Tom Holland is an award-winning historian, biographer and broadcaster. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Making History and has written/presented a number of TV documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4.

His most recent book is Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind which will inform his lecture.  His many other books include Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History; Persian Fire, his history of the Graeco-Persian wars, (Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award in 2006); Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom; In the Shadow of the Sword, which covers the collapse of Roman and Persian power in the Near East, and the emergence of Islam; and Dynasty, a portrait of Rome’s first imperial dynasty.

He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC. His translation of Herodotus was published in 2013 by Penguin Classics. He has also written biographies of Æthelstan, the first King of England, and Æthelflæd, England’s Forgotten Founder.

In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to ‘the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome’.