The Rest Is History

the Iliad is like, I think, the Lord of the Rings.

The Iliad is like, I think, the Lord of the Rings. And Hesiod's Theogony is like the Silmarillion.

J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic, The Hobbit.

And unsurprisingly, because for Tolkien, the Norman Conquest was the greatest tragedy in the history of England. Yeah. And he wanted to write Lord of the Rings to give the English back the mythology that he thought they had lost as a result of the conquest.

they're only in children's literature aren't they really after the hobbit? Yeah so the hobbit is famously Tolkien starts writing it in the early 1920s when he's marking school certificate papers after he's come home from the first world war

the film that replaces it in that list is the Lord of the Rings trilogy but you have to combine them to get to that point

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, that was ripped off and wasn't it?

I went on a quest... to visit the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

presumably you read him as a boy. Yes, the Hobbit first.

author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

I read the Hobbit, and then I read the Lord of the Rings.

It became enshrined right away in my mind as the best book.

the same Arcadia that you see in The Hobbit and then later The Lord of the Rings.

when I read Lord of the Rings as a you know when I was young, all of, none of this, I missed it all. but now you read it and you completely see that it's one of the great novels, you know it's one of the great antiurban novels.

Lord of the Rings is the bestselling novel of the 20th century. I would argue that one of the key reasons for its popularity is that it gives people suspicious of Christian orthodoxy a chance to experience what Christianity has made so successful.

Lord of the Rings far more than 1984 actually is the great novel written about the horrors of the 20th century.

Lord of the Rings is not an allegory, but it mirrors concerns of the 20th century, with themes of industrialisation, mercy, and Christian grace.

At the end of the book Frodo does not destroy the ring, he claims it for his own; he is weak, human, and fallible, and Tolkien's letters speak of divine grace and mercy to Gollum.

I guess the question for me and for a lot of people is, how much was Tolkien with, say the Lord of the Rings, how much was he influenced by Wagner? Because Tolkien always denied it, didn't he? He said, oh, I have nothing to do with Wagner.

That is something that obviously would be very familiar to readers of The Lord of the Rings.

She was the person who first read Rubicon, my first book on classical history in manuscript.

You always say when you introduce me, she was really kind to me back in the day before I'd written Rubicon.

the person who first read Rubicon, my first book on classical history in manuscript.

she was really kind to me back in the day before I'd written Rubicon.

Last week we put out Rubicon because that is being rereleased in audiobook.

Rubicon, which is the very first work of history I wrote, is being rereleased in audiobook. It's being rereleased because for the first time I have actually read it in its entirety. So here on the Restishistory feed, we have the book's introduction for you to listen to. Rubicon is the story of the fall of the Roman Republic. It's the age of Julius Caesar, it's the age of Cicero, Spartacus, Cleopatra. I think it's the single most thrilling and dramatic story in the whole of history. And as I say, it's a rerelease. It's out on audiobook. It's narrated by me.

Hi, Tom Holland here with, well, it's very exciting news for me and I hope maybe it's kind of exciting news for you. So Rubicon, which is the very first work of history I wrote, is being rereleased in audiobook. It's being rereleased because for the first time I have actually read it in its entirety.

He said he very much enjoyed Rubicon.

The first, Rubicon, tells the story of Julius Caesar and his age.

I've done it twice in two books I've written, Rubicon and Dynasty.

There is Tom Holland's Rubicon. For those of you who are older than 12, 13.

He would be good for the sales of Rubicon. He would. Which I should just mention. So we've been selling your book on Cleopatra for children is out. Do you mind if I just mention my book, Rubicon, which is about this very period? The audience would love it.

Tom's book, Rubicon is absolutely the book for you. I mean, that's the book that really made you, isn't it? That's the book that established your historical career.

It does have an endorsement from Ian McEwan, it was his book of the year. I remember reading it.

There's a brilliant description of this actually in your book, Rubicon, isn't it? Mark Antony do it.

So that's the beginning of Tom's book, Rubicon. So that's the book that launched you as a historian, isn't it?

It's the first work of history that I wrote. So in a way, my career as a historian...

