Judith Herrin won the Heineken Prize for History (the Dutch 'Nobel Prize') in 2016, for her pioneering work on the early Medieval Mediterranean world, especially the role of Byzantium, the influence of Islam and the significance of women. She is the author of Byzantium- The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, The Formation of Christendom, devoted to the Mediterranean world from the mid-sixth to the mid-ninth century A.D., A Medieval Miscellany and Women in Purple. She worked in Birmingham, Paris, Munich, Istanbul and Princeton before becoming Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London, from which she retired in 2008. Judith has published many scholarly articles, excavated in Greece, Cyprus and Turkey, and was on the editorial board Past and Present, for many years serving as Vice-Chair, from 2000-2013.
Herrin spent nine years researching her narrative of the three and a half centuries of Ravenna's ascendancy ... By the time we can easily visit Ravenna the city again it should be with the advantage of having read Ravenna the book -- Christopher Howse * Daily Telegraph * Herrin tells the changing story of Ravenna as it unfolds from the end of the fourth century to the ninth in a series of short, accessible sections with the aid of luscious illustrations. -- Averil Cameron * History Today * Beautifully illustrated, impeccably researched and accessibly presented, it traces Ravenna's career as the capital of the Roman empire in the west ... Buildings are also brought to life alongside the people who built and used them. ... It is this linking of tangible remains and historical record that is the book's great strength -- Jonathan Harris * BBC History Magazine * the book is absolutely gorgeous, with magnificent colour reproductions of Ravenna's churches and mosaics. Relics of an age that seems almost impossibly remote, they are the foundations on which modern Europe stands. -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *