Food for thought
James Howells has spent years trying to persuade Newport council to allow him to spend millions digging up a rubbish…
Holding water
It is clear that the country will soon need a Water Czar. Augustus’s right-hand man Agrippa would be the one…
The unflattering truth
The battle to be PM raises the question: in a functioning democracy, how should arguments be won? Surely, by persuasion.…
Territorial battles
The word ‘colony’ meets with a sharp intake of breath these days, but ‘province’ raises no eyebrows. How very odd.…
The play’s the thing
Last week Lloyd Evans was wondering whether it was about time audiences started booing dramatic productions of which they disapproved.…
Labours of love
An Oxford don has raised the prospect of producing a cocktail of hormone pills that would help you to fall…
First strike
The RMT union is threatening strikes to bring the country to a halt. Such activities have a long history in…
The invention of communism
Nostalgia wars are all the rage at the moment, but an extraordinary example appears to have been missed: a hammer…
Call that a party?
The ancients certainly knew how to put on a celebration. Let us hope the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee comes up to…
Soldiering on
Given Putin’s less than triumphant operation in Chechnya, where the Russian army suffered catastrophic losses, it is hardly surprising that…
Ship shape
The biggest cruise ship yet builthas just been launched, but in like-for-like terms, it comes nowhere near the Syracusia,built c.…
Ancient and modern
Did Vladimir Putin ever use his infamous ‘historical’ account of Russia-Ukraine relations to consider how Ukrainians might react to his…
Power naps
Whatever one thinks of her politics, Angela Rayner is clearly a pretty sporting party, and the joke she made about…
Rough justice
What is a just war? Those who, from St Augustine onwards, have debated the question usually begin with Cicero, the…
Morale support
Commentators talk much about the morale of the Ukrainian troops and the edge that this has given them over the…
Law and orders
St. Petersburg University in Russia is (desperately?) inviting scholars worldwide to a conference in September celebrating Mikhail Speransky. It was…
Rewriting history
Historians in Russia have a long and craven record, now going back centuries, of being economical with the truth about…
A hard act to follow
The Oscar frenzy spent, it is worth reflecting on how easy writers and actors have it these days. The ancient…
Raging against God
Patriarch Kirill is Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ and Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church; and one of his…
The truth about lies
The ex-Speaker John Bercow has been found to be a serial bully and serial liar. The ancients would have had…
Tacit approval
Last week Aristotle offered a lesson in tyrant theory. This week Tacitus (ad 56-c.120) offers one in tyrant practice. Tacitus…
Tyrants past and present
Is Putin a tyrant? Aristotle (384-322 bc) might well have thought so. Seeing the turannos as a deviant type of…
A figure of shame or pity
Virginia Giuffre may well be a heroine among all those abused in their youth. Ancient reactions compare interestingly with ours.…
Live and learn
German archaeologists have found ancient Egyptian tablets covered in repetitive writing exercises and ask — were they pupil punishments? But…
Healthy profit
Yet again ‘doctors’ with no qualifications have been found advertising dodgy but expensive products and treatments, in this case, injections…
