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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Jonathan Sumption |Alexander Larman |Julie Bindel |Peter Stothard
Strategically located in the narrows of the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tripoli, with a fine natural harbor, Malta has attracted the attention of successive conquerors for two millennia: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, French and finally British. In 1565, the island was occupied by a power that was already beginning to look anachronistic: the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Peter Stothard |Tom Jones |Christopher Harding |Stuart Kelly
It is rare to read a book about Cicero that likens its hero to a demagogue. Rome’s prosecutor of conspiracy and corruption in the last years of the Republic is seen more commonly as a toga-draped crusader for virtue. Was he also a ranter steeped in violence, crude character-assassination, tendentious storytelling and racial stereotypes? Yes, argues Josiah Osgood, an American historian, whose book persuasively analyzes a range of Cicero’s murder, fraud and extortion cases.
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Sep 8, 2024 | 
laphamsquarterly.org | April Bernard |Howard Singerman |Peter Stothard
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. —PlutarchTo bring up the subject of education in nearly any sector of the American conversation—after dinner or before breakfast, in print and en blog, via public television or private smartphone—is to invite an argument or endure a sermon. No subject strikes closer to the bone of the democratic idea, and whether standing at the bar or seated on the lawn, all present come armed with two invincible opinions:1.
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Jun 13, 2024 | 
laphamsquarterly.org | Alain de Botton |Peter Stothard |Jackson Lears |Thomas Geoghegan
However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be the widely held belief that our work should make us happy.
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May 14, 2024 | 
engelsbergideas.com | Peter Stothard
Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, second emperor of Rome, has a greater reputation for personal excess than for methodical defence of Rome’s empire. Despotic behaviour at home is part of everyone’s picture of Roman autocracy; determined decision-making abroad not so much. Which of the two we prefer to stress today says more about us than it does about Tiberius.
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Apr 20, 2024 | 
aspectsofhistory.com | Oliver Webb-Carter |Peter Stothard
The Emperor Vitellius was not a man of whom Roman historians have ever been proud. He was one of four emperors in 69 CE, the year after the death of Nero, and was famed mainly for eating massive helpings of seafood. Since his nasty death by a thousand cuts, slowly pushed down from the Capitol hill, he has been seen mainly in art where there was need of a fat villain.
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Feb 7, 2024 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Peter Stothard
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Jan 6, 2024 | 
aspectsofhistory.com | Peter Stothard
Marcus Licinius Crassus was famous for a boast. No one should be considered rich, said the richest Roman of his time, unless he could finance an army from his own income. Twice he lived up to that boast, the first time against Spartacus gaining himself only ingratitude, the second time beside the Euphrates costing his life and a national humiliation. The man who I call ‘The First Tycoon’ was not content with being massively rich.
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Oct 24, 2023 | 
thespectator.com | Matthew Foldi |Timothy Garton Ash |Sam Leith |Peter Stothard
Will today be the day we get a permanent speaker of the House? It’s tough to say. House Republicans are huddling to figure out who they will put forward as their speaker-designee in the hopes that someone — perhaps, anyone! — can steer the rowdy House at a time of growing international strife. Representative Dan Meuser bowed out late last night; and then there were eight.
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Oct 23, 2023 | 
thespectator.com | Timothy Garton Ash |Sam Leith |Peter Stothard |Russell Brand
Lviv, UkraineVasyl, a burly, tattooed infantry commander who lost a leg to a Russian mine on the eastern front, sits swinging his remaining leg on the edge of the treatment table in the “Unbroken” rehabilitation clinic in Lviv. He’s been inside the Russian trenches fifty times, he tells me. His stories are reminiscent of World War One. I ask him what Ukraine needs for victory.
