So, mercifully, the latest glossy video released by ISIS does not show innocent people being executed, or cultural treasures of the world being destroyed by thugs. For once, the high production values gives some hope that those at the top of ISIS are moving out of the teenage phase of blood-lust and wanting to play a new game that is basically good news (well, it could hardly get any worse). The new game is for adults only. It is called Government.

As if following a manual on how to build a state, attention has turned to having the right kit and the right trappings to be taken seriously. First up, as so often happens, is making your own money.

Numismatists set great store by the importance of money looks like: every time we put our hands in our pockets to pay for a loaf of bread, pint of milk or (let's say) a copy of my Silk Roads book, we affirm our allegiance to the queen, and participate - willingly or otherwise - in the political economy and the social order that binds us into a state. We have different views, different beliefs, different accents, but we all use the same currency (And that, of course, is one reason why UKIP and anti-Europeans attach so much importance to the pound).

And so ISIS have turned their attention to making their own coins; it tells us much about who they think they are and who they want to be.

The video is entitled 'The Rise of the Caliphate (Khalifah) and the Return of the Gold Dinar'. The project as two aims; one perhaps easier to guess than the other.

First is a return to a heavily mythologised past, a return to the era when the Prophet Muhammad lived. As a result, there are three currency denominations, as there were in Late Antiquity - gold, silver and bronze/copper. This is not enormously practical, especially given a gold coin is worth around $140 - not the most practical thing to pull out when you're trying to do some shopping - but it talks to a reversion to a world which was supposedly idyllic. The aim of the new currency, the narrator loftily proclaims, is to 'cleanse the earth of the stain of corruption that has marked it'. Simple, right ?

It is the second aim, though, that we should pay more attention to. It is time, the narrator states, to break the 'American capitalist system of financial slavery.' I think it is only fair to say that the chances of the new coinage in ISIS controlled territory snapping America's 'Achilles heel' is something of a long shot.

What caught my eye, however, was an almost parallel declaration in Moscow that said something very similar. It is time, said the Kremlin to get rid of the dollar and the euro. It would be much better, the proposal sets out, for the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

And the vision goes beyond former USSR territories, In a clear trial run for something more ambitious, Russia has just signed a huge currency swap of the rouble for equivalent Chinese yüan, that seeks to insulate both from the international currency markets.

The key question here is what lies behind the antagonisms towards and deep mistrust of the west and what underpins the growing attempts to form states, bonds and alliances that do not just aim to rival western institutions, but to cut out them out altogether. There are reasons for the deliberate shift away from what the the idealised forms of behaviour which we believe all other countries, peoples and cultures should follow.

That is one of the areas I look at in my new book on The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. If we do not understand - or even try to understand - the history of people who do not live in our own little goldfish bowl, and worse, and do not recognise that others perhaps see our past in a very different way to how we see it ourselves, then we run the risk of reacting on the basis of emotion, rather than of reason. As the axis on which the world spins begins to shift, it is more important now than ever to lift the veil of ignorance, and perhaps even to face some painful home truths about why levels of resentment and attempted rejection are rising.

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.

All societies desire to be meritocratic. Rewarding on ability, rather than accidence of birth, is one of the hall-marks of all empires, kingdoms and states since (as weather forecasters call it) 'records began.'

It is true, of course, that there has often been a dramatic disconnect between aspiration and reality: it's all very well wanting the best to rise to the top, after all, as long as one's own chances are not in any way diminished. Some of the most stratified and unfair societies in the history have maintained their openness to those from all backgrounds - despite all evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, one of the keys to a fair and just society is not just to allow but to actively encourage those with talent to go forth and prosper.

That prosperity that does not have to be wealth-related: we live in a world where it seems very easy to forget that success can be measured in other ways too (as educators; as carers; as civil servants; as parents, as siblings, as friends and so on). But success is difficult, if not impossible, in a world where lack of opportunity is twinned with poverty.

If I were in a better mood, I'd give some examples from the Byzantine Empire; or from the Islamic world; or from the Mongol era - where contrary to popular belief, stability and social equality were jealously promoted and protected (You can read more about that in my Silk Roads book next month)

But I am today spitting with rage about the latest round of persecution within the university system. Government cuts announced last week will result in 'substantially higher debt[s] for the poorest students'.  As the Institute for Fiscal Studies reports, this will have a dramatic effect on education participation in the UK.

The results will be startling. More than 3.5 children in the UK - an astonishing 1 in 4 - live in poverty. Save The Children estimate that nearly half of them, 1.6 million, live in conditions of 'severe poverty' - with some concentration levels in individual wards across the country at 100%. These figures do not reflect the huge cuts in welfare that have just been passed - along with those now proposed - that Robert Peston says do not amount to efficiency savings but to 'public service reinvention' itself.

