Paul Stephenson – författare

The Serpent Column, a bronze sculpture that has stood in Delphi and Constantinople, today Istanbul, is a Greek representation of the Near Eastern primordial combat myth: it is Typhon, a dragon defeated by Zeus, and also Python slain by Apollo. The column was created after the Battle of Plataia (479BC), where the sky was dominated by serpentine constellations and by the spiralling tails of the Milky Way. It was erected as a votive for Apollo and as a monument to the victory of the united Greek poleis over the Persians. It is as a victory monument that the column was transplanted to Constantinople and erected in the hippodrome. The column remained a monument to cosmic victory through centuries, but also took on other meanings. Through the Byzantine centuries these interpretation were fundamentally Christian, drawing upon serpentine imagery in Scripture, patristic and homiletic writings. When Byzantines saw the monument they reflected upon this multivalent serpentine symbolism, but also the fact that it was a bronze column. For these observers, it evoked the Temple's brazen pillars, Moses' brazen serpent, the serpentine tempter of Genesis (Satan), and the beast of Revelation. The column was inserted into Christian sacred history, symbolizing creation and the end times. The most enduring interpretation of the column, which is unrelated to religion, and therefore survived the Ottoman capture of the city, is as a talisman against snakes and snake-bites. It is this tale that was told by travellers to Constantinople throughout the Middle Ages, and it is this story that is told to tourists today who visit Istanbul. In this book, Paul Stephenson twists together multiple strands to relate the cultural biography of a unique monument.

Readers are provided with a practical insight into how to analyze policies and policy-making in the EU. Using case studies to deepen readers' understanding, this book examines the various stages of the policy process - from the moment the issue reaches the agenda through to drafting, implementation and evaluation.

Readers are provided with a practical insight into how to analyze policies and policy-making in the EU. Using case studies to deepen readers' understanding, this book examines the various stages of the policy process - from the moment the issue reaches the agenda through to drafting, implementation and evaluation.

This book offers comprehensive coverage of various aspects of financial accountability around the EU budget – how it is spent via policies, how institutions engage in checking policy performance (what taxpayers’ money actually delivers), and therein, the issues of monitoring, controlling, auditing, scrutinising and communicating budgetary expenditure. Presenting conceptual and theoretical approaches including financial accountability, learning, multi-level governance, implementation and throughput legitimacy, it looks at EU institutions (European Parliament, European Court of Auditors, European Ombudsman, European Public Prosecutor’s Office) and national bodies (supreme audit institutions at the national level), examining their contact with the EU budget. It details the historical development of accountability mechanisms (the ‘statement of assurance’, financial corrections, and parliamentary oversight by the Budgetary Control Committee (CONT)), and examines policy areas such as those of agriculture, social policy and cohesion (including Structural Funds and the Common Agricultural Policy), exploring the challenges of financial accountability in practice. Given the recent introduction of non-budgetary financial instruments and tools only partly financed by the EU budget, it sheds light on new burgeoning areas such as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) and the challenges they bring for ensuring the accountability of public money.This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of audit and evaluation, budgetary spending and financial control and, more broadly, public administration, public policy and EU institutions and politics.

This book offers comprehensive coverage of various aspects of financial accountability around the EU budget – how it is spent via policies, how institutions engage in checking policy performance (what taxpayers’ money actually delivers), and therein, the issues of monitoring, controlling, auditing, scrutinising and communicating budgetary expenditure. Presenting conceptual and theoretical approaches including financial accountability, learning, multi-level governance, implementation and throughput legitimacy, it looks at EU institutions (European Parliament, European Court of Auditors, European Ombudsman, European Public Prosecutor’s Office) and national bodies (supreme audit institutions at the national level), examining their contact with the EU budget. It details the historical development of accountability mechanisms (the ‘statement of assurance’, financial corrections, and parliamentary oversight by the Budgetary Control Committee (CONT)), and examines policy areas such as those of agriculture, social policy and cohesion (including Structural Funds and the Common Agricultural Policy), exploring the challenges of financial accountability in practice. Given the recent introduction of non-budgetary financial instruments and tools only partly financed by the EU budget, it sheds light on new burgeoning areas such as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) and the challenges they bring for ensuring the accountability of public money.This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of audit and evaluation, budgetary spending and financial control and, more broadly, public administration, public policy and EU institutions and politics.

The Byzantine World presents the latest insights of the leading scholars in the fields of Byzantine studies, history, art and architectural history, literature, and theology. Those who know little of Byzantine history, culture and civilization between AD 700 and 1453 will find overviews and distillations, while those who know much already will be afforded countless new vistas. Each chapter offers an innovative approach to a well-known topic or a diversion from a well-trodden path. Readers will be introduced to Byzantine women and children, men and eunuchs, emperors, patriarchs, aristocrats and slaves. They will explore churches and fortifications, monasteries and palaces, from Constantinople to Cyprus and Syria in the east, and to Apulia and Venice in the west. Secular and sacred art, profane and spiritual literature will be revealed to the reader, who will be encouraged to read, see, smell and touch. The worlds of Byzantine ceremonial and sanctity, liturgy and letters, Orthodoxy and heresy will be explored, by both leading and innovative international scholars. Ultimately, readers will find insights into the emergence of modern Byzantine studies and of popular Byzantine history that are informative, novel and unexpected, and that provide a thorough understanding of both.

