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In March 2018 I made a trip to the ancient Mediterranean port of Acre in Northern Israel – Akka in Arabic, Akko in Hebrew – as part of the research for writing my most recent book, Accursed Tower. I wanted to explore the place where the crusaders made their last stand in the Holy Land against ...
The last few years have seen people across the world being displaced in unprecedented numbers. As the entry to Europe Greece has been all but overwhelmed by the influx of refugees arriving on its shores, but the Greeks themselves have their own deep history of migration and displacement - ...
Author Interviews
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in?My interest in the Mediterranean world goes back a long way. My father was a naval officer who was based there in peace and in war. When I was nine he was stationed on Malta and I went out for holidays. I was entranced by the sights, sounds and smells of this small island and its history, clambering around on the fortifications of Valletta, visiting prehistoric monuments and swimming in warm seas. Before and after university I made trips to Greece, went to live in Istanbul and walked across western Turkey. The Byzantine and Ottoman worlds left a deep impression on me, and the maritime history that bound these empires together.Can you tell us a little more about how you research? Has the process changed over the years?I usually start by reading general histories of something I’m interested in to try to define the centre of a narrative. I also look early on to see how rich the contemporary source material is. I’m an avid reader of bibliographies to get a grasp of what’s available. The ability to read languages is essential to me and I have to spend a fair amount of time learning languages that I can’t actually speak. Although I have occasionally used translators (Arabic) I find I can’t tell what’s useful until I can read it myself, but my rule is to do no archival research – it’s simply too time consuming and demand skills I don’t have. I’m grateful for all those post-graduate students who have mined and collected material from the Venetian archives. Then I set to doing detailed reading and write hundreds of pages of handwritten notes. I aim to write books that have a rich sense of place and so travelling to historic locations in part of the deal. Writing the publisher’s proposal is a crucial first stage. With my first book I mapped out the whole thing, every chapter in detail, and it proved the easiest of my five books to write. In subsequent books I’ve tended to produce more general outlines and on several occasions I’ve ended up throwing away thousands of words. Recently I’ve resolved to going back to first principles and bolting down a very clear idea of the content at the proposal stage.The common phrase is that history is written by the victors. Do you think this is true?The fall of Constantinople in 1453, about which I’ve written, at the time was the work of the losers. Because of the disparity in narrative traditions between the Christian West and the Islamic world and the power of print in t17th he West from the early modern period on, Europeans have tended to hold the advantage in controlling the narrative, win or lose. Nowadays I think we’re seeing a rebalance, and there’s increasing space for the voice of the losers to be heard, whether it’s the terrible plight of the people of Berlin in 1945 or the rediscovery of slave narratives. Are there any historians who helped shaped your career? Similarly, can you recommend three history books which budding historians should read?It’s hard to pinpoint any one in terms of approach, but regarding the Mediterranean world I’d say John Julius Norwich on Byzantium and Venice and Fernand Braudel’s great work The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II have inspired me.I can’t claim to any ‘shoulds’ but here’s three varied reads:
- Sapiens for big thinking about our place on earth
- The Suspicions of Mr Whicher for the ability to weave fascinating narratives out of wonderful micro research.
- Braudel (as above) for interdisciplinary approaches to history: economics, geography, culture, politics and war. A man who can speculate that the Turks could capture Constantinople and the Arabs couldn’t because the Bactrian camel could cope with the harsh Anatolian climate and the Arabian camel couldn’t, makes fascinating connections.
- There are many different reasons for wanting to write history books. Be clear what yours are.
- Foreign languages are incredibly useful if you want to leave our shores in search of history. Learn as many as you can.
- Look to write the kind of book that you want to read – you are your own ideal reader.