Education has always been a key motor for social mobility, allowing new ideas to burst out to challenge the old. At a time when the world is changing dramatically, we should be encouraging our finest young minds to study, rather than putting obstacles and debts in their way. We should be urging young talent from all backgrounds iinto engineering, into medicine, into studying Russian, Arabic, Persian and Chinese history, literature and languages so we can understand emerging opportunities, and commercial, political and military threats that will shape the coming decades.

But what those who teach students can tell you, is that when education and debt is linked, there is enormous pressure to run to safety - to walk down well-trodden paths. With debts to pay, it is all but impossible not to pick subjects that deliver safe results that unlock the jobs that unlock repayments and freedom from debts. Why pick subjects that are complex, challenging and exciting if they are risky and require hard work? Why learn a new language? Why be different?

The raise in fees, incidentally, will not even help the Treasury, says the IFS. It is the triumph of a nasty and ill-thought through dogma, where education loses its value - and produces a bland homogeneity where everyone repeats the same thing to each other, and believes it.

I spoke a couple of weeks ago at the wonderful Chalke Valley History Festival. I had been asked to talk about Russia and the Ukraine - a topic that was the subject of lively debate on the panel, and considerable discussion amongst the audience. Everyone seemed to be bursting with opinions about what was going on and what the West should do.

At the end, I asked my audience (in Russian) who spoke Russian; and (in Ukrainian), who spoke Ukrainian. Given only 5 out of nearly 600 put their hands up, i pointed out that it seemed to me that most views were grounded in emotional reactions to events, rather than being based on any body of evidence or knowledge (beyond that day's newspapers).

Through the disastrous pressure on our education system over the last few decades, we rely on gut instinct rather than on facts; we rely on being able to rush to snap conclusions that are not grounded in the solid earth of research, but on patterns that seem familiar and right.

Little wonder, then, that we can make such catastrophic misjudgments when the blind are leading the blind. I've written about Iraq and Afghanistan in my book, and thought I had seen it all. Then I read this US report that was declassified a few weeks ago. which empahises the West's support for the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaida in Iraq] against Assad's regime in Syria. It was worth supporting these groupings, noted the cable from 2012, even though they would be unlikely to depose Assad. We chose to back a horse that we thought would not win - oblivious to the pure evil that it helped unlock.

(Note too, by the way, that the report carefully notes that ''Russia, China and Iran' all disagree with the approach of supporting armed militant fanatics. Who looks smarter now?)

The dramatic narrowing of society into a winner-loser culture, where those who are dropped down one chimney have all the advantages, while those dropped down another get no chances is a recipe for disaster.

I am a historian, so try to understand the past without claiming to be able to read the future. But i can tell you this: nothing good comes when those who are already struggling have inane barriers put in their way by self-satisfied politicians who are out to prove what capable leaders they are. Government for the few at the expense of the many has never ended well.

The new attack on the poor and on education is narrow-minded philistinism of the highest order. Surely I am not alone in thinking so ?

I am watching a harrowing programme on BB4 about the destruction of antiquities and ancient sites across territories taken by Da'esh/Islamic State.

It is heart-breaking seeing magnificent works of art being smashed with glee - and being dismissed as idols and works that deserve to be lost. The attacks are attacks on humankind's inventiveness, on our species' creativity and on the love of beauty that defines all that is good about us.

The destruction of the past will make the future look very different. Works many centuries - and millennia old - have been lost forever.

What I suspect the programme will not discuss (we're only half way through), is how this has all come to pass. My sadness at the images we were being shown turned to anger when we saw how - for all his many flaws (and worse) -  Saddam Hussein had been a champion of museums and how he had invested lavishly in preserving, restoring and maintaining sites that celebrated the majestic history of Mesopotamia from antiquity to the 20th century.

I am not one of those people who thinks that we create terrorists, or that our tolerance is responsible for radicalizing the young who are heading to join Islamic state/Da'esh.

But in this case, we must also reflect on our own role in this, for we really do need to atone for our sins. This destruction is the price to pay for our spectacular failures in the Middle East as a whole, of our embarrassing inability to understand the people and history of this region, of our idiocy in looking to support regime change (in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia).

The rage anger of those who are committing these acts of cultural barbarism - which go hand in hand with persecution and genocide of Yazidis and others - comes as a reaction to our actions in deliberately adn systematically dismantling a country to suit (what we thought were) our own ends.

I've written about this in my new book; but watching the programme this evening fills me with such despair that I could never capture in writing.