A History of the Eastern Roman Empire

"I’m sure it did, but I think Bury really belongs in the classic tradition. I have selected that work because he wrote beautifully. Bury’s analysis of original sources is a lesson to all of us in how to read carefully and with sympathy but looking constantly for the gaps or the silences in the sources which indicate some aspect which we can’t quite understand, and which Bury was able to make sense of in a way that is important. He produced this wonderful narrative and Peter Brown certainly has the same capacity to entice the reader along through all sorts of complicated developments by writing so well and so convincingly that you don’t want to put it down. Bury was in a class of his own. One of his most talented students was Steven Runciman. I would certainly have included Runciman’s History of the Crusades if there had been room for more books because that’s a very determined style, a style that is designed to interest and excite the reader. There’s nothing boring about Runciman or Bury. We need to cling to this tradition of stylistic excitement and clarity which frequently gets pushed aside by very detailed analysis of too much of the specifics."