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I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth?

I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.

History shows us that other highly developed forms of civilization have collapsed. Who knows whether the same fate does not await our own?

I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

Archaeologists have been digging up thousands of graves of people called Scythians by the Greeks. They turn out to be people whose women fought, hunted, rode horses, used bows and arrows, just like the men.

I wander around, get the lay of the land and try to imagine what kind of people would have lived there in that historical period. What would they eat? What kind of clothing would they wear? How did they shelter themselves? How did they get around?

It is good to learn from the ancients. I'm a bit of an ancient myself. They had a lot of time to think about architecture and landscape.

What is interesting to me about Vikings is that they were failed farmers.