text: There is a Collegna as well as a Collegno in the Metropolitan City of Turin; make sure you type the right one into Google maps...
  1: My anger about all this is justly infamous but has been badly misrepresented. I do think that some things are worth getting angry about, and the misuse of the Barbarian Migrations and the End of the Roman Empire to fuel xenophobia and racism, and the way some modern authors pander to this, is one such. However, to look at the origins of this ire and animus, I invite you to compare my engagement with Peter Heather's work in Barbarian Migrations, and its tone, with Heather's engagement – if you can call it that – with my work, and its tone, in Empires and Barbarians. I never expect to be agreed with; I do expect basic academic courtesy to be reciprocated. If people see fit to treat me intellectually as a second-class citizen, the gloves will come off. That may stem from my own biography as (unlike so many) a first-generation academic not educated at the 'right' schools and universities, but there we are.
  12: It is a matter of urgency to think about the links between the dominant, 'core' part of the world and its dependent subsidiaries, and the responsibility of the former for what goes on in the latter. It is by no means 'ridiculous presentism' to see that this mattered in Late Antiquity as much as in the modern world and that we need to internalise that for all our sakes.