Historian Peter Frankopan’s unusual rules for good writing

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Peter Frankopan. The British historian, author and academic, 52, is professor of global history at Oxford University. He’s the author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World and The New Silk Roads: The Present and the Future of the World.

“Politics looks easy – you think you’ve got the right skill set – but it’s tougher than it looks.”Credit: Iona Wolff

RELIGION

You were brought up Catholic. Tell me about the rhythms of faith and church in your life, growing up. We went to Mass every Sunday. Then, when I was eight years old, I became a choirboy at Westminster Cathedral. That sometimes meant Mass several times a day. We still go to church on Sundays. It’s an important but understated part of my life. The canon of choral music is something that’s constantly on my Spotify playlist, particularly when I’m writing books or slightly anxious about one thing or another. Religion plays quite an important part in my life.

It’s one thing to be raised Catholic; it’s another to be a choirboy at Westminster. Yeah, and I was also a chorale scholar, which was all about performances in Protestant cathedrals. I’m ecumenical [nowadays]. And because of the work that I do – working on histories of Islam and other faiths – I have quite a broad overview and a great deal of respect for ideas around religion generally.

So much of your work as a historian focuses on exchanges between different communities and regions. What interests you about moments of contact between religions in history? What religions do – particularly along the Silk Road connections, where there’s such vibrancy – is they borrow from each other. They learn from each other. They compete, they adapt, they take the best bits. They work out how to reshape. History always used to be about kings and queens, battles and fighting. Now we’re thinking about interactions and exchange.

What are your commandments for good writing? (1) Good coffee. (2) When you finish for the day, finish mid-sentence. (3) Keep the music off. (4) Don’t be too prissy about where you work. (5) Don’t beat yourself up. Like cricket, you can’t score 100 every day [Frankopan played for the Croatian national team]. It’s about making sure you get something down. Taking the time and making a little bit of progress is better than no progress.

DEATH

When were you first aware of death? I grew up in the 1970s and there was a TV program in the UK called John Craven’s Newsround, which adapted news stories from around the world for young people. We got reports about the Khmer Rouge and genocide in Cambodia. Understanding that death on a massive scale, through persecution, wasn’t just about the Holocaust but was happening in the world around us was deeply worrying. I’m also of a generation brought up to think it was guaranteed that there would be nuclear war in our lifetime. Thank God that went away. But here we are in 2023 and, quite rightly, we’re anxious about it again.

Is it inevitable that waves of persecution and killing continue into the future? What does history tell us? I don’t think history tells us anything about inevitability. It tells us that if these factors all line up, this might be what happens next. When you have economic fragmentation, social inequality and environmental factors where there are shortages and people are anxious, quite often leaders appear who give simple answers to complex questions. The answers they give involve dialling up passions, tensions and, in some cases, persecution. We should be mindful of that. We’re a way from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but there’s a series of pretty severe existential challenges, and global governance is probably not making quite as much progress as it should. Climate is a key example. Not one of the G20 countries is operating within the targets set at Paris in 2015. That tells you that we could do better at trying to solve big problems. But we live in hope.

Is there anything left to do before you die? More good. Be a better person. Life’s a work in progress and I’m still not the finished product. It’s learning how to enjoy yourself, how to celebrate and be with your friends. Like they always say, no one reaches 85, looks back and thinks, “I wish I’d worked harder.”

POLITICS

The past few years in UK politics have been quite intense. How would you describe the situation now? Well, it’s certainly a lot calmer this year than it has been for a while. You can paint one of two pictures. One is that, despite the Netflix cliffhangers every week, the institutions have worked. So even though the principals and individuals have been highly chaotic, the country has carried on; the UK has done pretty well. But you could paint another picture, too, which is that the chaos has degraded public trust in politicians, in experts, in institutions. That sets the scene for a belief that democracy doesn’t matter – which is a dark, dangerous place to be. But a ship can right itself quickly if captained with quiet competence. In terms of the world we live in, a lot will depend on what happens in the next US presidential election.

You have the trust of the public. You have name recognition. You have ideas. You know history. You understand politics. Would you run for office? There are some things I know about. Education, foreign relations, foreign affairs, global economics. But I don’t know anything about national transport systems or pension reforms. I’ve got no credibility in those areas. One of the challenges in politics is that you have to be an all-rounder; that’s certainly how it works here in the UK. That’s why I never made it as a cricketer. Politics looks easy – you think you’ve got the right skill set – but it’s tougher than it looks. I think I’m good at what I do: I’m going to keep playing the game that I play.

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