The previous episode is covers the reign of Alexander Severus the last of the Severan dynasty to rule Rome. Few reigns, even in the brutal world of Rome, had such an ugly start as that of Maximin.

I am very grateful to the lay preachers at Frenchgate Chapel in the nineteen sixties for being just about the worst advocates for their religion I can imagine.  They not only failed to convince me, at about age 7, that I should believe in God.  They failed to persuade me that they did either. Looking

I have just looked and to my amazement History Books Review is on the new and noteworthy page for history podcasts on iTunes.  Blimey.

Its a mini-book so this is a mini-review.  Leo the Wise was the founder of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire.  His life was fairly eventful, but it isn’t obvious from this account that anything he did was particularly wise, though he did just about manage to get the dynasty off on fairly firm