Empire: World History

And they spend the evening, these two, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Jefferson, reading Tristram Shandy out to each other in the evening.

Which at the time was, I mean, we regarded it in a sense as a literary text and something you'd do at university. But I think it was the kind of Monty Python of the time. It was a kind of wacko, completely crazy novel.

And reading Tristram Shandy would have been almost as an act of literary rebellion, wouldn't it?

Christopher Hitchens says when he talks about Tristram Shandy readings in the evening, he says, we must thus from the first appreciate what becomes ever clearer as this story proceeds. We are studying a man with very little sense of humour.

Such a wonderfully spare bitchy remark from Hitchens.

I've been just reveling in so many brilliant George Washington books at the moment.

Millions are gaping, says Weems, to read something about it.

It's called Washington, A Life.

This is a revelation in the book by Ron Chernow, who also very famously did the biography of Hamilton, upon which Lin-Manuel Miranda based his musical.

I've got something to whisper in your lug, Weems wrote in January 1800.

It's called The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.

Matthewhew2 Brilliant title for a book.

We can all do with a copy of that.

He sort of, cleanse not your teeth with a tablecloth, napkin, fork or knife, but if others do it, let it be done with a picktooth.

So that is John DeMoss' Unredeemed Captive, which was one of the most influential books for me that I ever read.

But what is so interesting about these captive narratives, which is what we're going to be talking about today from early America, is that they're both a very American story.

John DeMoss, whose entire life's work has been about this very early period of early Puritan and early English settlement of the American seaboard, came across this story and followed it, ransacking archives and reconstructing from all the different angles the story of the Reverend Williams, but particularly his daughter Eunice Williams.

And John Deimos in his analysis of this, you know, struggles to comprehend the killing of the children.

And Deimos in his book suggests that partly maybe the trauma of seeing her father helpless when the mother was killed, or his failure to be able to rescue her has left some sort of psychological inability of the daughter to trust her father again, because it's only when he dies that she'll come back.

And these early Captives, which have been written wonderfully also by Linda Coley, which is another wonderful book.

Anyone wanting to read more at the end of this should look at Linda's book, Captives, Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600 to 1850.

Just let me remind you of the name of Camilla Townsend's excellent book. It's called Pocahontas and the Pauhtin Dilemma.

And they did like it. They liked it that somebody was finally writing a book that was attempting to glean her perspective.

When Jan Morris wrote her wonderful Empire Trilogy Pax Britannica in the 1970s, which in a sense was the sort of first time that anyone attempted to put the whole history of British Empire into a single multi volume work and Jan Morris who died last year and who was a great friend of mine very much saw it as her greatest work and her legacy.

She opens if I remember correctly the second volume Pax Britannica with the Great Exhibition and for her it was the climax of Empire.

And anyone who like me has enjoyed reading Salman Rushdie or has read the Moors Last Sigh, you will know that too was a seismic convulsion in that part of the world which expelled a huge number of people.

I'm going to give a plug now for a wonderful book. It happens to be written by my wife called The Politics of Emotion, Love, Grief and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia.

Her name is Nuria Cierras Fernandez, and that's where I got everything here. So if there's anything wrong that I say, blame her, not me.

Sherlock, are you trying to draw my attention to something?

Yes.

To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.

It's a wonderful place to work.

And I've searched both Return of a King and Last Mughal in there.

The Horde is just one of the great, great books.

And if anyone wants to know anything about life in the Mongol era, Marie is your girl to go for.

The Horde, how the Mongols changed the world.

It is an exceptional book by an exceptional author and an exceptional storyteller.

author of so many books on the Islamic Caliphate, including The Court of the Caliphs, The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty.

I have a shelf, not a corner shelf, an entire groaning shelf of the collected works of Hugh Kennedy on Mayans, Abbasids, Caliphates, early Islamic eras.

So can I do a reading here because I've got here the wonderful chronicle of the amazing Abbasid historian Masoudi. It's called The Medos of Gold.

This is the period described in The Arabian Nights Baghdad, the city which is the capital of the Abbasids is the setting for these these fabulous stories.

From the same imagination that produces the stories of the Arabian Knights.

Now the Arabian Knights centres very heavily on the young Harun in disguise visiting the flesh pots of Baghdad in the street in the company with the youngest generation of the Barma kids.

It comes from Tabari's history of the prophets and kings which is the great enormous wonderful history of the early Islamic world.

This wonderfully gossipy and full of details like this that may or may not be true but which paid to wonderfully vivid picture of the intrigues of the court.

Listen thank you so much you're an absolute superstar it is an amazing story you tell it so well and if you want to read Peter Saras' masterful book on this Justinian.

It is a wonderful wonderful book do not miss this book.

Yeah Emperor Justinian you can get it at a discount if you are a friend of Empire join the Empire Club all you need to do is sign up at empireportuuk.com and you'll get lots of delicious things including that but listen it's been an absolute delight thank you so much for being with us Peter until the next time.

Oh see, you've returned to Jackenori. Look at that time. Very beautifully read William. It was the quote from the opening Alliance of Evening Wars, only historical novel, Helena. It's the story, ostensibly meant to be, of St Helena, the eponymous mother of the Emperor Constantine. It also suggests that she was the daughter of Old King Cole, the Mary Old Soul of Colchester.

Mary Old Soul, not to be confused with that King Cole, the death condition. No, and let me tell you that she was neither, that King Cole's daughter. Old King Cole's daughter. So we've started with something rather beautiful, but completely bullshit.

I think some of them are going to be new to you, like say Helena, I remember reading the Evelyn Waugh novel Helena, which is his only historical novel and being thrilled to discover that the author of Brideshead Revisited was basically a bar lady from York.

I think some of them are going to be new to you, like say Helena, I remember reading the Evelyn Waugh novel Helena, which is his only historical novel and being thrilled to discover that the author of Brideshead Revisited was basically a bar lady from York.