The Byzantine World presents the latest insights of the leading scholars in the fields of Byzantine studies, history, art and architectural history, literature, and theology. Those who know little of Byzantine history, culture and civilization between AD 700 and 1453 will find overviews and distillations, while those who know much already will be afforded countless new vistas. Each chapter offers an innovative approach to a well-known topic or a diversion from a well-trodden path. Readers will be introduced to Byzantine women and children, men and eunuchs, emperors, patriarchs, aristocrats and slaves. They will explore churches and fortifications, monasteries and palaces, from Constantinople to Cyprus and Syria in the east, and to Apulia and Venice in the west. Secular and sacred art, profane and spiritual literature will be revealed to the reader, who will be encouraged to read, see, smell and touch. The worlds of Byzantine ceremonial and sanctity, liturgy and letters, Orthodoxy and heresy will be explored, by both leading and innovative international scholars. Ultimately, readers will find insights into the emergence of modern Byzantine studies and of popular Byzantine history that are informative, novel and unexpected, and that provide a thorough understanding of both.

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier is the first narrative history in English of the northern Balkans in the tenth to twelfth centuries. Where previous histories have been concerned principally with the medieval history of distinct and autonomous Balkan nations, this study regards Byzantine political authority as a unifying factor in the various lands which formed the empire's frontier in the north and west. It takes as its central concern Byzantine relations with all Slavic and non-Slavic peoples - including the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Hungarians - in and beyond the Balkan Peninsula, and explores in detail imperial responses, first to the migrations of nomadic peoples, and subsequently to the expansion of Latin Christendom. It also examines the changing conception of the frontier in Byzantine thought and literature through the middle Byzantine period.

The reign of Basil II (976-1025), the longest of any Byzantine emperor, has long been considered as a 'golden age', in which his greatest achievement was the annexation of Bulgaria. This, we have been told, was achieved through a long and bloody war of attrition which won Basil the grisly epithet Voulgartoktonos, 'the Bulgar-slayer'. In this 2003 study Paul Stephenson argues that neither of these beliefs is true. Instead, Basil fought far more sporadically in the Balkans and his reputation as 'Bulgar-slayer' was created only a century and a half later. Thereafter the 'Bulgar-slayer' was periodically to play a galvanizing role for the Byzantines, returning to centre-stage as Greeks struggled to establish a modern nation state. As Byzantium was embraced as the Greek past by scholars and politicians, the 'Bulgar-slayer' became an icon in the struggle for Macedonia (1904-1908) and the Balkan Wars (1912-1913).

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier is the first narrative history in English of the northern Balkans in the tenth to twelfth centuries. Where previous histories have been concerned principally with the medieval history of distinct and autonomous Balkan nations, this study regards Byzantine political authority as a unifying factor in the various lands which formed the empire's frontier in the north and west. It takes as its central concern Byzantine relations with all Slavic and non-Slavic peoples - including the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Hungarians - in and beyond the Balkan Peninsula, and explores in detail imperial responses, first to the migrations of nomadic peoples, and subsequently to the expansion of Latin Christendom. It also examines the changing conception of the frontier in Byzantine thought and literature through the middle Byzantine period.

The book provides a concise focussed guide to the main management areas that are essential to the success of modern construction projects. The concepts, principles and applications in the seven main management areas that are essential to the success of construction projects are presented. It links in with The CIOB's Education Framework is recommended reading for The CIOB.

Construction Planning, 2nd Edition is a thorough guide to the use of planning techniques, key concepts and the latest developments in the field of project planning.It explores the construction planning process in the digital age by taking a closer look at the most effective principles and practice, including the latest technological developments to support the successful delivery of projects.This well-illustrated book provides students, and those needing a foundation in this specific aspect of project management with clear, straightforward and concise explanations of the processes and techniques required for the effective planning and control of construction projects.Construction Planning, 2nd Edition:describes the principal planning techniques - bar charts, network analysis, line-of-balance and linear programmes - that make up the ‘planners’ toolbox’explains the practical application of these techniquesprovides guidance on techniques for scheduling and controlling resourcesuses both manual and computer methods of analysis to demonstrate how these techniques can be used for planning, monitoring and controlling the construction works and the resources involved • explores international and UK case studies in detail, providing worked

Constantine is a masterly survey of the life and enduring legacy of the greatest and most unjustly ignored of the later Roman emperors - from a richly gifted young British historian. In 312, Constantine - one of four Roman emperors ruling a divided empire - marched on Rome to establish his sole control of its western half. Having claimed the imperial capital for himself, he then converted to Christianity and led its emergence from the shadows, its adherents no longer persecuted. Constantine founded Constantinople on the site of the ancient trading colony of Byzantium, a new Christian capital set apart from Rome's pagan past. Thereafter the Christian Roman Empire endured in the East as Byzantium, while Rome itself fell to the barbarian hordes in AD 476. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the historically crucial idea of a unified Christian Europe. In Constantine, a seminal figure in the political and cultural history of the West has at last found the biographer he deserves.

