Peter Frankopan

Frankopan is the second of five children born to Yugoslavia-born Croatian aristocrat Louis Nicholas Anthony Doimi Frankopan (1939–2018),[2] who emigrated to the United Kingdom after his family's land and fortunes were seized by the Yugoslav communist government in 1951,[3] and Swedish-born barrister and professor of international law Ingrid Detter de Frankopan. His elder sister is Lady Nicholas Windsor.[4]

He attended Eton College[5] and then received a degree in Byzantine history from Jesus College, Cambridge, before getting his D.Phil at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is a senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research.[6]

His areas of focus are the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Russia, as well as the interdependence of Islam and Christianity. He has also studied Greek literature of the Middle Ages.[7]

Frankopan's first book of history, The First Crusade: The Call from the East, was published in 2012.[8] The book received a rare five-star review from Nicholas Shakespeare in The Telegraph. He called it a "persuasive and bracing work" and said "Peter Frankopan is not yet well known, but he deserves to be."[9]

In 2015, his book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World was published. Writing in the Telegraph, Bettany Hughes praised it as a "charismatic and essential book",[10] while Anthony Sattin, writing in The Guardian, called it "ambitious" and "full of insight but let down by factual errors".[11] Frankopan's follow-up book, The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (Bloomsbury Publishing), was published in 2018.

In 2002, Frankopan and his wife Jessica opened Cowley Manor, a boutique hotel and spa on a historic estate in the Cotswolds. They have since expanded their hotel chain, which they named A Curious Group of Hotels, to include the Portobello Hotel in London, Canal House in Amsterdam and L'Hotel Paris in Paris.[12] The restaurant in L'Hotel Paris has been awarded a Michelin star.[3]

He has served as president of the Croatian Cricket Federation and has played for the Croatian national team.[13] In 2015, he said "That’s the achievement I’m proudest of – playing cricket for my country."[6] He also plays for the Authors XI cricket team with other British writers and contributed a chapter to the book that team members collectively wrote about their first season playing together, The Authors XI: A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon (2013).[14]

He and his wife Jessica, daughter of Tim Sainsbury, have four children and live in Oxford.[5] Together, they oversee a £14 million trust funded by her family's supermarket fortune.[3]

• Frankopan's personal website
• Frankopan's page at the Faculty of History of the University of Oxford