Ancient greece
How I bonded with Tom Stoppard over the classics
Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study when the phone rang and a voice said:…
Keir Starmer and the ancient question of word vs deed
Sir Keir Starmer said that Britain had come to a fork in the road. As usual, he took it –…
Angela Rayner and the ancient question of ‘good judgment’
Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to…
The ancient Greek take on human rights
While Greek and Roman thinkers were influential in developing ideas such as citizenship, justice and equality, the notion of universal…
The enigma of C.P. Cavafy
The homosexual poet from Alexandria avoided publication in his lifetime, despite being a ruthless self-promoter with a very high opinion of his own work
How the Spartans got fighting fit
Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young…
Who could persuade you to fight for Britain today?
This week we celebrated VE Day. When Pericles remembered the dead from the war against Sparta in his famous Funeral…
A fabulously entertaining new podcast about ancient Greece
How did a myth about the consequences of poor judgment become a parable for aspiration? The question is posed by…
Dry retelling of the Odyssey – but Fiennes is ripped: The Return reviewed
Uberto Pasolini’s The Return stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche in a retelling of the last section of Homer’s Odyssey.…
Boris Johnson is no Pericles
Boris Johnson’s Unleashed imagines him, like Cincinnatus, leaving his plough, saving Rome, and returning to it. But given that Boris…
The first Olympian: what was there to celebrate about Heracles?
However great the achievements of athletes at the Olympic Games – and even more so the Paralympics – there will…
How Ancient Greece handled riots
Riots are difficult enough for us to deal with, let alone for the ancients, who had neither police nor prisons;…
The Greek guide to swearing an oath
A lawyer who wished to serve on a jury but was no Christian was given permission to swear his oath…
How to crack election jokes like a Greek
As the party of the lost and the party of the losers square up to each other, the next few…
All that remains
Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close
The causes of gout
Medical problems come and go in the media, and at the moment the flavour of the month appears to be…
Food for thought
James Howells has spent years trying to persuade Newport council to allow him to spend millions digging up a rubbish…
The unflattering truth
The battle to be PM raises the question: in a functioning democracy, how should arguments be won? Surely, by persuasion.…
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…
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.…
High life
The only good news, after the massacres in Ukraine, is that so many ugly behemoth super-yachts have been seized and…
