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For once I’m speechless. It’s Thursday lunchtime and in the last 330 hours I have talked publicly about 7 different ancient Greek topics and one Roman one. Conference season is always exhausting, but...
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Ancestral Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me.
Edwardian DunbarI've needed for some time to find out more about my mother's family. She died in 2016, but had refused to talk much about her own mother, who killed herself almost exactly 50 years...
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On (Briefly) Returning to KCL and Supervisory Best Practice
Weird event of the week was attending a King's College London graduation day at the magnificent Royal Festival Hall. Having left this university unnecessarily, under a humiliating cloud entirely of...
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On Vindication and Robert the Bruce's Spider
What a difference a month can make! A year ago I was in the greatest pickle of my working life. Fortunately, the visionary Head of Classics & Ancient History and the management at Durham, which...
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Five New North-Eastern Classics Initiatives
Yesterday was the launch of five new initiatives fostering understanding and enjoyment of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds in the North-East of England. It was drizzling on and off, and the lawn...
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Finding the Argo, Medea and Alcestis: Adventures in Thessaly
I’ve just ticked off a crucial item on my bucket list by touring Thessaly, and identifying key places in Greek mythology. I’m in a break between surgery for breast cancer and radiotherapy and am...
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Good Times A-coming: Join me in Greece?
Last time I blogged I was entering an unpleasant period of medical treatment, but I’m thrilled to say that I’m nearly through and have been given the all-clear. So I’m getting back down to business...
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The Mystery of Greek Theatre's Use in Ancient Medicine
The Ancient Theatre of EpidaurosOne of the reasons I’m so thrilled to be leading a retreat, with an initiative called Travelgems, in the north-eastern Greek Peloponnese in July,[i] is that I can...
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Text of TLS Review of 2 Books on 2 Cleopatras
CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTEREgyptian princess, Roman prisoner, African QueenJane Draycott (336pp. Bloomsbury. £27.99). CLEOPATRA Her history, her mythFrancine Prose (216pp. Yale University Press. £15.99). The...
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Goodbye to My Father, Man of God
Like Shakespeare, Raphael and Ingrid Bergman, my father, the Reverend Professor Stuart George Hall, died yesterday on his birthday, 7 June. He had just completed 95 years alive. Given his age, his...
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Nine Questions for the British Library's Chief Executive
Seven weeks after the British Library was afflicted by a ransomware cyber-attack, its chief executive, Sir Roly Keating, has belatedly issued a substantial statement. While it is indisputable that the...
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1772: James Somerset versus Aristotle
I’m leading a project exploring the ubiquity of Aristotle outside the Academy. He has often been mobilised in progressive causes, but nothing can be done to rehabilitate the muddled thinking of the...
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Pope Francis on Ukraine: What Has His Holiness been Reading?
'You've got to be in it to win it' goes the adage cited by academics working overtime to submit lengthy applications to the lottery for external research grants in order to save their jobs. But Pope...
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Day of Drama in Dublin
Green was everywhere. The elation was palpable. Half the people on the flight from Stansted were dressed as leprechauns and the other half in Ireland rugby merch. But I wasn’t going for St Patrick’s...
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Greeks but Few Romans in the Granite City
Four years, an epidemic and a job change after a conference I co-convened with Dr Tom Mackenzie (and blogged about), on the Scottish leader Calgacus, who stood up to the Roman invaders, I have finally...
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Daisy Dunn interviews me in The Daily Telegraph
‘Face ghosts or they will have their way’How the ancient Furies escaped from the pages of Edith Hall’s library to cast a shadow across her lifeThe Daily Telegraph - Saturday27 Apr 2024By Daisy DUNN...
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Classics, Speaking Skills & the Dawn of Hope
One of Keir Starmer’s first statements as PM has been that he wants to reduce the number of people going to prison through renewed efforts to cut reoffending. He has appointed the admirable James...
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Euripides on the 50th Anniversary of the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus
On July 10 I was in Nicosia and privileged to witness the first public performance of a production of Euripides’ Phoenician Women directed by a great classicist and former PhD student of mine. The...
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Inaugural Durham Prize in Classical Reception 2024
The results are in!Dr Caroline Barron, Director of the Durham Centre in Classical Reception, has made them public. The panel of judges, Durham scholars who work on Classical Reception, met on...
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How Low Will Clytemnestra Go? On Editing Aeschylus
My edition of Aeschylus’ Agamemnonhas finally been published, and I’m relieved to say that the paperback edition is currently priced at ‘only’ £31.99. It has taken me twenty years, on and off, to...
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Classics, Class and ‘Class. Civ.’ Qualifications in the 21st Century
On Thursday I was excited to deliver the inaugurating lecture of the new Leeds University Centre for Ancient World and Classical Reception Studies. The Director, Dr Bev Back, had asked me to report in...
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A Week in Classics: Progress, Celebration and Grief
What a week that was. Forgetting that my surgeon told me last year I had to slow down, on Tuesday we wound up our pilot course, attached to both the Durham-based campaign Advocating Classics Education...
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My Telegraph article on Gladiators in Britain
The brutal reality of gladiators in Roman BritainHeadless skeletons, feral bears and female fighters – a new British Museum show revolutionises our understanding of life in 175 AD Edith Hall It’s 175...
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Preserving Democracy & Resisting Tyranny with Aristotle
Friends, especially Americans, and people I’ve encountered recently are all asking the same question: when democracy, free speech, truthful journalism and civil society are under attack, and...
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Review of Dan Mendelsohn's Translation of the ODYSSEY
Homer’s Odyssey is the most familiar work of ancient literature besides Aesop’s Fables. It has been translated into most world languages and transformed into countless operas, plays, novels, poems,...
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