Home-schooling, Plato style
Education is cumulative. The idea that it will be lost on a generation because, for one out of 42 terms…
Roman pop-up hospitals
The speed with which ‘model’ Nightingale hospitals have been designed and erected across the UK reminds one of the experts…
The health of the people
The Prime Minister recently quoted Cicero’s famous dictum salus populi suprema lex esto, translating it as ‘Let the health (salus)…
Happy hebdomaversary
The Spectator’s 10,000th hebdomaversary (hebdomas, ‘a group of seven’: a weekly cannot have an anniversary) will surely be celebrated with…
When life becomes art
Covid-19 has not yet reached its peak but already the moguls of the small screen are plotting how to monetise,…
Crisis management
When a major crisis strikes in the modern world, the state and international bodies such as the IMF and World…
Needs must
It must be infuriating for those who see the Prime Minister as a prisoner of a rigid elitist mindset that…
How to be self-sufficient
Those with signs of Covid-19 are being asked to ‘self-isolate’ (Latin insula, ‘island’). But do they have the mindset for…
Ancient and modern
Plagued by the past
Viral hysteria
Last week Ross Clark expatiated on the hysteria and panic generated by Covid-19 that threatens to send the world into…
Brevity goes a long way
The PM is insisting that the briefings he finds in his red box every evening should be, well, brief, and…
Performance artists
The PM was filmed introducing his new cabinet by getting them to answer in unison how many hospitals, how many…
Beyond impeachment
An impeachment trial is overseen by Congress and Senate, who both make the law and (in this case) sit in…
Living in hope
The gloom that envelopes the Labour party stands in strong contrast to the confidence and hope that the Prime Minister…
Hair we go
Lord Heseltine’s electrifying hair once whipped the party faithful into paroxysms of euphoria. But since today he sees his hopes…
Family matters
There are as many explanations for Harry and Meghan’s problems with the royal family as there are commentators. May as…
Does ‘equality’ mean the same to Rebecca Long-Bailey as it did to Plato?
The candidates battling for the leadership of the Labour party never stop banging on about ‘social justice’ and ‘equality’. But…
What difference will ‘weirdos and misfits’ make to the civil service?
Dominic Cummings has written a modest blog inviting mathematicians, physicists, AI specialists and other experts to help him revolutionise the…
It’s science, not protest, that will save the planet
One might expect that the challenge of climate change would encourage many young people to take up Stem (science, technology,…
We could certainly do with a Tacitus now
As a contemporary John Clapham reported, Queen Elizabeth I ‘had pleasure in reading the best and wisest histories’, and translated…
Socrates would have made the leaders’ debates real interrogations
There is something deeply unsatisfying about the debates featuring party leaders. The questions put to them, whether by an audience…
The ancients were aware that there’s more to making speeches than just words
Cicero said that the good orator could arouse in the listener many different feelings: ‘delight, grief, laughter, tears, admiration, hatred,…
For the ancient Greeks, the only point in taking part was to win
The England team reached the final of the rugby world cup in Japan but they lost. As athletes, they knew…
Could a sex-strike solve Brexit?
Last week the Lawyers Group of the charity Classics for All held its fifth moot (cf. ‘meet’) in the Supreme…
Roman funerals had real ‘emotional intelligence’
Today’s funerals, featuring shiny black hearses and top hats, lack (we are assured) ‘emotional intelligence’. Colourful coffins featuring pictures of…
