Review of How to Teach Classics to Your Dog on Classics for All

The website Classics for All, which promotes the teaching of Classics in schools, has published a lovely review of How to Teach Classics to Your Dog, which will be out in paperback next week. Here's a link.

Interview with Perlego about How to Teach Classics to Your Dog

 

I've been interviewed by Lucy Hoyle of Perlego, about How to Teach Classics to Your Dog, will be published in paperback soon. Here's the interview.

Classics issue of SCOOP

 

It's nearly here! I had great pleasure in guest-editing the June issue of SCOOP magazine. The theme of which, as I expect you can guess, is... Classics. There's an interview with Mary Beard, and plenty of stories, facts and more.

You can order a copy or subscribe to the magazine at the SCOOP website.

Launch of How to Teach Classics to Your Dog, and a review of Peter Stothard

 Today is the day we are launching HOW TO TEACH CLASSICS TO YOUR DOG, my quirky introduction

to the Greeks and the Romans. I very much hope that you enjoy it, and also, if you do, would be very grateful for any reviews. You can order a copy here, from Waterstones, or pop into your local independent bookshop.

I've reviewed Peter Stothard's new book, with a suitably classical theme, The Last Assassin, for The Spectator. Read it here.

Finished copies of HOW TO TEACH CLASSICS TO YOUR DOG

 

 Finished copies of How to Teach Classics to Your Dog have arrived - they look absolutely beautiful. 

"Engaging and funny and clever. Written with the verve of a novelist and the insights of a scholar. Illuminates the pleasures and relevance of the Classics today." - Dr Harry Sidebottom, author of the Warrior of Rome series.

Proof of How to Teach Classics to Your Dog

Ecce! Proofs have arrived of How to Teach Classics to Your Dog, which will be published in October by Oneworld.

"Philip Womack and Una – his optima canis – are tremendous companions in their journey round the classical world. The ultimate vademecum.." Harry Mount

Cover for HOW TO TEACH CLASSICS TO YOUR DOG by Philip Womack

I'm absolutely thrilled to reveal the spiffing cover for my first non-fiction book, How to Teach Classics to Your Dog, which will be published in October by Oneworld.

How To Teach Classics To Your Dog by Philip Womack: Oneworld, 2020

From the immortal Molesworth

Exciting news: I've got my very first non-fiction book coming out next year. Published by Oneworld, it's called How To Teach Classics To Your Dog, and will be a light-hearted exploration of the world of classics. Watch this space for more info.

Birds in the Ancient World by Jeremy Mynott: review in Literary Review

I've reviewed Jeremy Mynott's new book, Birds in the Ancient World, for Literary Review.

Classics and Myth workshop for Classics for All

I'm delighted to announce I will be running a workshop for Classics for All on myth and creative writing. It's available for teachers: have a look here.

THE FALL OF TROY: Part 1

The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis by Cornelius van Haarlem

The fall of Troy is one of the most important events in myth and history. Its causes and consequences ripple backwards and forwards through time and space. You could draw a line from pretty much any character in Greek myth and find a connection towards someone who had fought and died in that war.

I have always been interested in connections and causes: and in the following weeks I will be exploring the main events that led up to the Trojan War.

You could say, then, that it began with an apple. A golden apple, thrown down onto the grass during the wedding of the sea-goddess Thetis, and her mortal husband, Peleus. Thetis had not wanted to marry Peleus: but he had grappled with her as she changed forms, like Proteus, from snake to fire and back again; and so the gods were called, and the wedding celebrations began.

But in the bustle of preparations - one could not say, necessarily, that they were happy -  Peleus and Thetis  forgot to invite one god. The original wicked fairy, Eris, the goddess of strife, was passed over. The gods, careless, feasted and drank, and gods can feast and drink with the best of them. One guest - a young nymph, perhaps, yawning as she longed for her bed, unable to leave before her divine mistress decided it was time to go - picked up something pretty and golden that had rolled towards her feet.

It was an apple, gleaming and golden, and on it were inscribed the words: “To the most beautiful.”

Goddesses are not known for their modesty. Dignities will be stood upon, privileges invoked. The minor goddesses and nymphs bowed out of the way, as, flashing to the fore, the queen of the goddesses herself stood forwards. Two peacocks pecked at her feet; a diadem flashed upon her forehead; proud and haughty she did not even have to glance at her husband Zeus, the king of the gods, as she knew that he would give the apple to her.

