Harry Mount

Harry Mount is editor of The Oldie and author of How England Made the English (Penguin) and Et Tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever (Bloomsbury)

All human life – and death – is here: the British parish church

In ‘Church Going’, the poem that gives this charming book its title, Philip Larkin talks about ‘one of the crew that tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were… Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique’. Well, Andrew Ziminski is king of the ruin-bibbers, randy for antique churches. He doesn’t just know what a rood-loft is; he’s

The fury of the Med

Scylla and Charybdis are said to have sat off the Sicilian coast, where Mike Lynch’s boat foundered, and where 3,200 years before, Odysseus navigated between the monster and the whirlpool. Many think of the Med as a gentle sea, more like an oversized eternity pool, unbothered by the killer storms and cliff-high waves that rage

No wonder the National Trust is bowing to climate activists

Just like the Anglo-Saxons disastrously paying off the Viking marauders with Danegeld, so the National Trust has attempted to do the same with its desperate virtue-signalling. For the last decade, the Trust has fallen on its knees in deference to every fashionable cause. But, again like the Anglo-Saxons with the Vikings, they can never do

It’s better to be quick than clever

What’s the biggest division in life? Between clever people and stupid people? Between the good-looking and the ugly? No. The fundamental difference is between the ones who do things quickly and the ones who do them slowly.  You know that friend who emails you back the moment you email them for a favour? Or the

How to avoid the tourist backlash

Europe is revolting against the tourist invasion. This summer, Venice has started charging a tourist tax to keep visitors at bay. Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera have just set up inter-island protests under the slogan, ‘Let’s change course – let’s set limits to tourism’. Barcelona is planning to ban Airbnb. In the Cinque Terre, on

Why does the National Trust hate itself so much?

In its latest bout of self-hatred, the National Trust has declared that ‘people from the global majority are widely under-represented in the outdoors, accounting for only 1 per cent of National Park visitors in 2019’. That’s despite 15 per cent of the population in England and Wales being represented by the global majority. It’s one

Conspicuous luxury looks cheap

Street robbery has become an epidemic. Horrible thugs are stealing luxury watches and jewellery in broad daylight. The number of luxury watches stolen almost doubled in England and Wales between 2015 and 2022 – with 25,802 stolen in 2022. The problem is particularly bad in London, where the Metropolitan Police have set up a special unit

Could I find love at the British Museum?

Mirabile dictu, as we Latin lovers like to say. In other words, wonderful news! Attractive women have fallen for ancient Rome – and for classicists. Well, that’s what the British Museum thought when it cooked up its advertising campaign for its new show, Legion: Life in the Roman Army, about Roman legionaries. The Museum put

When John Lennon took on Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries would have been 90 on 17 February. To commemorate his life, Radio 4 is broadcasting Barry Humphries: Gloriously Uncut that evening. For the programme, I recalled the joy of talking to Barry about the column he wrote for the Oldie. What a delight, too, it was to hear from the great diplomat Sir

The grim life of a Roman legionary

Over the heather the wet wind blows, I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose. The rain comes pattering out of the sky, I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why. The mist creeps over the hard grey stone, My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone. W.H. Auden was right. Life for

Starmer is wrong to defend the National Trust

Keir Starmer is drawing up his battle-lines for the next election. First, he came for the public schools, pledging to whack VAT on school fees. Now he’s going for the traditionalist wing of National Trust members.  In a speech today, he accuses the Tories of ‘waging a war’ on charities and civic society. He claims

The Elizabethan grandeur of Middle Temple Hall

It’s the most beautiful restaurant in London – and the oldest. Built in 1573, Middle Temple Hall is celebrating its 450th anniversary. It’s also where Shakespeare held the premiere of his Christmas play, Twelfth Night, in 1602. How strange that hardly anyone knows about the best Elizabethan hall in London. It’s mostly used by barristers but the public

The joy of an archive

It’s amazing how quickly you become ancient history. Thirty years after I left Oxford, my old college, Magdalen – alma mater of Oscar Wilde, Edward VIII and my fellow undergraduate George Osborne – sent out a request to former students. The college archivist asked for ‘Academic work. Records of student societies. College magazines and newsletters.

In defence of Eton’s Provost

The world divides into two groups. Those who liked school and those who didn’t. Sir Nicholas Coleridge, the next Provost of Eton, is firmly in the first group. In an article in the Telegraph, he has frankly admitted that he prefers people who went to Eton, as he did. He said: I am bound to say

Women are obsessed with the Romans, too

Infamy! Infamy! That was my response to the TikTok trend about ancient Rome. Women asked their partners how often they thought about the Roman Empire. Many men admitted they thought about it every day; three times a day, said one. One confessed he was obsessed with ‘aqueducts and the fact that they had concrete that

How the Aeneid was nearly destroyed

According to legend, Vergil declared of himself ‘Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces.’ (‘Mantua bore me, Calabria took me; now Naples holds me: I sang of pastures, fields, and leaders.’) In her rigorously researched biography, the American classicist Sarah Ruden shows that this is largely true – even if

Why some men are obsessed with the Roman Empire

Why do men think about the Roman Empire so much? That’s the subject of a new social media trend, where women ask their partners how often they think about ancient Rome.  Some men do it every day; one admitted to doing it three times a day. But why is it men who love the Empire

What’s in a school nickname?

‘Have you met Sperm?’ a friend from Westminster School asked me at a teenage party once. Sperm was a charming, pretty, confident girl but, still, I didn’t feel quite ready to use her startling nickname on our first meeting.   My own nickname – Mons, Latin for Mountain or Mount – seemed unadventurously fogeyish by comparison.

‘She had no neutral gear’: Lindy Dufferin remembered

In 1957, when my dear godmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1941-2020), was 16, she began her diary. The granddaughter of the Duke of Rutland and daughter of Loel Guinness, an MP, financier and Battle of Britain pilot, Lindy Dufferin had a gilded childhood. Her entries as a teen are like no other: ‘Randolph

The lewdness and lyricism of ancient Roman graffiti

Throw him to the lions! That’s what I thought when I saw the video of a grinning moron desecrating the walls of the Colosseum with the words ‘Ivan + Hayley 23’. He must have been referring to his girlfriend, standing by his side – and the year. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d defaced