I've actually just been writing about it in the book ... I've done Rubicon which is about the fall of the Rome Republic ...

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels Animal Farm and 1984 giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

things like George Orwell's 1984 or the quests in J.R. Tolkien or Frank Herbert's Dune

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels Animal Farm and 1984 giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

George Orwell's 1984

George Orwell's 1984...

Things like George Orwell's 1984 or the Quests in J.R.R. Tolkien or Frank Herbert's Dune.

That of course is the opening of George Orwell's novel, 1984, published in 1949.

It is the final hurrah of Orwell's career; it's his last great work.

Lord of the Rings far more than 1984 actually is the great novel written about the horrors of the 20th century.

Film, football, beer and above all gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. So said George Orwell in his dystopian masterpiece 1984.

the really influential ones like 1984, they're about totalitarianism and political ideology.

We have 1984.

It's very, very Heart of Darkness, actually.

Heart of Darkness, which we did a podcast on a few weeks ago, you know, the narrator Marlow goes up the Congo.

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision. He cried out twice. A cry that was no more than a breath. The horror. The horror. That was Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, first published in Blackwoods Magazine in 1899.

We are not. The rest is literature. But this is a book that quite aside from its incredible literary value is also well worth doing in a history podcast for reasons that we have been touching on, Dominic, throughout the series that we've just finished about the Belgian Congo.

we'll be going back to the book that we began with, which is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad, of course, writing in Heart of Darkness, which he wrote in 1899.

Conrad, again, in Heart of Darkness, 1899, and his narrator Marlow has arrived in the Congo and is witnessing workers who are building the railway that will expedite European access to the highlands.

Marlowe, the hero and the narrator of Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, which was first published in Blackwood's magazine in 1899. It famously provided the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, about the European colonial experience in Africa, probably the greatest, the most influential, possibly the most controversial book about that ever written, about the moral dangers of colonialism.

And also about the sense of the darkness that lurks in the heart of the human soul. Because the darkness in that title, Heart of Darkness, has many different levels. It's one of the most influential books of the modern age.

We'll get on to Heart of Darkness next week because it's one of the most influential books of the modern age, anticipating much of 20thcentury culture and wrestling with man's capacity for evil.

So that's from Heart of Darkness. It's Joseph Conrad's hero Marlow driving a steamboat up the river Congo.

Heart of darkness.

that what Joseph Conrad talks about later in Heart of Darkness.

What Joseph Conrad talks about later on in Heart of Darkness.

Apocalypse Now is based literally on Heart of Darkness. I mean, it's based on Conrad's story of Belgian imperialism in the Congo.

That quotation from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad in which Marlowe the narrator imagines the feelings of a Roman, a young Roman, posted to Britannia. What a godawful posting that is and he ends up in London of all places.

the great story of that uh is um Conrad's Heart of Darkness which then gets translated into apocalypse now the idea that that the colonizer can enter a heart of darkness where all moral norms get dissolved um and that's a kind of very I mean that that's a a nightmare that is clearly bred of direct experience for functioning of empire.

Dominic's book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!

your new book for children, The Fall of the Aztecs is out.

your book, The Fall of the Aztecs, is out now available in Goodbook Shops.

Dominic's book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!

And your children's book, which has inspired us to do these episodes, is called The Fall of the Aztecs.

it's the latest volume of the Adventures in Time series, The Fall of the Aztecs, available now.

Thrilling stuff there, Dominic, from your new book, The Fall of the Aztecs, one of your Adventures in Time series.

In my children's book, The Fall of the Aztecs, there was a long section discussing this.

So Dominic in your new book, Fall of the Aztecs, part of your Adventures in Time series for children, you were pitching in giving us your take on Melinche's role ...

Yes. So this is the latest Adventures in Time available from all good bookshops.

That is from The Fall of the Aztecs by top historian of Mesoamerica, Dominic Sandbrook.

So that was Dan Brown. That was Tom Holland so rude in Dominion, which is your magisterial book about the history of Christianity and how it has shaped the Western world, indeed the entire world, Tom.