But her husband hesitated. And what was this - Aphrodite, the goddess of love, in a dress embroidered with dolphins, long hair falling down her white arms, was looking as if she might have an interest in the matter. And even Athene - so dear to Zeus’s heart, having sprung out of his own head - was adjusting her helmet and looking at herself in the reflected sheen of her warrior’s shield. Concealed behind a nearby tree, Eris watched all, and laughed. She had picked the apple herself, and had inscribed those fatal words with her long fingernails. She lazily picked up a grape from a bunch held by an attendant, and strolled off, delighted with the conflict she had caused.

Zeus, looking at his wife, his daughter and the primal goddess of love, could not bear to be the judge. Choosing between these three mighty goddesses would bring untold strife to the calm mansions of Olympos. Zeus was not a god who enjoyed conflict, and, although he was not necessarily known for his tact, did tend to spend rather a lot of time mopping up after his own mistakes. Sighing - because he, after all, knew what was going to happen, even if nobody else did - he decreed that a mortal man would be found who would be arbiter; and he, Zeus, would wash his hands of it, and go back to enjoying his wine with Ganymede.

Laughter began again in the wedding, and the guests returned to their carousing, glad that the strife had been put off - for now. Peleus and Thetis were joined in marriage beneath the leaves of a broad oak; and the Fates, who were attendant in their white robes, spinning, whispered of the son that would be born to them: the mightiest warrior of all the Greeks: Achilles. The three goddesses retired; and plotted.

NEXT WEEK: The Judgement of Paris

THE ARROW OF APOLLO is a novel that takes place after the fall of Troy. Have a look at the funding page on Unbound here. 

The Arrow of Apollo by Philip Womack launches on Unbound

Today is a great day: I have launched The Arrow of Apollo on Unbound, the wonderful crowd-funding publisher. I'm very excited about this - partly because they make such beautiful books, but also because it's a chance for this idea to reach an audience directly. There is a synopsis below, but you can read more here on the Unbound website.

An epic children's adventure set in the legendary past: three friends must find the magical Arrow of Apollo before evil consumes the world

The gods are leaving the earth, tempted by other worlds where they can live in peace. Only a few retain an interest in the mortals left behind, including Hermes, the messenger god, and Apollo, Lord of Light. Other, darker, more ancient forces are wakening, and threatening to take over.
In The Arrow of Apollo three teenagers encounter increasingly perilous situations in order to defeat Python, the most terrible enemy of all. It draws freely on Greek and Roman myth, whilst telling stories that have not been told before in a gripping, fast-flowing tale for boys and girls aged eleven plus, combining literary quality with an absorbing plot.
In The Arrow of Apollo, two opposing houses are forced to come together to face a terrible danger. Silvius, son of Aeneas, of the Italian House of the Wolf, is given a task by a dying centaur. The dark god Python is rising and massing an army of unstoppable force. The only thing that can save the world is the Arrow of Apollo - but it was split into two.
Against his father’s wishes, Silvius and his friend Elissa must travel to the land of their enemies, the Achaeans.
Meanwhile, Tisamenos, the son of Orestes, is facing his own dangers in the kinghouse of Mykenai. A plot is afoot against both him and his father, and he is the only one who can stop it.
When Silvius, Elissa and Tisamenos meet, they enter a final, terrifying race to reunite Arrowhead and Shaft, and destroy the army of the Python.
There’s one more problem: a prophecy tells that one of them will die.

Eureka Moment piece for The Guardian: Homer's Iliad

I've written a piece for The Guardian's Eureka Moment series, about Homer's Iliad. Here it is.

Review round up for The Double Axe by Philip Womack

There have been two wonderful reviews of The Double Axe. 

Suzi Feay in The Financial Times which you can read here.

Toby Clements in The Telegraph which you can see here.

Catullus' Bedspread by Daisy Dunn: Review for The Spectator

I've reviewed Catullus' Bedspread by Daisy Dunn for The Spectator. Read it here.

Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard: review

Homer reading: This is what classics is like

Salve! I've reviewed Mary Beard's collection of, um, reviews, for The Daily Telegraph. Read it here.

Books of the Year 2012

Yuletide be here again, and with it the inevitable lists. I'm not going to do separate ones this year: here they all are, in time for any last minute Christmas shopping that you may be doing. Of course I've already done mine. Naturally. I won't be wandering the shops on Monday. At all.

