Autor/-in: Michael de La Cour

Michael De La Cour first encountered the Ostrogothic collapse of Roman Italy while researching a family history that traced, however tenuously, back to Norman settlers in County Clare, and found himself unable to look away from the sixth century's forgotten drama. Now based on the west coast of Ireland, he has spent years reading Procopius against the grain and following the numismatic trail that modern scholars have used to recover Baduila's own name from beneath centuries of Byzantine propaganda. His writing favours the underdog kings and collapsing empires that mainstream popular history tends to pass over, and he brings the same patient, source-driven curiosity to each new subject. This is his latest work of narrative nonfiction exploring the twilight of the ancient Mediterranean world.