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Having been bombarded for weeks with videos of people asking random men how often they think of the Roman Empire on social media, I have finally found the perfect person to explain this rather odd phenomenon.
In the past few years Tom Holland, historian, author and more recently beloved podcaster, has made history sexy again, with his smash-hit podcast, books and live shows. So how often does he think about the Roman Empire?
Historian Tom Holland is the perfect person to explain a modern conundrum.Credit: Grannie Quinlan
“Well all the bloody time, really,” he says. “I’ve obviously been thinking about this a lot, and it’s the sense that Rome is powerful, that it’s terrifying, that it’s exotic, but also that it is safely extinct. And I think that’s the key thing.
“Boys, little boys, in particular are famously obsessed by dinosaurs. And I think it’s a kind of similar thing. But the glamour, the terror, the ferocity of a Tyrannosaur is kind of thrilling but safely thrilling because you’re never going to run into one. And Ancient Rome is kind of the same thing, but for adults.”
Holland points out when Julius Caesar, the most famous Roman of them all, invaded Gaul he was reported to have slaughtered a million and enslaved another million.
“I mean those are near genocidal figures, but at 2000 years away it … provides sanction, scope for people to ponder things that are kind of thrilling, but at a safe distance would be my guess.”
Holland’s The Rest Is History podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow historian Dominic Sandbrook, is somewhat of a phenomenon.
Tom Holland, left, and Dominic Sandbrook, hosts of The Rest is History podcast.
It’s a witty, twice-weekly, hour-long broadcast that ranges across pretty much all of human history, from Captain Cook to the Loch Ness Monster via Tolkien and Tutankhamun. The show is downloaded more than 6 million times a month, with more than half of its listeners hailing from outside Britain. But Holland’s favourite statistic is that half of his audience is under 35.
It also has a whopping 20,000 paying subscribers, who get extra content for around $12 a month. It’s been reported the pair are clearing at least £70,000 ($133,000) a month each for their venture, which is part of the ever-increasing podcast stable run by former England soccer star and broadcaster Gary Lineker.
Their fans range from Canadian pop star Grimes to former prime minister Julia Gillard, who Holland recently took on a guided tour of Roman London. The co-hosts have crisscrossed the globe for the past 12 months, packing theatres with sell-out shows, and it’s a trip to Australia this month that’s given me a reason to ask him to lunch.
Julia Gillard is a friend of the show.Credit: Twitter
“Of course the irony is that I’d never really listened to podcasts before I started doing it,” he says. “And I still don’t really listen to podcasts very much.”
However, he also added that podcasting has the widest reach of any medium illustrating historical events, and that he is “completely ecstatic that it’s worked out”.
Holland’s suggestion was to meet at Andrew Edmunds, a famously intimate restaurant in an 18th-century townhouse in Lexington Street, Soho. It appears frequently in lists of Britain’s best places for romantic dinning and Holland it incredibly excited to be back here after a fortnight on the road for his new book, Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age.
Holland’s latest book.
He was initially nervous that it was too cliched, but I reassure him I am totally ignorant of the history of the place. He tells me with great enthusiasm that it is also regarded as one of the last hangouts of Bohemian “old Soho”, and has long been a favourite haunt of journalists and establishment figures. Upstairs the late writer Auberon Waugh reconstituted his Academy Club, a club for raffish writers, journalists, and other reprobates, where the only prohibition was against “bores”.
“After the first lockdown from COVID my wife and I came here, and it was near empty,” Holland says. “But it just has so many great memories for me. It was a hellish time and to come out to eat together and drink wine just felt at the time like the most wonderful treat.”
I ask Holland what his relationship with food, and he reluctantly admits he should be more interested, having discovered through his wife’s work on science documentaries that he’s in the 2 per cent of the world’s population who are “super tasters”.
“I should probably be more of a foodie than I am, but I was skint for so long, that going to nice restaurants was an enormous treat,” he says.
Listeners to the podcast would agree Holland, 55, and Sandbrook, 48, are just about the perfect duo. The pair met in their publisher’s office for a charity quiz in 2005. “We share a kind of inner nerd that we were nervous to reveal even to our wives,” Holland says.
While Holland’s forte is ancient Rome, Sandbrook focuses on more recent history, having published vast tomes covering Britain in the 1980s.