Here goes:

Alan Garner: matter of Britain

Fiction of the year 2012

Boneland by Alan Garner is a very strange book, but also a very compelling one. It rounds off the story begun by The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in an intelligent and insightful manner. Highly recommended. Another literary offspring is Andrew Motion's Silver, which takes up the tale of Jim Hawkin's son as he returns to Treasure Island. It's a beautiful, glossy creature, and enthralling. Back in Tudorland we find Hilary Mantel on tingly form in Bring up the Bodies: I may be the only person in the world not to love it as much as I loved Wolf Hall, but it's still head and ruff above the rest. In the Orchard, the Swallows by Peter Hobbs is an elegant novella about imprisonment; and Deborah Levy's Swimming Home is a spookily brilliant middle-class holiday novel with a twist. Finally, Ali Smith's Artful is a dazzlingly engrossing semi-fictional meta-fiction, if there can be such a thing: her quicksilver mind and lightning connections will leave you gasping for more.

Non-fiction of the year

I've read no new non-fiction this year at all. A Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers came out a while ago, but it's worth a mention - a charming, lively and enchanting account of the things that make up our conception of the unicorn. I was intrigued to learn that certain herdsmen induce their animals to grow one horn, and make them the leaders of their herds - this gives them greater power. Our horsey, gentle, mystical creature arises from a fascinating mishmash of real animals and legends. City of the Sharpnosed Fish by Peter Parsons also came out a while ago, but is a very enjoyable study of the papyrus fragments that came out of Oxyrhyncus and which don't, on the whole, contain new poems by Sappho, but do show a rich and detailed picture of ordinary life in a Hellenistic Egyptian city. Oxyrhyncus had such a hold on the imagination that the novelist Ronald Firbank wrote a scene in which Professor Inglepin reads a new Sapphic fragment: "In plain English," the professor said with some reluctance, "It means: Could not [he wagged a finger] Could not, for the fury of her feet."

Antigone at the National

Orpheus: The Song of Life by Anne Wroe is as beautiful to read and magical as its subject, whilst The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deustcher is an account of how language is how it is which will leave your brain fizzing with delight and joy.

Poetry of the year

Antigonick by Anne Carson is my overall book of the year. It's absolutely marvellous: spooky, finely-tuned and compulsive, a version of Sophocles' Antigone which powers on like a lit fuse. Sidereal by Rachel Boast  is an extraordinary debut: considered, careful, rich and multilayered, with many striking images: "Behind the house the dark rooms / in a shape called forest." Almost Invisible by Mark Strand is a series of haunting, witty and wise prose poems.

Classics of the year

Loving, Living and Party Going by Henry Green is a new source of celebration for me. These three novels are so rich, and with a sideways approach to language which compels and grips.  Party going in particular is almost indescribably good: dense yet vivid, it takes place in the confines of a railway station whilst all around the fog whirls. Green should be up there with Evelyn Waugh in the pantheon: but he's also one of those writers that I will now keep as a secret favourite, to be savoured often. The Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice is an obscure radio play which is an adaptation of the line "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." A strange, dreamy experience. Another obscurer couple of classics which I have rediscovered are Craven House by Patrick Hamilton, a gas-lit study of hypocrisy in a boarding house, and The Violins of Saint Jacques, Patrick Leigh-Fermor's only novel, which tells the splendid tale of a Caribbean island ripped apart. I was reading Edmund Gosse's Father and Son in a crowded pub when someone said it must be a terribly gloomy book because of the grim photograph on the cover: how wrong could he have been. This is a seminal memoir of a youthful spirit breaking out. A special mention should also go to Robert Aickman's banjaxed ghost stories in The Unsettled Dust.

I've been re-indulging in a lot of drama this year: The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar, which I didn't get to see at the Donmar, so read instead - boisterous fun. There are some lines in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi which still have the power to make me stand and stare; and of course, every time I read William Shakespeare's Macbeth it's like being doused in flame and blood.

Children's Books of the Year

The Changeling by Philippa Gregory is a perfect young adult confection, featuring a devilishly handsome young monk and a beautiful, disinherited aristocrat. Frances Hardinge's A Face Like Glass is as zany and inventive as any of her books, whilst Eva Ibbotson's The Abominables is a swan song for a fine talent. Black Arts by Prentice and Weil is an intelligent thriller set in an Elizabethan London throbbing with spirits, whilst Philip Reeve's Goblins! is a delightful take on the orc-and-sword fantasy.

