I could not let the first anniversary of myByzantine blog pass without some comment. What started as an attempt to discover whether there was much interest in the subject of Byzantium beyond academia, has developed into something important to me, and I hope interesting and useful for all who visit.
In this first year – and there will be more – we have had over 7,500 visits; there have been eighty-six posts; the most popular posts have been:
our travels Mosaic Hunting in Northern Italy
The controvery over the ‘cuts’ at King’s Save the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at KCL King’s College London
and books about the Crusades The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge and Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips
Some of my personal favourites were posted before the daily visitor levels reached their current high levels:
Judith Herrin’s 18th Runciman Lecture – We are all children of Byzantium
The first Mosaic Hunting article (more to come) – Mosaic Hunting – Aquileia, Grado, and Concordia
and the excellent lecture given by Dr Teresa Shawcross at the seminar series at KCL – Conquest Legitimised: The Making of a Byzantine Emperor in Crusader Constantinople 1204-1261
I have been able to indulge in my passion by travelling with my wife Kim to visit Byzantine sites, and I walked to find a personal Byzantium when I trekked the Via Egnatia with donkeys in May last year.
I have been amazed by the popularity of the theme of the Crusades which brings in a lot of visitors each day. They don’t hold a huge interest for me but maybe I will write something on them at a later date; perhaps a series of articles like those I wrote about The Fall last year. I plan to revise those articles and post them over the coming weeks as we approach 29 May.
Our heroine has been Bettany Hughes who is without doubt a very popular historian and who has been very busy of late; search the blog to find related articles, but for my money her handling of this debate shows her skill and flexibility. Listen here.
I look forward to the next year on the blog and hope that you will come back and pass me your comments to keep me on track!
Finally, for you all, a picture that few will have seen from an ancient Orthodox monastery on the western shore of Lake Ohrid in Macedonia that I took last year. I hope that you enjoy it.
Tom
From a monastery on Lake Ohrid, Macedonia
Byzantine Blog 