Their differing personalities are a great part of the appeal. Sandbrook is a stout Englishman who lives in Oxfordshire and writes punchy columns for the Daily Mail. Holland is tall and somewhat urbane and plays into his role as the softer, gentler, south-London historian.
He met his wife, Sadie, on their first day at Cambridge University when they were both 18. She was a producer at the BBC but has now retrained as a midwife.
Holland and I both pause to look at the menu as or waitress comes to take the order.
“I’m not eating meat at the moment, but I’ve never had pigeon,” I say to him. “I quite fancy it.”
Soup and pigeon at Andrew EdmondsCredit: Grannie Quinlan
“I don’t eat meat at home either, but you can’t come here and not have it so I’m going to have the pork chop,” he replies.
So it’s pigeon entree for me and the crispy polenta with oyster mushrooms for main. Holland has the carrot soup for his starter. We agree on a bottle of French red – Chateau Gombaude Guillot Pomerol.
The podcast has become so big in Holland’s life that he says he no longer has time to read books that are not related to the show. Next year he intends to do nothing else but dedicate his time to the recording and all the extracurricular activities that come with it.
“It really has changed my life in so many ways,” he says. “I mean, the idea I’d be able to be secure enough to do anything like this was so foreign to me for so long. It’s much more of a success than any of my books have ever been.
Mains at Andrew Edmonds.Credit: Grannie Quinlan
“Of course, we do focus on fields of history that we’ve written about or particularly studied. But actually, they are often the least satisfying to do. You feel kind of a little bit nervous; you’ve got to get pack everything in, you kind of know too much.
“But the episodes that I think I have most enjoyed doing are those where I didn’t really know very much, and it absolutely confirms me in my opinion that there is no aspect of the past that isn’t fascinating.”
The bill.
As we continue to chat over our entree, I hear a woman at the table next to us mention “that’s Tom Holland the historian” to her dining companions. When they pay their bill and leave soon after they interrupt to say hi. She tells him she’s booked to see one of his upcoming shows and just loves the podcasts, referencing recent episodes on the Boston Tea Party.
When they leave I ask if this has become a common occurrence. “It has, and it’s still a great thrill,” he says, as our food arrives. “I mean, I think it is our enthusiasm for our subjects.
“Our attitude towards history is not that it teaches moral lessons, but the fact it’s a dark comedy.”
What’s been dubbed the “gentle anti-wokery” of The Rest Is History has been critical to its appeal. Sandbrook and Holland regularly tell the story of the British Empire, but they do so without sweeping judgements, or dwelling exclusively on the darkest moments. He hopes the podcast acts as a kind of culture war bromide, taking the sting out of progressive passions by putting history in its proper context, instead of viewing it as a modern morality play.
Holland grew up in a middle-class family in Broad Chalke, in Wiltshire in the west of England – not far from Stonehenge – where his father was a country solicitor and his mother an occupational therapist. He and his younger brother James, now also a prominent historian of World War II, read ferociously, kicked a football and fell in love with cricket.
“I read obsessively,” Holland recalls. “There were no videos. The house was completely lacking in anything that might have distracted me from books.”
A passionate cricketer – both watcher and player – Holland is hoping for plenty of banter in Australia. He was engrossed with the Ashes summer, captivated by England’s “Bazball”, and doesn’t mind an argument or two about the spirt of cricket.
“Like so many others, I watched the astonishing 1981 Ashes-winning heroics of Ian Botham, and was seduced,” he said. “And playing with the Authors XI [a team first assembled by Peter Pan’s J.M Barrie] is one of my great pleasures in life.”
Dessert arrives, and I’ve gone with the tiramisu (don’t mind if I do) and Holland orders the cheese platter.
Then, as we remark how wonderful our lunch has been, he’s interrupted again. This time by the duty manager.
“Sorry, I just had to say hello to you Tom,” she says. “I’m coming to see your show soon, but my daughter is also seeing you in Melbourne next month … could you give her a shout-out?”
He takes down the details and they devise a plan. “It is so much fun,” he says. “I am so incredibly lucky that this has happened to me.”
The Rest is History Live will be in Melbourne on November 18, Brisbane on November 21 and Sydney at the Enmore Theatre on November 23.
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