Caroline Lawrence's The Poisoned Honey Cake is a joy, instructive and witty about ancient Rome; and no boy worth his salt will be able to put down Atomic! by Guy Bass, a comic book mash up throbbing with kinetic energy. More eerie and strange is Fright Forest by Marcus Sedgwick; Kate Saunders' The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop is a hilarious and clever fantasy featuring a giant talking cat - and talking wallpaper.
My book of the year, though, is threefold - I can't choose between them.  Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher is a blackly brilliant fantasy containing Dr Dee, fairies, time travel and a genie; Maggot Moon by Sall Gardner is a striking and bold young adult novel; and The Diviners by Libba Bray is simply marvellous, featuring quite the best heroine to be found in young adult fiction and beyond, a gin-swilling flapper with psychic powers.

Bummer of the year

The time I spent reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's godawful memoir A Death in the Family is time I would dearly like back. How a book like this can be hailed as a masterpiece across so many countries and yet read like such a draining nightmare is beyond me. It's about as much fun as sticking red hot needles into your eyes whilst somebody drags their nails down a blackboard.

From the Book Mountain: City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt

A while ago I reported the problem of "book lag", something which everyone whose professional duty it is to read books suffers from (and, I imagine, a lot of people whose duty it isn't). This means that perfectly interesting and enjoyable books get forgotten about; you get half way through them before, suddenly you are called upon to review three 900 page novels by the day after yesterday, or similar. Inevitably, the books on my Book Mountain (rapidly becoming a Book Himalayas) turn out to be worth it. One such was Gardner Botsford's A Life of Privilege, Mostly, which memorably featured a tiger-skinned lady chasing its unsuspecting hero with a whip.

This time it's a star turn for Peter Parson's City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007). This charming, entertaining and informative book is not only easy to read, it also delights with its clear-sighted analysis of the papyrus fragments found at the site of the Egyptian city of Oxyrhyncos. Here, in the early twentieth century, the archaeologists Grenfell and Hunt stumbled upon a classicist's dream - mounds and mounds of intact papyroi.

Obelix: "These Egyptians are crazy!"

A few of them gave up texts of Homer; there was a lost play of Euripides, Hypsipyle, (which it is thought concerns the cursing of a group of women by Aphrodite for neglecting her shrine; her curse was to give them all extreme body odour. Perhaps that's why it was lost.) There were songs of Sappho (who features in a Ronald Firbank novel, Vainglory, in which a professor reads out, proudly, the fragment to assembled high society: "Could not (he wagged a finger) Could not, for the fury of her feet!") and other Greek lyricists. But most were prosaic, and as such add a huge amount to our knowledge and understanding of life at the height of the Roman Empire, just before Christianity.

There are many, shall we say, odoriferous anecdotes, but my favourite is this: Kallirhoe writes to a friend: "I make obeisance on your behalf every day before the Lord God Serapis. From the day you left we miss your turds, wishing to see you." It seems that those Egyptians had slightly different priorities. Then there's a "joke billet doux": "Apion and Epimas say to their very dear Epaphroditos: 'If you let us bugger you and it's OK with you, we shall stop thrashing you - if you let us bugger you.' Keep well! Keep well!'" As Obelix might say: "These Egyptians are crazy."

Spicy and engaging, Peter Parsons makes a knowing Hermes in this, his guide to a world that we can build up from the tiniest of particles into a whole, bustling, human universe.

 

Books of the Year, Day One: Classics

Merry Christmas to you, and God Bless You, One and All! (Flings away crutches, downs eggnog, kisses unsuitable person under mistletoe, passes out with paper crown over one eye.) Well I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas. Mine was distinctly unbookish (apart from dipping into Samuel Pepys); to rectify the matter I am returning to my books of the year round ups, which I hope will become a tradition as Yuleish as weeping over the Doctor Who special. (What? I didn't do that! Not me, guvn'or.) To start with, here are my Classics of the Year.

1. Vathek by William Beckford 

Published by Oxford Classics, this is insane, terrifying and brilliant, concerning the Caliph Vathek, who meets an ugly stranger; said stranger promises him untold power and the knowledge of the pre-Adamite sultans; meanwhile, his Satanic mother Carathis gloats and commits various atrocities with her mute negresses. It veers from extreme farce (when Vathek shoves, one by one, fifty of the most beautiful of his subjects' children off a cliff) to madness (Koran-quoting dwarfs, anyone?). It's, basically, totally cool. Beckford was 20 when he wrote it, and it's my Classic of the Year for its complete and utter disregard for narrative and, well, anything, but yet managing to be scintillating. The bit where the mute negresses run into the marsh looking for poisonous weeds; the bit where Carathis storms around hell; the bit where people are being tortured for eternity with their hearts set on fire - just go and read it, you won't regret it.

