Guest blogging over at Osprey Publishing

As my regular readers know, one of my many writing hats is as a military historian for Osprey Publishing. Regular readers will also know that I recently wrote a travel series about Greece. Well, I've put one hat atop the other and write a guest post for the Osprey blog about Oddities from the Athens War Museum. Head on over and check it out!

New travel series on Greece

As I mentioned last week, I've started a new travel series on Greece. It's called. . .well you can see what's it's called from the pinbox above. I spent a week in Greece interviewing museum curators, archaeologists, and regular Greeks about the problems facing our collective past. How are the strikes inhibiting access to museums and sights? How much are staff cuts reducing opening hours and the nation's ability to conserve and restore our heritage?

Five posts are already up, three of them illustrated with galleries of photos. Several more posts are on the way over the next two weeks. So hop on over and check it out!

Siamese twins in the Middle Ages

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been traveling in Greece writing a new series for Gadling called Our past in peril: Greek tourism faces the economic crisis. The first in the series is here.

I've always been more interested in Byzantium than Classical Greece and so I spent a lot of time exploring Byzantine sights, including Mistra, a Byzantine ghost town overlooking Sparta. On one of the signs there I came across this strange story. The image above is from a Byzantine manuscript owned by the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and the caption reads:

"In the time of Romanos Lekapenos (10th cent.) a pair of Siamese twin boys were brought to Constantinople from Armenia and they 'stayed in the city for a long time and everybody went to see them as if they were some kind of curious monster; and then they were expelled from the city because they were thought to be an evil omen."

There's a story in the making. . .

Traveling in Greece

Hi everyone. I've been a bit silent this week and that's because I'm traveling in Greece! Gadling has sent me here to write a series about how the economic crisis is affecting tourism and heritage management. The first article will appear January 30.

I'm writing this to you from Sparta. The Classical ruins here aren't as impressive as those of Corinth or Delphi, and the real reason I came here was to see Mistra. This is a late Byzantine ghost town that is, hands down, the most impressive thing I've seen in this county. Acropolis included. I've always wanted to see this place since researching my book Byzantium: An Illustrated History. It's great to finally get here! I'll be doing a heavily illustrated article on Mistra as part of the series. Here are a couple of photos to give you a taste.