Well, here we are.

In just over two hours, my book officially comes to life. I've been waiting for 27 August 2015 for years. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is the culmination of a journey that began while I was still a boy - keen to find out about parts of the world I was not being taught about, rather than those that I was.

I could not be more proud of the book. Picking it up brings back many memories of long days and late nights spent agonizing how to figure out works written hundreds or even thousands of years ago; of the excitement of spotting patterns; of the frustrations of giving up on dead ends and moving on.

I feel like the conductor of an orchestra made up of gifted virtuosi. I have been able to call up eye-witnesses from across the globe who lived over more than two millennia, who observed, recorded and tried to make sense of a world changing before their eyes. I have admired the authors of a huge range of sources, have learned from them and hope to have introduced them to new audiences.

I've been counting the weeks, days and hours as the launch date has crawled closer. I've been holding my breath to see what people think of a book that it is unashamedly ambitious, and tries to look at history in a different way.

And now, finally, the moment has arrived.

I hope all who read Silk Roads enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It will excite, enthrall and challenge. Above all, I hope that it encourages readers to think about the past, and to remember why studying history is so rewarding - and so important.

So Google has shaken itself up and will re-organise under as Alphabet - hardly the most inspired choice of name, but handily ranks before Amazon and Apple in (hey!) alphabetical lists.

Re-branding in this way, according to experts and stock-pickers alike, is a genius idea. Google, so the story goes, is not a normal company, and so it can behave in non-normal ways. One would think that something had been miraculous had been invented. As it is, the new name (and excitement) simply reflects administrative changes in how the Google Empire is run. The Byzantines would have approved. Most of them that is.

The branding of the East Roman Empire as 'Byzantine' has its own story, worth saving for another day. But the Google into Alphabet has its own neat parallel in late antiquity when the authorities in Constantinople decided to switch from using Latin to using Greek.

The Roman Empire of course used Latin as its primary language - although the Emperor Claudius commended a barbarian for managing to learn 'both our languages' (that is, Latin and Greek). Claudius himself loved showing off his own prowess in Greek, delivering 'long replies' to envoys when given the chance, and liked nothing more than quoting Homer (presumably also at length and also in Greek) during official business.

Two problems emerged as the western part of the empire contracted and disintegrated and Rome itself spiraled into decline from the fifth century. First, the centre of gravity switched to the eastern Mediterranean where Greek was more widespread than in the west; and second, Greek was used by the computer programmers, the geeks and the Silicon valley equivalents of late antiquity - the Christian priesthood.