It's been said before, but one of the cool things about Oxford is that your tutors are actually leading academics who publish their work. So it was that I opened the Sunday Times culture section yesterday, to read a review of Bryan Ward-Perkins's The Fall of Rome. I'm pretty sure this was a book that I saw in bits and pieces over the floor during Michaelmas, when he took me for tutes about Merovingian Gaul. I might even have stepped on a page. Alas, Rupert Murdoch seems incapable of creating a decent website for either the Times or the Sunday Times (take a look at the Guardian, fella), so although the review is on there, you have to search for it and it's only available for free for a week. Anyway, it is a good review, and accompanying it is a review of Peter Heather's book on the fall of the Roman Empire. I've never had Heather, but a friend who did in the first year assures me that the thesis relies on the fact that the barbarians went left rather than right, or something. One day I shall read it and find out. Nevertheless, it didn't stop me from looking at the review and thinking "cool".