Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium Episode 229, John Comlinos, with

Doctor Maximilian Lau.

Today we talked to the man whose research has guided our last few podcasts, Doctor Maximilian

Lau.

Doctor Lau is adjunct professor of economic history at Hittout-Subachi University in Tokyo,

and also a research associate in history at St. Benet's Hall University of Oxford.

He's been studying 12th century Byzantine history for many years now, and the fruits of

that labour can be found in his forthcoming book, Rebuilding New Rome, the foreign policy

of John II, Comlinos.

The book is written and will be out next year, and Doctor Lau very generously shared it

with me in advance.

It's been incredibly helpful, in part because of its quality, but also because it follows

a format similar to our narrative episodes.

It is a chronological account of John's military and political activity with a discussion

of the sources as each incident unfolds.

As Doctor Lau explains in the interview, John's reign often gets short shrift in popular

Byzantine books because our Roman sources cover him fairly briefly.

But there are plenty of other sources to work with, and Doctor Lau has synthesised them

to create a new history of John's reign.

This book has similarities in style and structure to Anthony Codellis' book, Streams of Gold,

Rivers of Blood, which I also highly recommend.

But Doctor Lau's book goes one further and has a superb collection of photos from sites

...