Agamemnon
A death foretold: The Voyage Home, by Pat Barker, reviewed
Cassandra prophesies Agamemnon’s death as punishment for his crimes in Troy. But she knows that she too must share his fate -- since ‘you can’t cherry-pick prophecy’
Pat Barker travels to Troy, but finds herself diverted somewhere outside Ypres
Sing muse, begins The Iliad, of the wrath of Achilles. We are dropped straight into the tenth year of the…
The greatest anti-war poem of all
The Iliad begins with a grudge and ends with a funeral. In between are passages, if not necessarily of boredom,…
Carry on Don
One of these days I will probably see a production of Don Giovanni set in a research station in the…
Powerful pathos
The impersonator — Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan — speaks, in different voices, to a single primitive pleasure centre in his…

![‘Achilles has a dispute with Agamemnon [following Briseis being taken away, and Achilles refusing to fight until she is returned]’, J.H. Tischbein, 1776, oil on canvas. (Bridgeman Images)](https://spectator-australia-preprod.go-vip.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/achillies.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)








