Best books… Peter Frankopan

The writer and historian picks his six favourite books. His latest, The New Silk Roads (Bloomsbury £8.99) – the follow-up to 2015’s prizewinning

The Silk Roads (Bloomsbury £11.89) – is out now in paperback.

The Alexiad by Anna Komnene (Penguin £16.99). A history written by a Byzantine princess in Constantinople in the 12th century. Sparkling, witty and a delight from start to finish. I spent days, weeks and years studying this text – and found something new each time I read it.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, 1862 (OUP £7.99). Turgenev is one of my favourite novelists, and Bazarov one of my favourite characters. I read this when I was 15 and it made a big impression on me. It opened a new world of activism, nihilism and, above all, a lifelong love of Russia and Russian literature.

The Fall of Rome and the

End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins, 2006 (OUP £12.99). A gem of a book that I also return to time and again. Most scholars don’t think too much about what happened in Western Europe in the centuries that followed the fall of Rome – but this account is brilliant, informative and witty. History writing and first-class scholarship at their best.

Commodity and Exchange

in the Mongol Empire by Thomas T. Allsen, 1997 (CUP £29.99). This did more than perhaps any other book to change my ideas about the past. Far from being the violent hordes of popular imagination, the Mongols were in fact highly sophisticated and impressive empire-builders. Allsen, who died recently, was a genius.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, 2017 (Bloomsbury £8.99). Shamsie is a breathtakingly good author. I love her work. Home Fire is a cracker of a novel, reworking the story of Antigone in a contemporary context.

Wisden Cricketers’

Almanack edited by Lawrence Booth (Wisden £55). I’ve always loved playing and reading about cricket. If I had time, I’d spend days reading Wisden each year. I’m determined to make an appearance in it one day.