Ward-Perkins, Bryan

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Ward-Perkins, Bryan

PERSONAL:

Born in Rome, Italy; son of John Bryan (an archaeologist) and Margaret Sheilah Ward-Perkins. Education: Magdalen College, Oxford, M.A. and D.Phil.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Trinity College, Oxford University, Broad St., Oxford OX1 3BH, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Worked as field archaeologist in Italy for approximately fifteen years; University of Oxford, Oxford, England, lecturer in modern history, fellow and tutor in history at Trinity College, 1981—. British School at Rome, chair of publications.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Hessell-Tiltman History Prize, English PEN, 2006, for The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Jörg Garms and Roswitha Juffinger) Tassilo Blittersdorff and others, Die Mittelalterlichen Grabmäler in Rom und Latium vom 13. vis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Volume I: Die Grabplatten und Tafeln, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Rome, Italy), 1981.

From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy, AD 300-850, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor, with Hazel Dodge) J.B. Ward-Perkins, Marble in Antiquity: Collected Papers of J.B. Ward-Perkins, British School at Rome (Rome, Italy), 1992.

(Editor, with G.P. Brogiolo, and contributor) The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Brill Academic Publishers (Boston, MA), 1999.

(Editor, with Averil Cameron and Michael Whitby, and contributor) The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XIV: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425-600, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 2000.

The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including The Rebirth of Towns in the West, AD 700-1050, edited by Richard Hodges and Brian Hobley, 1988; Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XIII, The Late Empire, AD 337-425, edited by Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey, 1997; Sedes Regiae (ann. 400-800), edited by Gisela Ripoll and Josep M. Gurt, 2000; and Wolf Liebeschuetz Reflected, edited by John Drinkwater and Benet Salway, 2007. Contributor to periodicals, including Antiquity, Classical Review, English Historical Review, History Today, Journal of Roman Studies, Medium Aevum, and Times Higher Education Supplement.

SIDELIGHTS:

The son of a prominent British archaeologist, Bryan Ward-Perkins was born in Rome, Italy, and raised among the ancient buildings and artifacts his father studied. He himself spent more than a dozen summers working as a field archaeologist in Italy, and he brings an archaeologist's awareness of physical evidence to his work as a historian of the ancient world. While he has written and edited a number of works in his field, Ward-Perkins attracted particular notice for his 2005 book The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization.

The Fall of Rome contradicts modern scholarship that portrays the end of Roman rule as a more or less smooth transition to a new regime, not the calamitous fall described by earlier scholars such as Edward Gibbon, author of the classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Drawing on recent archaeological evidence, Ward-Perkins shows that by many measures, quality of life in the former empire was drastically lower for centuries after the fall of Rome than it was before. Asia Times writer Spengler remarked that "Ward-Perkins has arrayed the evidence in a lean and compelling narrative that shows that Rome not only fell, but fell with a sickening crash that spread misery on a horrifying scale." Archaeologist Catherine Hills wrote in Antiquity that The Fall of Rome "is written with authority and wit and has already won deserved praise." She continued, "I agree with a great deal of what he says and admire the clarity with which he has set it out," but she also felt that Ward-Perkins "represents non-Roman material culture unfairly, portraying it inaccurately as much less competent than it was, and he actually says very little about the material culture of regions which lay outside the empire." R.W. Burgess stated in the Canadian Journal of History that the work's "only real drawback is that it is overly polemical in its tone and approach." Burgess found the book "a wonderful antidote" to the dominant view and commented that it "marks a real watershed for the study of the period." Similarly, University Bookman contributor Matthew McGowan said that "Ward-Perkins may slightly overstate his case, but his points are valid and his book comes as a welcome counterpoint to the prevailing opinion." He deemed the organization of the work somewhat difficult to follow but maintained that the volume represents "solid scholarship." Several critics commented on the boldness of the author's argument. As Peter Jones phrased it in the Telegraph Online, "There is nothing mealy-mouthed about this hard-hitting and beautifully written assessment which, I am delighted to say, will cause a great deal of trouble."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Antiquity, March, 2007, Catherine Hills, review of The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization, p. 191.

Asia Times, September 7, 2005, Spengler, "Deep in Denial (or in de' Mississippi)."

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Volume 6, number 2, 2000, Marietta Horster, review of The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages; Volume 7, number 69, 2005, James J. O'Donnell, review of The Fall of Rome.

Canadian Journal of History, spring-summer, 2007, R.W. Burgess, review of The Fall of Rome, p. 83.

Choice, September, 2006, M.L. Rautman, review of The Fall of Rome, p. 174.

Contemporary Review, November, 2005, review of The Fall of Rome, p. 318.

English Historical Review, January, 1988, N.P. Brooks, review of From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy, AD 300-850, p. 163.

Financial Times, May 7, 2005, review of The Fall of Rome, p. 33.

Historian, winter, 2006, Peter S. Wells, review of The Fall of Rome, p. 860.

Historically Speaking, March-April, 2006, Donald A. Yerxa, "An Interview with Bryan Ward-Perkins on the Fall of Rome," pp. 31-33.

History Today, December, 1985, Keith McCulloch, review of From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, p. 56.

Library Journal, August 1, 2005, Robert J. Andrews, review of The Fall of Rome, p. 103.

Medieval Review, October, 2007, Andrew Gillett, "Rome's Fall and Europe's Rise: A View from Late Antiquity."

New Criterion, April, 2006, Victor Davis Hanson, "Collapse of a ‘Hyperpower,’" p. 63.

Spectator, August 27, 2005, Ian Garrick Mason, "Why Rome Fell," p. 30.

Sunday Times (London, England), June 5, 2005, Tom Holland, review of The Fall of Rome.

Times Higher Education Supplement, June 24, 2005, Sean Kingsley, "The End of the World as They Knew It," p. 22.

Times Literary Supplement, December 23, 2005, Kate Cooper, "The Hun Effect," pp. 5-6.

University Bookman, winter, 2007, Matthew McGowan, "The Rise of Books on the Fall."