Tacitus
The coronavirus is springing the Thucydides trap
The first casualty of informational war is truth. The first American casualty of COVID-19 was the myth that the United…
We could certainly do with a Tacitus now
As a contemporary John Clapham reported, Queen Elizabeth I ‘had pleasure in reading the best and wisest histories’, and translated…
Tacitus knew how to handle stories from ‘insiders’ and ‘sources’
We read much about ‘fake news’ these days and of efforts to rid the internet of it. But what of…
Cicero could have told you all about the MPs’ standards committee
As Sir Kevin Barron, chair of the MPs’ ‘Standards’ committee, steps down so that his own MP-packed body can adjudicate…
If he’s lucky, Jeremy Corbyn might be as good on defence as Nero
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton is worried that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will never use the existing…
John McDonnell’s true economic guru: the emperor Nero
John McDonnell, shadow chancellor in the Corbynite splinter-group, has announced that £120 billion is waiting to be reclaimed from tax…
Rid of their enemies, the Caesars set about murdering family and friends
According to Francis Bacon, the House of York was ‘a race often dipped in its own blood’. That being so,…
What Tacitus would have made of the applause at Fifa
Apparently Fifa emperor Sepp Blatter received a ten-minute standing ovation from his 400 staff when he addressed them after his…
