Stilicho - the book

[sonic]

Hi Ian,

Looking forward to both.
What do you think of that review at amazon.co.uk?

It's difficult when reading reviews of your own work. I can kind of understand his complaint that the references are end-notes, which can be tedious to find, rather than footnotes, which are instantly-available, but that is the policy of Pen and Sword. I must admit too that in most respects I would have preferred footnotes at the bottom of the page, but I can understand why the publishers wanted end-notes: in some cases more than half of a page can be taken by footnotes rather than text.

I feel that I did my best to highlight where statements are hypothesis in the text, however that is one of the greatest difficulties when writing: something that is clear and precise to the writer - who is intimate with the subject - can still appear vague to the reader.

However, overall I am happy. Writing about individuals such as Stilicho where the evidence is so poor means that much of the information that remains is open to a wide variety of interpretations. The fact that the reviewer states that the book is a 'valuable reanalysis' and is 'more enjoyable and more scholarly' than 'Belisarius', which most people seem to have liked, gives me hope for the future.

The only worrying part is where the reviewer is looking forward to 'Aetius', which he clearly expects to be either as good as or better than 'Stilicho'. Oh dear: no pressure then ....