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W.

W. Empire pod UK.com. Hello and welcome to the brand new series of empire with me Anita Arnan

and me William Darimple.

It's very exciting this very very exciting.

We've been looking forward to doing this. So look, Russia. In this particular episode, let me just give you a little menu of what's going to come up because we're going to be talking about the founding of Russia, the first ZARS, you'll hear about Mongol hordes, and we have the very best guest to talk to today.

It is a strange thing because I've always sort of in my head called him Simon as in the great Simon

Seabag Montefiore author of the world a family history of humanity it's an amazing

dazzling huge home of a book where you'll find many of the characters that we've discussed

throughout this podcast series and so many more besides. And the Robinovs, the

Robinovs. And the Robinovs and you know we'll talk about many others of his books because he's got a great

catalogue but you prefer to be called Seabag that's right isn't it? Well everyone calls

me Seabag except my parents and my brothers. Yes.

Well, I remember when we first met, I called you Simon and you sort of did a little...

Wintz?

That's...

We should confess up that Seabag and I have known each other for close on 35 years now and he was always

C-bag when I first knew him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I actually never liked the name Simon, but the Russian Simeon

would be better so you could try that or Sinka for short.

...