By Jennifer Rodrigo
“The past struck my childish self as being more exciting, more wondrous and more beautiful than the present,” muses Tom Holland author of Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Persian Fire, his history of the Graeco-Persian wars, won the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award in 2006.
Tom is also the author of Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom, and In the Shadow of the Sword. His most recent book is Dynasty, about the first Caesars. He has translated Herodotus for Penguin Classis and written and presented a number of TV documentaries, on subjects ranging from religion to dinosaurs. He has been described by "The Times", Britain's national paper of record as "a leading English Cricketer."
What 3 words would you use to describe yourself?
A terrible cricketer
When and how did your interest in history come about?
I was the kind of boy who was obsessed by dinosaurs. I’d go up the lane behind my house, look at the cows, and wish that they were sauropods. The past struck my childish self as being more exciting, more wondrous and more beautiful than the present. In a sense, I have never outgrown that feeling. It is perhaps why I am particularly drawn to more distant periods history: the colour, the cruelty and the glamour of those terrifying ancient empires have never ceased to thrill me.
What’s the most fascinating thing about learning of our past?
The light it sheds on the present: the way in which sometimes it makes people who lived an unfathomably remote distance of time from us seem eerily familiar, and on other occasions unsettlingly different.
The most challenging thing about being a writer?
The occasional attacks of self-doubt.
Tell me about ‘Dynasty’. How did the book come about?
As the title suggests, the book tells the story of Rome’s first dynasty of emperors, from its establishment by Augustus Caesar in the last decades of the 1st century BC to its final, florid extinction less than a century later. The line of autocrats known to historians as the ‘Julio-Claudians’ remains to this day a byword for depravity. The brilliance of its allure and the blood-steeped shadows cast by its crimes still haunt the public imagination. When people think of imperial Rome, it is the city of Tiberius and Caligula, of Claudius and Nero, that is most likely to come into their minds. I wanted to write the book because, as a story, it has everything.
3 things no one knows about you?
My favourite ever headline came from a Sri Lankan newspaper: a report that the happiest parents are those with two daughters. (I have two daughters.)
The last time I was in Sri Lanka I accidentally shot tea through my nostrils while laughing.
I have no other secrets.
Expectations for GLF 2016?
Oh, sky high! What more beautiful a setting for a literary festival could there possibly be?
Expectations for Sri Lanka?
I will be playing cricket for the authors XI in a number of matches in Colombo and Galle. The last time we came to play in Sri Lanka, I don’t think I took a single wicket. This time I am even older and more decrepit. So to sum up: my expectations for Sri Lanka are that I will leave it feeling very tired.
Future plans?
To continue writing books that will earn me further invitations to Galle.
Tom Holland is one of the many writers who’ll be attending the Fairway Galle Literary Festival 2016 in January.
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