What is Boris’s great secret? Does it lie in the bust of the Athenian statesman Pericles (c. 495–429 bc) that he keeps in the Mayor’s office in London?

The key can be found, perhaps, in Pericles’ passionate commitment to the idea of Athens as a ‘living lesson for Greece’. This was the central message of his famous Funeral Speech (430 bc) — not so much the heroism of the dead as the uniqueness of the city for which they had died and the contrast with its bitter rival, the conservative, inward-looking, military-obsessed Sparta.