Carpe Diem

the long version

Have you ever found yourself irritated when a sine qua non or a mea culpa is thrown into the conversation by a particularly annoying person? Or do distant memories of afternoons spent struggling to learn obscure verbs fill you with dread? Never fear! (or as a Latin show-off might say, Nil Desperandum!) In this delightful guided tour of Latin, Harry Mount wipes the dust off those boring primers and breathes life back into the greatest language of them all. Using Latin lovers from Kingsley Amis to John Cleese, from Evelyn Waugh to Donna Tartt , and even Angelina Jolie’s stomach, Mount breathes life into Latin. Read this book and you will know Latin. Know Latin and – mirabile dictu – you will know Wilfred Owen’s misery, Catullus’s aching heart and the comedy of a thousand bachelor schoolmasters.