Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music

when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

This is the BBC.

Thank you. BC. Hello. With Europe, with Europe such an acutely topical subject today, it's easy to forget that

it's an idea with a long history. In the 5th century

BC, for example, when the Greeks were losing ground to the Persian Empire, Greek writers developed an idea of

Europe as a way of fighting back. For them, Europe was civilization and freedom and home.

Anything beyond Europe's geographical boundaries was where you found the enemy.

Those people, they claimed, lacked recorded history and laws.

They gibbered or at best made a sort of barba noise when they spoke.

Europe was everything that those barbarians were not.

The waters of the Aegean today are full of non-Europeans.

So maybe that's why, following the ancient Greeks,

we're talking again about a Europe that's rather

more than a geographical unity. I'm going to be exploring this contested territory with the novelist

Lawrence Norfolk, whose books include Lampreya's Dictionary, in the shape of a bore, and John

Sattonel's Feast. The actor, Peter Mar Marinka will be reading extracts from the authors chosen by Lawrence

to illustrate what Europe conjures up for him, for us, and for some of our continental

neighbours.

Lawrence, you began your career by creating these meticulously researched historical worlds

...