It dawned on me only a few short minutes ago whilst listening again to episode 1 of a history of a world in 100 objects. That I had always seen the world in the wrong way; It is obvious to me now and stupidly so when written down, but all art, tools, things everything man made around us, before us and to be created, are all impossible without the hand of humankind. We are linked simply by who we are to everything that has gone before. Far from being remote and something held at a distance. History is right here with us, in our genes and behaviours; in our art and our cultures. The legends of the past had real people behind them, these are not just stories, its real not distant! I am so thrilled to have this basic inescapable fact dawn on me – silly as I am sure you think it must be that I did not know these things! It allows me to look at the world with new eyes.

Recalling where it all started for me, I recall my first visit to the St. Albans museum so many years ago. Not the lavish building it is now, but back then it consisted of only a few rooms with the skeletal remains of the man, woman and baby on display in large glass topped ‘coffins’. I guess the morbid curiosity that a child has drove me to be fascinated by them. But it was the objects around me growing up so close to Verulamium park that still inspire awe within me. The ever present huge relics of the walls of the city, the remains of the gate house on the north side. The hypocaust (which as a child was never revealed, but contained in what I can only describe as a leaky old shed) now covered by a new building and open access to all. The remains of the amphitheatre opposite St. Martins church and so close to Old Watling street, so often not available to me because my folks could not afford it, still holds childlike wonder within me.

A few years back, my current wife and I were lucky enough to shoot off to Rome; I was like a child in a sweetshop. I have never been so enthralled by a place. As I walked down the Forum I was struck with the realisation that I was treading in the footsteps on the ‘real Romans’. The Pantheon made we weep for a way of life lost to Christianity (and yes I suppose I am still bitter about it!).

I guess growing up around such Roman relics; it has been inevitable that I would return to History as my Degree subject. I also suspect that this is the reason when I picked up Caesar’s Gaul Wars and read a paragraph a shiver of excitement ran up my spine and I was utterly awestruck.

I am so looking forward to the rest of this adventure of this Degree, AA100 and Y160 alone have changed my life and opened my mind to new ways of thinking and new ways of seeing the world. I think the next few years are going to be some of the best of my life.