The Romans are returning according to Oxford Don Professor Llewelyn Morgan, one of the nation’s leading Latin scholars.
Giving a master-class at King’s Girls’, the prolific author and critic, who has an MA from Oxford, a PHd from Cambridge and has taught in America and Ireland as well as Oxford, explained why Latin was undergoing a major revival in top British schools.
Professor Morgan said: “For many years Latin was blighted by an appalling image of some dusty old professor with a mortar board and cane reciting indecipherable Latin phrases in front of a room of bored school children. Now a new generation of teachers and academics, such as we see at King’s, is bringing the subject to life.”
He added: “It’s about time too. Any great writer from the birth of Christ to probably about 1890 would have had a thorough understanding of the classics. Shakespeare,
Professor Morgan is pictured with Bridie , who is the King’s Girls’ Division’s “Custus Rerum” or in modern parlance “Lost Property Monitor” and Boys’ Division classics scholar Tom .
Tom said: “Latin is fascinating because it makes up so much of English and other western European languages.” While Bridie added: “It’s amazing to think that a 2,000 year-old culture was just as sophisticated as we are today.”