So this is the moment Tom from Dan Brown or Tom Holland's book, Dominion, your own book when Luther, a man whose writings have been condemned as heretical comes face to face with a prince of the church and inquisitor, a cardinal who has the power over him.

when I was writing Dominion about Christianity and its moral influence, I couldn't actually find many.

they feature in your book Dominion as the sort of antagonists, I suppose, to the tradition of Christianity and of compassion and the celebration of victimhood.

So this is one of the key reasons why I ended up writing Dominion, was the difficulty of getting to grips with what Deimos actually meant to the Athenians.

Well, the great exponent of it, who you've written about in your book Dominion, I think, Bartolomeo Las Casas, the great priest who condemned the mistreatment of the Indians.

I was about to say, that oak is your book Dominion, Tom.

And I know Tom thanks to you and your book Dominion we have an awful lot of vickers who listen to this podcast.

It is my own recently published book Dominion... Tom's book Dominion is all about Christianity's impact on human history.

your excellent book Dominion about the Christian tradition there you are I've done the plug for you.

I've just written a book, Dominion, which goes from 480 BC right the way up to the present day, a history of Christianity called Dominion, available in all good bookshops, folks.

That was Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most famous passages of historical prose overwritten. He is describing the legacy of the Battle of Tor, which was fought on the 10th of October 732, or perhaps 733, nobody is entirely sure, between the Franks and what he called an invading force of Saracens.

I mean, Gibbon's decline and fall of the Roman Empire, a great example of this.

So it's famously summed up by Edward Gibbon in the decline and fall of the Roman empire.

Edward Gibbon, you know, great author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, who loved all this stuff.

It was Edward Gibbon in 1776 who originally cast the second century AD as the most golden of golden ages. Famously, in the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he defined the reigns of Hadrian and of his immediate predecessors and successors as the period ... during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous.

This is a myth that emerges basically in the writings of Edward Gibbon, the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He writes that the valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed and that the shelves were left empty.

On the evening of 27 June 1787, the historian Edward Gibbon wrote the final sentences of his great book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

But Tom Holland, it took Gibbon 20 years to write that book. It's a massive, massive book.

as Gibbon suggested in that passage that you read, there is the salient fact that of course, what we're talking about is the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

If a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation pick the period from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.

Gibbons, a history of the decline of all the Roman Empire. On audiobook, he describes countless peoples as savages.

Gibbon writing about all that in The Decline and Fall.

And that is the acclaimed novelist, renowned novelist, Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code.

people who haven't read The Da Vinci Code or seen it or read The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which is the book purporting to be history on which The Da Vinci Code was based.

That book is The Da Vinci Code by the renowned author Dan Brown.

the one that is best exemplified by Holy Blood and Holy Grail, and then by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code.

Those are the final lines of The Da Vinci Code, one of the great texts of 2003, of the 21st century, perhaps even of all time, said nobody ever.

the final lines of The Da Vinci Code, one of the great texts of 2003, of the 21st century, perhaps even of all time, said nobody ever.

I am going to return to my reading of Dan Brown's wonderful novel, The Da Vinci Code.

We discussed the book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

If you haven't listened to our previous podcast on The Da Vinci Code, that will just be meaningless babble.

We discussed the book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

Dan Brown starts that book with the words renowned curator. So he starts with an occupation and the person's level within his profession, which I think I admire.

I read it in three hours and ignored all Sadie's unfortunate demands that I go out and dig the potatoes or whatever. I found it completely page turning.

He explains that Jesus Christ got together with Mary Magdalene. So she's at his right hand in The Last Supper, being painted there deliberately because they were a couple and they got married and had children.

He was asked in interviews which parts of the history are actually true. And he said, and I quote, absolutely all of it. He said 99% is true.

Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code in 2003 and it sold 81 million copies. The only book that outsold it was the latest Harry Potter book.

And among these, so among one of the sons of the seven is one of the most famous of the Greek warriors who ends up fighting on the plain of Troy. And this is Diomedes, who appears in The Iliad and is the great friend of Odysseus.

And that's how we get Homer's poems. I mean, they're the most famous of all of these poems, aren't they? The Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Iliad is like, I think, the Lord of the Rings.

And among these, so among one of the sons of the seven is one of the most famous of the Greek warriors who ends up fighting on the plain of Troy. And this is Diomedes, who appears in The Iliad and is the great friend of Odysseus.

And that's how we get Homer's poems. I mean, they're the most famous of all of these poems, aren't they? The Iliad and the Odyssey.

So if you go to Homer's epic, The Iliad, obviously most of the action or indeed almost all of the action revolved around the men, Achilles, Hector, Patroclus, Odysseus and so on and so forth.

We know he loved The Iliad.

It's the way that people are described in The Iliad, for instance, seeing Achilles.

So that was Odysseus talking to Athena. Now that's actually not from the Odyssey, it's from The Iliad as translated by Robert Fagels.

She had disguised herself as a vulture, and there are descriptions of her kind of shivering with delight at the spectacle of blood being spilled.

Heart of Darkness, I would argue, is by far the preeminent cultural representation of Western imperialism, particularly in Africa. More than King Solomon's Mines.

King Solomon's Mines is the journey into the heart of Africa that is swashbuckling, that is ultimately an optimistic story, that is jolly, that never questions, I think, ultimately, the right of the adventurers to be there.

With Sir Ryder Haggard thing that we talked about in Solomon's Mines.

We did a podcast, didn't we, about King Solomon's Mines, about the H Rider Haggard, kind of great classic of Victorian imperial fiction.

We did that podcast about King Solomon's Mines published what 20 years earlier, obsession with manliness, with brotherhood, with kind of people in tight trousers riding up and down promising civil wars.

So that Dominic is a thrilling moment from King Solomon's Mines, which was published in 1885, written by Henry Rider Haggard.

Basically, even if you've never read it, you will be familiar with it because it was one of the bestselling novels of the Victorian age.

King Solomon's Mines is not just an enormously influential kind of text of empire, of the British empire and of Britain's involvement in Africa, but I would argue it's a foundational text of modern popular culture actually.

And when you read King Solomon's Mines now, almost every chapter seems stock full of stereotypes and cliches.

The heroes live to fight another day, and they emerge triumphant at the end of the story.

So that, Dominic, is a thrilling moment from King Solomon's Minds, which was published in 1885, written by Henry Rider Haggard.

King Solomon's Minds was not just an enormously influential text of empire, of the British Empire and of Britain's involvement in Africa. But I would argue it's a foundational text of modern popular culture, actually.

He wrote a sequel called Alan Quartermain and another book, which you'll come to a little bit later called She, which is another absolutely foundational text in our kind of popular imagination.

He also read the stories of Rider Haggard, the Imperial Adventure stories, which are always quests. So King Solomon's Mines or Shee, which both were written in the 1880s, about people going to Africa and discovering lost cities and mysterious queens.

King Solomon's Mines or She, which both were written in the 1880s, about people going to Africa and discovering lost cities and mysterious queens.

So that was Homer in The Odyssey. Translation is by Daniel Mendelsohn, who was in one of our recent Restless History bonus episodes, so our club members will know all about him.

And that's how we get Homer's poems. I mean, they're the most famous of all of these poems, aren't they? The Iliad and The Odyssey.

So that was Homer in The Odyssey. Translation is by Daniel Mendelsohn, who was in one of our recent Restless History bonus episodes, so our club members will know all about him.

And that's how we get Homer's poems. I mean, they're the most famous of all of these poems, aren't they? The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The Odyssey, the sequel to the Iliad, describes the wanderings of Odysseus for another 10 years.

I think you know the Coen brothers... where art thou? - is based on The Odyssey.

And this is the first of the 24 books that constitute Homer's great epic, The Odyssey.

The Odyssey offers one, ... a vision of an ideal society.

the appeal of The Odyssey, Tom, what do you think it boils down to? Because it's obviously the product of a very specific time and place. And yet it's proved so enduring and so influential on Western literary culture more generally.

you've written books on the Parthenon, the general reader, Pompeii, the Caesars

in your introduction to the Twelve Caesars, which I was talking about in the last episode

a new translation by an unknown author of Suetonius' Twelve Caesars is about to hit the bookshelves.

He's like a character from Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars.

That's from Suetonius, the Twelve Caesars. It's your own translation, which is why you wanted me because you sort of felt, I think, didn't you, that there hadn't been enough of you in this podcast?

again reported by Suetonius, someone from Thessaly kind of region in Northern Greece comes to Octavian and says that I have seen Caesar. Yeah. And Caesar predicts that you will win.

That's from Suetonius, the Twelve Caesars. It's your own translation, which is why you wanted me because you sort of felt, I think, that there hadn't been enough of you in this podcast.

It's again reported by Suetonius, someone from Thessaly kind of region in Northern Greece comes to Octavian and says that I have seen Caesar.

I mean, it does make me think about Suetonius and the Twelve Caesars.

And so that's what makes me think we've referred a lot to Christopher Clarke's brilliant, groundbreaking book on this process, The Sleepwalkers.

great bestseller The Sleepwalkers.

...in his book, The Sleepwalkers, great historian, Christopher Clarke, Regis professor at Cambridge. He says, in a way you could argue it's a kind of appeasement that Russia is a big threat to our empire in Asia.

Christopher Clarke talks about this in The Sleepwalkers. He says there's a steady stream of memos... arguing about the threat posed by Berlin.

Having reread Christopher Clarke's great book, The Sleepwalkers, in preparation for this and having read all your notes, I'm now doubtful.

As Chris Clark says in The Sleepwalkers, they never ever really talk about what will happen if the Russians attack them.

Chris Clark has this wonderful line. It says, the Austrians resembled hedgehogs scurrying across a highway with their eyes averted from the onrushing traffic.

He's described by Christopher Clarke in The Sleepwalkers as in a state of high agitation and perspiring heavily.

Christopher Clarke in his brilliant book Sleepwalkers says how people dream of Franz Josef. He haunts their sleep.

Chris Clark says in his book The Sleepwalkers, between 1906 and 1914 Conrad repeatedly counseled preventive wars against Serbia, Montenegro, Russia and even Italy.

And Chris Clark starts his book The Sleepwalkers, which we will be talking about a lot in the next few episodes.

Christopher Clarke, in the introduction to Sleepwalkers, actually makes this point. He says that, you know, looking back to the prewar world, guys in feathers and archdukes and things. But actually, this is a world that will be very familiar to people who've lived through 911 or the London tube bombings.

Virgil, when he adapts Homer to tell this great epic drawing on stories of the Trojan War and the Odyssey, that explains the beginning, the origins of Rome, The Aeneid is a work of mythology.

And The Aeneid, it's an epic that tells the story of the founding of Rome, how Rome comes to be founded by a band of exiles from Troy.

Since Virgil wrote it, there probably hasn't been a day when people haven't been reading it. It is absolutely the foundational text of European literature.

It's written by Virgil and it is written in where it's the reign is Augustus emperor.

The Aeneid is a great poem. It's a powerful poem, it's a moving poem, it's a complex poem because Virgil is not just writing Augustan propaganda.

It has been a celebration of Augustus and his regime and Rome's destiny and I guess Roman imperialism, you could say.

the most famous example of this would be in The Aeneid, the great epic of Roman beginnings that Virgil writes.

there wasn't a day when someone hadn't read The Aeneid.

they weren't thinking about the literary merit of The Aeneid.

So that was the greatest of all Roman poets, Virgil. ... In that poem, The Aeneid, which is translated there by Robert Fagles, Virgil is taking us back, isn't he, to the legendary beginnings of Carthage.

There are elements of it in Virgil's poem, The Aeneid.

things like George Orwell's 1984 or the quests in J.R. Tolkien or Frank Herbert's Dune

Frank Herbert's Dune

Frank Herbert's Dune...

Things like George Orwell's 1984 or the Quests in J.R.R. Tolkien or Frank Herbert's Dune.

And Dune was written in the 60s by Geico Frank Herbert.

