An Accidental Scholar

In this essay I reflect on my development as a scholar of late antiquity and Byzantium over many decades. I was a Classics undergraduate at Oxford in the late 1950s, and my subsequent history took me first to Glasgow, then to London as a professor and back to Oxford as the head of a college and a pro-vice-chancellor, with several stays in the United States along the way. I have been lucky enough to be able to follow my intellectual curiosity in numerous directions, but always as a historian, and especially as a historian curious about the history of religion.