Arron Banks, multi-millionaire UKIP backer and co-founder of the Leave.EU pro-Brexit campaign, has been telling historians what *really* caused the fall of the Roman empire. It was immigration, he says:
This caused things to kick off a little. Averil Cameron, a professor of antique and Byzantine history at Keble College, Oxford, pointed out that this was, not to put to fine a point on it, wrong:
And everyone's favourite TV historian, the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard – author of the critically acclaimed Roman history book SPQR – weighed in, RT-ing Cameron's tweet.
At this point Banks, realising he was going against the weight of expert opinion, gracefully acknowledged that the two women he was arguing against probably knew more than he did about the subject they had dedicated their lives to, and withdrew from the conversation.
Because he is a grown-up.