the classics
Has Shakespeare become the mascot of Brexit Britain?
The deployment of Shakespeare to describe Brexit is by now a cliché. It might take the form of a quotation,…
Must Ovid be hijacked by the alt-right?
Who could possibly take exception to the Stoics? One of the more passive arms of Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism required its…
Homer Simpson meets Homer
Milan Kundera has said that Homer’s Odyssey was the first novel. I’m not so sure — the verse kind of…
Homer in the theme park
A favourite game of mine is to imagine Virgil and Homer today, plying their trade among the supermarkets and office…
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
