I remember once having an argument with my grandfather about history.
‘History’ he said, ‘is nothing but trouble, we shouldn't remember it because it makes us all enemies’.
‘You’re wrong’, I said, ’History is great and interesting and stuff’.
At which I punched him in the face and we never spoke again. Which is ironic because according to my Grandfather’s philosophy he should have put that little incident behind him.
Like all great lovers of history I am drawn to the most interesting and bloody parts first and the boring stuff second. Although it is normally the boring stuff that sets the precedent for the interesting and bloody stuff to happen.
In this interest I have recently started writing an original history of my own, concentrating on the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Please take a look and enjoy.
'Barbarians and Gentlemen'
‘The fall of the Western Roman Empire came about through its interactions with the four main barbarian tribes of the time; the huns, the vandals, the goths and the hooligans. Encroached upon from all points of the compass (if compasses were invented back then), the Huns to the east, the goths to the north, the hooligans to the west and the vandals probably from the last direction, the south. The Huns and the vandals we shall set time aside to examine in greater detail later, but we must first set the stage for the goths and the hooligans.
Imagine the year is 432 and Rome is crumbling. Justinian (or maybe Constantine) has fucked off and left the west to its own devices. The hooligans, a tribe of vaguely Germanic peoples emerge on the European continental mainland from the British isles, ready for conquest. Formed from a loose confederation of sports-dress loving hovel dwellers, these fearsome pot-bellied warriors arrived emblazoned with the fetishes of their gods and local holy men and ready for war (or certainly a good drubbing). Over the decades that followed, names such as Fred Perry, Peter Storm and Adidas would strike fear into Roman citizens as they had their heads and testicles ritually pounded by these gangs of lager-crazed ‘sons of Mars’. But just as they began, their time was over, a newer more invasive tribe arrived, the goths. Driven by their love of death and all things ghoulish, these black-clad, cider-guzzling mopers cut a gloomy swathe through the classrooms and parties of the cooler continental kids’ dominion. Constantly bringing everybody down with their going-on about how they’d like to have met Saint Ian of Curtis or how nobody would miss them if they were dead, their dreary, electro dirges and ritualised side-to-side dancing to (un)popular bardic groups such as the Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus poisoned Western Europe and generally made everybody feel a bit uncomfortable. The stage was now set for the final collapse of…’
If you want to read any more of my ground breaking work on this tumultuous period of European history, just wait a few years before I get around to doing anything more, you’ll be able to read it then.
Thanks for your time and see you soon!
‘History’ he said, ‘is nothing but trouble, we shouldn't remember it because it makes us all enemies’.
‘You’re wrong’, I said, ’History is great and interesting and stuff’.
At which I punched him in the face and we never spoke again. Which is ironic because according to my Grandfather’s philosophy he should have put that little incident behind him.
Like all great lovers of history I am drawn to the most interesting and bloody parts first and the boring stuff second. Although it is normally the boring stuff that sets the precedent for the interesting and bloody stuff to happen.
In this interest I have recently started writing an original history of my own, concentrating on the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Please take a look and enjoy.
'Barbarians and Gentlemen'
‘The fall of the Western Roman Empire came about through its interactions with the four main barbarian tribes of the time; the huns, the vandals, the goths and the hooligans. Encroached upon from all points of the compass (if compasses were invented back then), the Huns to the east, the goths to the north, the hooligans to the west and the vandals probably from the last direction, the south. The Huns and the vandals we shall set time aside to examine in greater detail later, but we must first set the stage for the goths and the hooligans.
Imagine the year is 432 and Rome is crumbling. Justinian (or maybe Constantine) has fucked off and left the west to its own devices. The hooligans, a tribe of vaguely Germanic peoples emerge on the European continental mainland from the British isles, ready for conquest. Formed from a loose confederation of sports-dress loving hovel dwellers, these fearsome pot-bellied warriors arrived emblazoned with the fetishes of their gods and local holy men and ready for war (or certainly a good drubbing). Over the decades that followed, names such as Fred Perry, Peter Storm and Adidas would strike fear into Roman citizens as they had their heads and testicles ritually pounded by these gangs of lager-crazed ‘sons of Mars’. But just as they began, their time was over, a newer more invasive tribe arrived, the goths. Driven by their love of death and all things ghoulish, these black-clad, cider-guzzling mopers cut a gloomy swathe through the classrooms and parties of the cooler continental kids’ dominion. Constantly bringing everybody down with their going-on about how they’d like to have met Saint Ian of Curtis or how nobody would miss them if they were dead, their dreary, electro dirges and ritualised side-to-side dancing to (un)popular bardic groups such as the Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus poisoned Western Europe and generally made everybody feel a bit uncomfortable. The stage was now set for the final collapse of…’
If you want to read any more of my ground breaking work on this tumultuous period of European history, just wait a few years before I get around to doing anything more, you’ll be able to read it then.
Thanks for your time and see you soon!