Charles Freeman is a freelance academic historian with wide interests in the history of European culture and thought. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Egypt, Greece and Rome, Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean. He followed this up with The Greek Achievement (Penguin 1999), The Legacy of Ancient Egypt (Facts on File, 1997) and the bestselling The Closing of the Western Mind, a study of the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity in the fourth century and beyond. AD 381 follows up the themes of Closing by concentrating of the outcome of a single year when alternative forms of Christianity were suppressed by the Roman emperor, Theodosius. His The Horses of St. Mark’s (Little Brown, 2004) is a study of these famous works of art in their historical contexts over the centuries. In 2009, Yale published his A New History of Early Christianity and this has been followed by Holy Bones, Holy Dust, How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe.
Charles Freeman is Historical Consultant to the Blue Guides and leads cultural study tours to Italy, Greece and Turkey. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.