Tracy Lee Simmons is an author and classicist known for his advocacy of classical education and the liberal arts. He is the author of *Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin*, and his writing focuses on literature, classical civilization, and the Great Books tradition. He contributed essays and book reviews to The Weekly Standard from 1998 to 2017.
Back when the Apollo astronauts were feted as heroes for pushing out into other worlds, a hero of another breed landed in Washington to be recognized for his high service to this one. Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), the eminent British art historian, was invited to the National Gallery to accept a…
Back when the Apollo astronauts were feted as heroes for pushing out into other worlds, a hero of another breed landed in Washington to be recognized for his high service to this one. Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), the eminent British art historian, was invited to the National Gallery to accept a…
Last April’s wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, ubiquitously covered from Westminster Abbey by every medium from satellite to iPhone, served up a reminder that even we in this constitutional republic, where all are equal, can always be counted on to get caught up with the lives of those…
When the eminent English critic Frank Kermode died last month, the Washington Post duly noted his passing and added prosaically that “no cause of death was reported.” But as Kermode took his leave at the age of 90, you would think curiosity on that score would be less than ravenous: He’d had a long…
Racing Odysseus
Robert Fagles, the quietly competent scholar-poet and oracular channel of ancient voices, died of cancer at the end of March, and of the man and his work we must now sing.
The Perfect Summer
The American Home Front: 1941-1942
A Loeb Classical Library Reader
Defining the World
A Natural History of Latin
Oxford Days
Debrett's New Guide to Etiquette & Modern Manners The Indispensable Handbook by John Morgan St. Martin's Press, 384 pp., $27.95 "THERE ARE lots of us," Sebastian said of his aristocratic family to commoner Charles in "Brideshead Revisited." "Look them up in Debrett." He meant "Debrett's Peerage and…
Word Court
Peepshow
So you want to buy a book. Maybe you're too busy to stop off at the local bookshop. There's a funny moment in Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road, the charming 1970 collection of letters between a New York writer and the London bookstore manager from whom she would order books by mail, in which…
Just as we were despairing that today's children, seduced by the Information Age, might never learn to read for pleasure, a new strategy to draw them back to the stacks has emerged: the translation of children's books into Latin.