Lecture by Hugh Trevor-Roper Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford
'It was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764 as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.'
Professor Trevor-Roper considers the preparation for this great event. By breeding and inclination Edward Gibbon was not an Englishman but a European.