2. The Iliad by Homer (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Some thought this new version (see comment below) too colloquial - would Achilles, asked The Economist drily, really say "I don't give a damn about that man?" I think he probably would. Mitchell retained the grandeur of the original, whilst injecting it with some zest and spice - an excellent version for those who haven't yet been introduced to the wonders of Homer.

3. The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

"The moving toyshop of the heart..." A fabulous little satirical epyllion, ordered yet chaotic, lovely, shocking, sharp and warm all at the same time, it left me longing for a twenty-first century Pope.

4. Eline Vere by Louis Couperus

Printed by the stalwart Pushkin Press, the cover of this beautiful edition shows a woman draped in a kimono, made inert by ennui, as is Eline Vere herself. The Dutch Couperus was revered in his time; his highly realistic novels drip with detail, as gorgeously and tightly rendered as a painting of his countryman's. The riotous characters and scenes in this book seemed to be so close to us in spirit and temperament, so much more so than the aristocrats of War and Peace, or the WASPs of Edith Wharton; there is a naughtiness, an impishness in his prose which I found very touching. Eline Vere herself is a complicated heroine (if one can call her that), and reading this you sometimes feel as if you've overdone it on the cherry brandy, but it's entirely worth it to become wholly immersed in a world both familiar and strange. There is a Dutch film, but if anyone knows if there's one with English subtitles (my Dutch being, er, non-existent), I'd be grateful.

5. Electra by Sophocles, The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, Philoctetes by Sophocles 

This was the year I returned to Greek tragedy. There is something in the searing purity of Sophocles that cannot be garnered anywhere else; and the cosmic otherworldliness of Aeschylus feels like looking into a clouded mirror, back into the depths of our civilisation from which spring these extraordinary tales. The Philoctetes in particular I have been enjoying, finding in its tale of isolation, friendship and civilisation something that resonates widely, it being perhaps the most 'modern' of Sophocles' plays (containing, as it does, a meta-textual play directed by Odysseus). But lurking behind its resolution lies the future fall of Troy - and in that is the genius of Sophocles. I also highly recommend the version of Philoctetes by Seamus Heaney: The Cure at Troy, which adds an eeriness.

6. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Every time I read this I find it more savage. The murder of Mr Prendergast by the lunatic! The deaths of onlookers at the wedding of Paul and Margot! Almost every paragraph is laced with venom and wit, and it never gets any less fresh. I also read The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold again this year, but found it hasn't lasted nearly as much - I think because its "trick" seems so outdated. It's something you need to look at in the context of its time, whereas Decline and Fall stretches its black limbs across the centuries, settling in for good.

7. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

This occupies a special place in my mental furniture, much like an old rockinghorse, having responded warmly to it as a child: its tale of young clairvoyants terrified of being found out for fear of death is both thrilling and poignant. And God I wish I was a mind-reader. It would make writing novels so much easier.

8. How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston

A little-known, and overlooked, novella, about the friendship between an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and a labourer on his lands; they come together in the trenches of the First World War, but their friendship does little but tear them apart as others misconstrue it. Written in sometimes quite oblique prose, it nevertheless manages to sear its imagery onto the brain.

9. Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

The first Fitzgerald I've read - and why don't people read her more? This is a slim book but it contains within it more intelligence, wit, vividness and awareness of humanity than most. It concerns the lives of a group of houseboaters and is often quite nightmarish in its piercing lyricism.


10. A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford

Published by Daunt Books, this deserves a mention both because Daunts are doing a great job of bringing out neglected books, and also because you can see what a great writer Bedford would become. This novel is very curate's-eggish; the opening chapter is peerless, but the bits in between can be remarkably stilted. However, it is worth persevering with just to see how a writer forms herself.

Pip pip, then, till tomorrow...

Memorial by Alice Oswald: review

Paris and Helen in the film Troy

I've been very lucky this year with Classics-oriented books to review. I've written about Alice Oswald's beautiful, heartbreaking poem Memorial for The Daily Telegraph, here. It takes the deaths of the heroes and the similes out of the Iliad and sculpts something entirely fresh and exciting.  Each dead soldier is remembered, given life.