Like the prime minister, I studied Latin and Greek. His references are pure show-offery in the service of brand Boris I had the same education as Boris Johnson. Not the Eton part, self-evidently – it is in that period, I assume, that he learned to recite, from memory and in Greek, the first 100 lines of the Iliad – but the Balliol classics part. I did that. We were taught by the same men (and men they were). “Effortless superiority”, a ghastly phrase once used by another Balliol prime minister, Herbert Asquith, was the college’s unofficial motto, though there was nothing tranquil or effortless, still less superior, about my own panicky grapplings with Homer. (Women, I should note in passing, were admitted in 1979, 716 years after the first men.) Related: Classical scholars turn backs on Boris Johnson over burqa comments Continue reading...
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