This book restores the fountains of Roman Byzantium, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul, reviving the sounds, shapes, smells and sights of past water cultures. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, is surrounded on three sides by sea, and has no major river to deliver clean, potable water. However, the cultures that thrived in this remarkable waterscape through millennia have developed and sustained diverse water cultures and a water delivery system that has supported countless fountains, some of which survive today. Scholars address the delivery system that conveyed and stored water, and the fountains, large and small, from which it gushed. Papers consider spring water, rainwater and seawater; water suitable for drinking, bathing and baptism; and fountains real, imagined and symbolic. Experts in the history of art and culture, archaeology and theology, and poetry and prose, offer reflections on water and fountains across two millennia in one location.

This book restores the fountains of Roman Byzantium, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul, reviving the sounds, shapes, smells and sights of past water cultures. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, is surrounded on three sides by sea, and has no major river to deliver clean, potable water. However, the cultures that thrived in this remarkable waterscape through millennia have developed and sustained diverse water cultures and a water delivery system that has supported countless fountains, some of which survive today. Scholars address the delivery system that conveyed and stored water, and the fountains, large and small, from which it gushed. Papers consider spring water, rainwater and seawater; water suitable for drinking, bathing and baptism; and fountains real, imagined and symbolic. Experts in the history of art and culture, archaeology and theology, and poetry and prose, offer reflections on water and fountains across two millennia in one location.

Space policy is at the cutting edge of current EU policy developments and is a fascinating object of study, involving multiple and diverse actors. It is also an original and contemporary lens for studying European policy-making. This book explores advances in European space policy and their significance for European integration. Using a ‘framing’ methodology, it addresses central questions in European studies in order to form an interdisciplinary bridge between current research in space policy and contemporary European political studies. It assesses the interests of EU institutions in space and how these institutions perceive space policy. Furthermore, it demonstrates that space is a cross-cutting policy domain affecting a diverse range of EU policy fields, such as security, transport and migration, and underpinning the 21st century European and global economy. In doing so, this volume firmly locates space policy in the field of European Studies.This innovative volume will be of key interest to students and scholars of a range of policy areas including common foreign and security policy, technology policy, transport policy, internal market policies, environmental policy, development aid and disaster-risk management, as well as the EU institutions.

Space policy is at the cutting edge of current EU policy developments and is a fascinating object of study, involving multiple and diverse actors. It is also an original and contemporary lens for studying European policy-making. This book explores advances in European space policy and their significance for European integration. Using a ‘framing’ methodology, it addresses central questions in European studies in order to form an interdisciplinary bridge between current research in space policy and contemporary European political studies. It assesses the interests of EU institutions in space and how these institutions perceive space policy. Furthermore, it demonstrates that space is a cross-cutting policy domain affecting a diverse range of EU policy fields, such as security, transport and migration, and underpinning the 21st century European and global economy. In doing so, this volume firmly locates space policy in the field of European Studies.This innovative volume will be of key interest to students and scholars of a range of policy areas including common foreign and security policy, technology policy, transport policy, internal market policies, environmental policy, development aid and disaster-risk management, as well as the EU institutions.

The book provides a concise focussed guide to the main management areas that are essential to the success of modern construction projects. The concepts, principles and applications in the seven main management areas that are essential to the success of construction projects are presented. It links in with The CIOB's Education Framework is recommended reading for The CIOB.

'Fascinating ... illuminating ... Stephenson examines ordinary life, painting a vivid and intriguing picture.' The TimesLong before Rome fell to the Ostrogoths in AD 476, a new city had risen to take its place as the beating heart of a late antique empire, the glittering Constantinople: New Rome. In this magisterial work, Professor Paul Stephenson charts the centuries surrounding this epic shift of power. He traces the cultural, social and political forces that led to the empire being ruled from a city straddling Europe and Asia, placing all into a rich natural and environmental context informed by the latest scientific research. Blending narrative with analysis, he shows how the city and empire of New Rome survived countless attacks and the rise of Islam. By the end, the wide world of linked cities had changed into a world founded on new ideas about government and God, art and war, and the very future of a Christian empire: Byzantium.

Shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2024. Shortlisted for the Gay Poetry Lammy Award 2024. When his partner suddenly died, life changed utterly for Paul Stephenson. Hard Drive is the outcome of his revisiting a world he thought he knew, but which had been upended. In poems that are affectionate, self-examining, sometimes funny and often surprised by grief in the oddest corners, the poet takes us through rooms, routines, and rituals of bereavement, the memory of love, a shared life and separation. A noted formalist, with a flair for experiment, pattern and the use of constraints, Stephenson has written a remarkable first book, moving and, despite everything, a hopeful record of a gay relationship. It is also a landmark elegy collection.