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…
Words of advice
The Prime Minister has been having some trouble with his inner circle of advisers. Tacitus supplies fine examples of how…
Cher options
The singer Cher, now 75, has announced that, because she refuses to appear old, she is not going to allow…
Gathering storm
Whatever the result of Sue Gray’s report on ‘gatherings’ in Downing Street, there is a political lesson to be learned:…
Stone cold revenge
The statue of the Bristol merchant Edward Colston is apparently guilty of a hate crime. Let us hope that the…
Rethinking Penelope
Problems about the misuse of history, especially on subjects such as race and colonialism, have been running for a long…
