James Howard-Johnston

James Douglas Howard-Johnston (born 12 March 1942) is an English historian of the Byzantine Empire. He was University Lecturer in Byzantine studies at the University of Oxford. He is an emeritus fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His approach to Byzantium follows that of Edward Gibbon and concentrates on comparisons between the Byzantine state and its Western counterparts. Howard-Johnston has also done research on Late Antiquity, especially the Roman–Persian Wars and the early history of Islam.

Early life Born in Dublin, Howard-Johnston is the son of Rear-Admiral Clarence Howard-Johnston and his wife Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Haig, a daughter of Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig. His mother married secondly the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. At the time of his re-election in 1973 as an Oxford councillor in the Oxford South ward, where he garnered 43.7% of the vote, he was a member of the Labour Party.

Personal life Howard-Johnston is married to the novelist Angela Huth and has a step-daughter, Candida Crewe, daughter of Quentin Crewe, and a daughter, Eugenie Teasley.

Books (with Nigel Ryan) The Scholar & the Gypsy: Two Journeys to Turkey, Past and Present (1992) (ed. with Paul Hayward) The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the contribution of Peter Brown (1999) Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford 2010) Historical Writing in Byzantium (Heidelberg 2014) (ed.) Social Change in Town and Country in Eleventh-Century Byzantium (Oxford 2020) The Last Great War of Antiquity (Oxford 2021) Byzantium: Economy, Society, Institutions 600–1100 (Oxford 2024) Byzantium in a Changing World (Oxford, 2025) Byzantine Historical Writing (Oxford, 2026)