Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Photo: Detail of the A-bomb dome in Hiroshima.

Probably an odd reading choice for South-East Asia, but I've always wanted to catch up on the classics I missed in my misspent youth...

After having read about the origins of Buddhism, it was interesting to turn to a book that deals so heavily with the development of Christianity, albeit in a way that was terribly controversial on publication in the 1780s.

The whole thing being a bit massive, this was an abridged version that only came to under 700 pages, but which had most of the first three volumes intact.

If being a tourist here in Bali makes me feel like a member of the idle rich, reading Decline and Fall while sitting on a patio drinking fresh papaya juice and local coffee felt incredibly decadent, as if I were one of those effete youths on Grand Tour so often described in novels about the decline and fall of the British empire.

I'm carrying on the classical theme with Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is a more obvious choice for transformative journeys...