Britain | Latin lovers

A £4m scheme to bring Latin into British state schools begins

A subject seen as being for “posh white boys” tries to extend its reach

2G52A14 A bicycle is chained to a fence next to a sign asking people not to park their bicycles there in Latin and Greek. Cambridge, UK
|Pimlico

Evelyn Waugh, a novelist, valued his classical education. Not because it enabled him to understand ancient languages: Waugh could remember no Greek, write no Latin and enjoyed reading neither. But it did enable him to excel in a more important exercise: spotting and judging those who knew less than he. Such people (“most Americans and most women”) betrayed their deprivation with sentences of “inexcusable vulgarity”. “I do not,” he wrote, “regret my superficial classical studies.”

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Latin lovers”

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