Thursday 21 August 2008

Classic Boris

Boris Johnson - the capital Boris, as Malty describes him below (under Semicolons and Snails) - put on a splendid and very funny performance in last night's Who Do You Think You Are? The mighty Boris (King's Scholar, Brackenbury Scholar) is living proof that it's best to put good classicists in charge of everything . It was classicists - educated in a supposedly defunct tradition - who ran the empire, being well versed in such matters from their readings in Latin history and literature. Without classicists we'd be nowhere - in fact we probably are: I doubt there's a single decent classicist in Broon's mob.

11 comments:

  1. I give you Peter Stothard and Mary Beard. Those two are brilliant and at least they're majorly influential at your most important news organ.

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  2. Yes - a surprising number of classicists in the print media, which must be a good thing. They used to be all over the Civil Service too, sending each other elegant memos peppered with Latin tags and classical allusions. Those days are long gone...

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  3. Spot on Nige, enough damage has been done to this poor old country of ours by the PPE brigade, even more if Milly Band takes control.

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  4. If anybody asks, Nige, you've not seen me...

    Excellent post, by the way.

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  5. i don't normally advertise my wares, but i wrote a homage to Boris:

    http://elberry.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/why-boris-johnson-should-be-absolute-monarch/

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  6. Ah yes, the glories of empire. If only Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis had been running the show in Britain circa 1914...

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  7. TEMPORA MVTATNTVR ET NOS MVTAMVR IN ILLIS.

    EHEV!

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  8. Eheu indeed!
    Eheu fugaces labuntur anni...

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  9. Okay, okay, okay clever school boys. Ya gonna translate for the illiterate (read, lazy) American?

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  10. Untranslatable Susan...
    Roughly, Alas the fleeting years pass away (Horace).

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  11. I'm not too certain whether Latin will help Boris in Beijing?

    However I can confirm that CRI now broadcast in Esperanto.

    This can be seen at http://esperanto.cri.cn/

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