Ordinary Odyssey

What This Blog Is (And Isn’t)

This blog started because I kept finding myself annoyed by how history is usually served up online. You either get dry academic stuff, or shouty threads that flatten everything into memes and hot takes. I wanted a place in between: properly sourced, but written for people who just like a good, honest story about the past.

You’ll see a lot here about the ancient world, the world wars, and the history behind books, music and film I care about. I read the big biographies, I look at the primary sources, and I try to explain what I find in straightforward language, without pretending to be the final word.

What this blog is

• A place to walk through how we know what we think we know about the past: which sources we have, what they leave out, and where historians disagree.
• A reading diary for serious but accessible history books – the kind that are researched, critical and not pure hero worship.
• Occasional deep dives into figures like Alexander, Lincoln, and “ordinary” people caught up in big events, using good scholarship but keeping the tone clear and human.

What this blog isn’t

• It isn’t a shrine to “great men” where everyone is secretly flawless and history is just a string of genius decisions. Even if I like the book about them.
• It isn’t modern execptionalism, where we sneer at the past to make ourselves look enlightened.
• It isn’t aesthetic war‑porn. I take violence and ideology seriously and I’m not interested in turning them into mood‑board content.

If that sounds like your thing, you’re welcome to read along. Treat this as an ordinary odyssey through history: one reader working carefully through sources and books, trying to make sense of the past in public. First up will be some pieces on Alexander, the Civil War, and a couple of books that are actually worth your time.