This is the book for which the word ‘magisterial’ was coined. Except… Except magisterial, to my ear at least, now carries some undertones of something worthy and a little dull, and Peter Brown is never, ever dull. Never, not through 700 odd pages. And this is a view, with all the clarity of a pin-hole camera, of a an odd age indeed: when Roman antiquity was struggling into the middle ages, the Empire kicking and struggling and, above all, money gathering against the dawning of the light. The subtitle gives the subject: wealth, the fall of Rome and the making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, but gives no hint of the wealth and wit of the insights within. You want strange new worlds: read this book. What’s particularly interesting – and an unspoken rejoinder to Gibbon’s thesis – is how even an officially Christian Empire remained, at its tax gathering, money raising heart, determinedly, stubbornly pagan. This is history at its best. Even if the subject doesn’t grab you, read it, for Peter Brown’s ability to bring the past and its people and cultures to life is without peer.