Matt Molloy's

A barstool at Matt Molloy's pub, the day's first customers, sipping a Guinness while reading Rubicon, Tom Holland's literate and evocative account of the fall of the Republic of Rome. It begins:

January 10, the seven-hundred-and-fifth year since the founding of Rome, the forty-ninth before the birth of Christ. The sun had long set behind the Apennine Mountains. Lined up in full marching order, soldiers from the 13th Legion stood massed in the dark. Bitter the night may have been, but they were well used to extremes. For eight years they had been following the governor of Gaul on campaign after bloody campaign, through snow, through summer heat, t0 the margins of the world. Now, returned from the barbarous wilds of the north, they found themselves poised on a very different frontier. Ahead of them flowed a narrow stream...