Ancient Rome
Corbyn, Nero and the Bomb
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton is worried that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will never use the existing…
Of gods and men
Tom Holland on Egypt, where the deities were born and history itself began
The emperors of Brussels
As both sides of the great EU debate line up their forces, it is worth reflecting on the implications of…
John McDonnell’s true economic guru: the emperor Nero
John McDonnell, shadow chancellor in the Corbynite splinter-group, has announced that £120 billion is waiting to be reclaimed from tax…
Corbyn’s democracy
The virtuous Mr Corbyn is insisting that New Old Labour should return to its traditional republican ways and take decisions…
Livy on immigration policy
In the migration crisis, the EU is currently acting just like the ancients, as if border controls did not exist,…
Corbyn and the plebs
Last week, guru Corbyn was invited to reflect on the 2,500-year-old Roman origins of the republicanism to which he is…
Just how republican is Jeremy Corbyn?
True to his antique, bearded ideology, guru Corbyn is a ‘republican’, a form of government invented 2,500 years ago. ‘Republic’…
Boris’s waiting game
While the Labour party rakes over its past in an effort to find a policy for its future, the commentators…
Barometer
Gesture politics A royal home movie from 1933 apparently showed the future Queen, aged seven, and her mother giving a…
Vespasian vs Islamic State
As Ahmed Rashid argued last week, it is hard to see what the West is doing in the Middle East,…
Shaw hand
When is a rape not a rape? It’s an unsettling question — far more so than anything offered up by…
The game of survival
Apparently Fifa emperor Sepp Blatter received a ten-minute standing ovation from his 400 staff when he addressed them after his…
Pliny the Younger on Fifa
In any huge enterprise (like Fifa), where does the rot begin? Pliny the Younger mused on this question in a…
Caesar, Pompey and the SNP
Alex Salmond, the ex-first minister who proved incapable of making Scotland independent, has assured the world that he and his…
Rome’s 99 per cent
In the UK the richest 1 per cent — 300,000 — of the working population control 23 per cent of…
Survivors
Martin Gayford visits two new surveys of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum and Palazzo Strozzi. Reimagining what’s lost is as much of an inspiration as what remains
Greeks vs Greens
The Green party’s manifesto appears to make saving the planet only a small element in its otherwise painfully unoriginal agenda.…
Hyperides vs Jack Straw
In responding as they did to the Daily Telegraph ‘sting’, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind may well have done…
Julius Caesar vs Isis
Isis disseminates videos of beheaded captives to spread simple terror. Julius Caesar knew all about it. In his diaries of…
Socrates and Charlie Hebdo
What would the ancients have made of Charlie Hebdo? The First Amendment tolerates the expression of opinions, however offensive, but…
Oaths for MPs
Before taking their seats in Parliament, all MPs must swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Mark Durkan, MP…
How the Romans taught Latin
Barely a week passes without someone complaining about the teaching of English or foreign languages, usually because it involves too…
Send in the clowns
Nell Gifford joins a colourful troupe of acrobats, contortionists, lion-tamers, freaks and funambulists
Pain, brains and space planes
Explaining the death of a pilot testing a Virgin Galactic rocket-ship, Sir Richard Branson intoned: ‘I truly believe that humanity’s…
