Peter Heather

Peter Heather is a British historian of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, born in Northern Ireland in 1960. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and at New College, Oxford, where he earned his doctorate. He lectured at Worcester College, Oxford, at Yale University and at University College London, and in 2008 he became professor of medieval history at King's College London. He is regarded as a leading authority on the Goths and on the end of the Western Roman Empire. His research focuses on the relationship between the Roman Empire and the peoples it called barbarians, such as the Goths, Vandals and Huns. Against historians who stressed gradual change, he argues that the arrival of the Huns in the late fourth century set off movements of peoples that, together with Rome's own weaknesses, caused the collapse of the Western Empire in the fifth century. His books for general readers include The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History (2005), Empires and Barbarians (2009) and The Restoration of Rome (2013), and with John Rapley he wrote Why Empires Fall (2023).

Peter Heather is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia