Insubstantial rock-hard durability
The durability of things and of cultures intrigues me; and particularly when those artefacts are themselves physically fragile or insubstantial.
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Zeus dispenses with practicalities
Zeus here neatly rebuffs his daughter Athene's requests. I like his suitably arch reaction, which puts all supplicants in their...
Ill guidance, bad leadership
A strikingly modern sounding comment by Dante, resonating painfully when the evening news seems to be forever picking apart the...
As it sounded, so it looked
In the preface to his marvelous translation of Dante, Clive James mentions the poet's pithiness. I can't judge it in...
And this is my epic…
Listening time: under 4 minutes.
A marvelous account of a butcher bursting in to Lawrence Durrell's office during...
Podcast review – Adam Nicolson’s The Mighty Dead
Listening time: 8 minutes.
Enjoy this celebration of a favourite book by a favourite author about a favourite...
Fortune’s favour
This reminds me of an anonymous Elizabethan verse which I cite from memory:
'Lift up thy heart and courage...
Strategic consideration
The wild card of ancient Greek military planning was the existence and randomness of divine intervention. You never knew which...
Synaesthetic sound
An early evocation of synaesthesia - I like Dante's portrayal of a voice in terms of visibility. This is from...
All-encompassing flow
The cadence of this metaphor has the abundance and freshness of clear, flowing water. It likens Virgil, whom Dante views...
Frayed by sin
A surprising one, this, as sin is often presented, nowadays, as socially acceptable, even desirable 'vice' - something naughty-but-nice, essentially...
Pah to the Iliad
Tom dismisses one of the world's greatest epics, a 3,000 year old classic of war, on the grounds that its...
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