Angus Konstam, author of our new book Piracy: The Complete History, which is available to pre-order now, was interviewed on Friday afternoon by the BBC Radio Scotland team.

His interview, aired during the Newsdrive programme is available to listen to again here.

Angus begins his interview about 45 minutes into the 2 hour programme - so I would suggest skipping along till then, unless you would like to hear some 4 day old news. During the interview Angus speaks about how pirates remain a menace today, particularly off the African coast. He also describes how fictional writingh has given the modern audience an overly positive view of pirates - when in actual fact they were not brave adventurers, but were rather unpleasant all round...

In fact, reading Piracy I have picked up on some really interesting piratical facts. One of the things that interested me most was the role of pirates during the Roman Empire - these pirates become such a great menace that vast swathes of the Roman army and navy were deployed to eradicate them forever.