Thoroughly enjoyable counterblast to the Peter Brown school of studies of late antiquity: Ward-Perkins argues forcefully that, in the Western Roman Empire, civilization, at least as represented by decent pottery, good food and tiled roofs that kept out the rain, really did end. As such, it provides a welcome corrective to the Brown school of civilizational continuity and transition. In the end, it seems clear that both views are correct: late antiquity was a time of both continuity and collapse, in part dependent on where in the Empire you lived, but this reminds us that, for the people living through this, things really had changed.

Speaking as a reader of history, I must also note how fortunate we are to have this dispute argued out between two such wonderfully fluent historians. Reading Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Brown is one of the great literary pleasures available today: long may they dispute!