Hello and welcome to Empire with me and Eta Arnen.

And me, William Durampoul.

Now this is the very first of a brand new series and we thought we'd take a look at the

Ottomans but then we thought actually let's not get ahead of ourselves because to understand

the Ottomans you have to start looking at the world that they took over and the world

that they transformed and that you can only do by looking at the great empire of Byzantium

whose capital Constantinople they took as their own.

It's a subject I think of huge fascination and the full story I think of both empires

are really very little known outside a fairly small world of specialists but the Byzantines

are an incredible story in themselves and we're going to start with them because they

were repositories of all that had been salvaged from the fall of classical civilization.

The new Rome of Constantin defended by the greatest city walls ever built the Thedos in Land

Walls kept the city safe for a thousand years of attack against Persians, Arabs, Avars,

Vikings and many others preserving the languages and the libraries of the Western classical

world after the fall of Rome and we're lucky to have with us today to talk about it one

of the great historians of our time and also a good friend of both Anita and I, the great

Peter Frankapan.

Yay!

Now listen Peter Frankapan you are better known as the author of the extraordinary successful

Silk Road.

Million Sellings.

Yeah.

...