I thoroughly disliked his writing style, his tabloid representation of the Republic (focusing on the smutty rumours over substance) and the fact that he walked on an extremely well-trodden path without adding anything new whilst presenting everything as if he'd just thought of it. And that's just Rubicon; Persia Fire was in my opinion even worse, in his attempts to link events over two-thousand years ago to the modernday War on Terror, and again that he added nothing new to existing research. Because it's a slightly less well documented period that book is even more superficial, barely raising itself above the primary sources in many cases.

He's clearly no historian, but a writer, and a bad one at that. For facts I'll look in decent works, and for good writing I'll pick up a novel.

Bit of a rant, but he's a bit of a pet peeve, certainly after I saw him interviewed on BBC. Lord...