It's full of giant kind of sandworms and things. But what Arrakis produces is a kind of weird thing called spice that effectively powers space travel. It's also called melange.

people will be familiar with the book by d brown that was published at the beginning of the 70s called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and that was the book that really transformed i think it's now regarded as a bit outdated isn't it tom i think it's regarded though as a classic as a highly significant book in terms of how this kind of clash is understood totally it was transformative

we think of Wounded Knee and we think of Dee Brown's book, which was published in 1970.

I was very into Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I was very into Sacred Spirit, all that kind of thing.

Well, I think it also reflects the fact that no matter the, you know, Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and all the attempts to see how the West was won as being how the West was lost.

why that book had such an impact um to the degree that I think it'd be very difficult ever again to portray ... Barry my heart at wounded knee

I've done it twice in two books I've written, Rubicon and Dynasty.

I've done it twice in two books I've written, Rubicon and Dynasty.

Well, I remember I was writing Rubicon during this period of Chirac's presidency where lawyers were kind of sniffing around his record. And there were all kinds of talks of bringing him to trial for corruption.

There's a brilliant description of this actually in your book, Rubicon, isn't it?

your own book Rubicon which has the most fantastic descriptions of roman villas

His book is called The Histories. But your book, as you have told our Restless History Club members already...

Me. So this is the Penguin Classics. The most egotistical podcast ever recorded this episode.

You can read it in my Penguin Classics translation of Herodotus.

Tom's translation of Herodotus, an acclaimed translation, it pains me to say, hugely acclaimed, Tom.

I love Herodotus, Tom? Much cherished. I've translated him and everything. And Herodotus tells the story of the Persian invasions of Greece

I first read Herodotus and Herodotus has been the kind of classic that's accompanied me through my life most of all but I would say that this story also has accompanied me through my life I mean it was the one of you know it was the first great story from history that I became obsessed by.

The historian Herodotus tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae when the Spartans made their heroic stand against the Persian king Xerxes.

Now another person who fights only for glory is my collaborator Tom Holland. The translator of Herodotus's histories, no less.

And Tom, this is from the ancient historian Herodotus, isn't it? Translated by me. And I thought you rendered it beautifully, especially the hint of the eunuch in The Servant.

And Herodotus writes a very famous passage about how and why the Athenians had gone from being losers to complete winners.

And then there's the great historian of the Amazon, John Hemming, who wrote a brilliant book about the fall of the Incas.

John Hemming in his brilliant book, The conquest of the Incas, said, you know, how do you know how many people died?

And actually, it's going to get madder. Because Atahualpa sits down to dinner with Pizarro, surrounded by Spanish guards and servants. As John Hemmings says in his brilliant book, what a weird scene.

In his brilliant book, The conquest of the Incas, John Hemming makes the excellent point that basically, in most places, the Europeans conquered. Europeans had arrived multiple times before they actually turned up for good.

John Hemming says Chalkuchima is the one man who might have united the empire against the Spaniards because he's the one man who's not entirely defined by the Civil War because he had served Atahualpa's father.

And as John Hemming says in his book, the key to the story is the hysteria and the paranoia that has now seized the Spaniards.

John Hemming, brilliant book on The conquest of the Incas. Really, I can't recommend it too highly.

as John Hemmings says in his brilliant book, this is the last great tribute to the Inca's genius for organization.

John Hemming says the Spanish always have this technological advantage.

So begins the climactic chapter of Adventures in Time, Nelson, Hero of the Seas, which Dominic, I'm sure you'd agree, must surely rank as the definitive life of this extraordinary man, written, of course, by yourself.

Yes, Adventures in Time by Dominic Sandbrook.

So begins the climactic chapter of Adventures in Time, Nelson, Hero of the Seas, which Dominic, I'm sure you'd agree, must surely rank as the definitive life of this extraordinary man, written, of course, by yourself.

Adventures in Time by Dominic Sandbrook.

Dominic, namely yourself, and this is from your new book for children, instilling in them a due sense of patriotism and suspicion of French revolutionary fervour. The latest volume, Tom, in the bestselling Adventures in Time series.

when I was writing this in the Adventures in Time book, I thought to myself, this is so much the trajectory of so many great children's stories.

I had a scene with her in the library ... I'm writing my own Adventures in Time book about Cleopatra, putting her in the library for child readers.