All Booked Up

I MENTIONED in an earlier post (http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2021/01/lockdown-irony.html) how a highly favourable review in Ancient Warfare magazine persuaded me to order Ian Hughes' biography of Attila from Pen & Sword.

It arrived on the same day as I went to a local Post Office to collect three books bought from Amazon.

These are Procopius's History Of The Wars, which covers the Roman Empire (aka the Byzantine Empire) under Justinian I taking on Persians, Vandals and Ostrogoths.

I have tried many times to buy the books in a bookshop, especially Foyles in Charing Cross Road.

But the only Procopius volume I have seen there is his Anecdota, published under the title Secret History, which has very little military content.

True, Foyles stocks the Loeb editions of classical works, where the English translation is printed alongside the original Greek (or Latin).

But Loeb books are expensive and somewhat irrelevant if, like me, you have no knowledge of ancient Greek and your final Latin exam score of 11% included 8% for drawing a Roman underground heating system.

Anyway, I am pleased to have made these four purchases and I look forward to reading them, perhaps in a Greek or Italian taverna, when the government restores our liberties.

Books to enjoy