Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us

So much about the society that is now emerging in the twenty-first century bears an astonishing resemblance to the most prominent features of what we call the classical world - its institutions, its priorities, its entertainment, its physics, its sexual morality, its food, its politics, even its religion. The ways in which we live our rich and varied lives correspond - almost eerily so - to the ways in which the Greeks and Romans lived theirs. Whether we are eating and drinking, bathing or exercising or making love, pondering, admiring or enquiring, our habits of thought and action, our diversions and concentrations recreate theirs. It is as though the 1500 years after the fall of Rome had been time out from traditional ways of being human.

This eye-opening book makes us look afresh at who we are and how we got here. Full Circleis not only wonderfully witty and brilliantly astute, but also profound and often disquieting. Ferdinand Mount effortlessly peels back 2000 years of history to show how much we are like the ancients, how in ways both trivial and crucial we arethem and they are us.

‘In characteristically wide-ranging style, Ferdinand Mount’s Full Circle tackles the question of the legacy of the classical world. Our contemporary European institutions, our recreations, our food, even our sexual morality, he argues, have brought us full circle to the mores of ancient Rome and Greece’
New Statesman 21/6

‘Mount mounts a compelling and amusing case’
Evening Standard 17/6

‘A readable, stylish, expansive, occasionally sharp and stimulating series of reflections ranging widely over the modern world. Take Mounts chapter on religion. It consists of a swinging attack on the evangelical atheism of Richard Dawkins and his acolytes, and a comparison with the equally evangelical atheism of the first-century BC Roman Epicurean philosopher Lucretius, this is a comparison well worth making and Mount makes it very well’
Literary Review, June Issue

‘I’ve always thought of circles as images of frustration and repetition. Yet in Mount’s book, and in talking to him, there is a feeling of growth and regeneration. He is someone who hasn’t quietly trodden the same path. Mount is at the peak of his career, and one feels there is a great deal more to come’
Philip Womack, Daily Telegraph 26/6

‘Think we’re addicted to fame? You should’ve seen us 2,000 years ago’
Feature, Mail on Sunday 20/6
‘An author of obvious erudition, with a great flair for anecdote’ Guardian 26/6
‘An author of obvious erudition, with a great flair for anecdote’
Guardian 26/6
‘We are taken on a delightful excursion along the cultural loop line, a journey of sudden views, jokes and surprises, conducted by a witty and knowledgeable guide. As you would expect of a prominent newspaper columnist and novelist, our cicerone is a crafty phrase-maker; but he shows passion in the prose and moral seriousness behind the irony. Here we have the triumph of the generalist, whose intellectual vigour trumps academic rigour. Take him with you on holiday: you won’t regret it’
Financial Times 17/7
‘We are taken on a delightful excursion along the cultural loop line, a journey of sudden views, jokes and surprises, conducted by a witty and knowledgeable guide. As you would expect of a prominent newspaper columnist and novelist, our cicerone is a crafty phrase-maker; but he shows passion in the prose and moral seriousness behind the irony. Here we have the triumph of the generalist, whose intellectual vigour trumps academic rigour. Take him with you on holiday: you won’t regret it’
Financial Times 17/7
‘Elegant, interesting and funny... go out and buy it at once’
Independent
‘...this is a delightful book: rumbustious, eclectic, erudite and stimulating, the vade mecum of a fine mind. Who else could run from proto-rugby to opimian wine, from Nye Bevan to the use of the Vulgate- and, almost, back again? If it’s barmy at times, its brilliance is something sui generic: quite its own’
Ross Leckie, Country Life
‘The return of pagan passion’
Feature, Mail on Sunday 5/9
'At first sight, the Roman Bath Company is not a particularly powerful support for Mount's headline thesis in Full Circle: that in recent decades the West has gone back to the ancient world. This is not, he insists, by a process of rediscovery or conscious revivalism, as in the Renaissance.
Instead, in some 'weird' and 'natural' way we find ourselves reproducing the mindsets of the Greeks and Romans, form our passion for spas and for the body beautiful, to New Age cults or fashionable atheism'
London Review of Books 17/2
'All this is expertly exposed by a classicist who knows his Latin and Greek texts... It is a world which he makes, in his good-humoured an, elegant style, seem amazingly contemporary. This is a rich, full book of stimulating reflections on human nature, then and now, which has changed the world so drastically while itself remaining almost the same'
Daily Mail
'Aldous Huxley referred to himself as an "home de letters". If anyone could lay claim to that title, then it is surely Mount, although he would demur at the description'
Daily Telegraph
'These parallels between the ancient world and ours are intriguing...Mount's ingenious polemic skewers any number of modern-day vanities, and takes us with wit and charm through many absurdities of the remote past'
The Spectator
'Here we have the triumph of the generalist, whose intellectual vigour trumps academic rigour. Take him with you on holiday: you won't regret it'
The Financial Times
'Mount's thesis... is lightly and humorously expressed...'
Times
'Mount charms the reader ... is an entertaining guide to ancient Rome'
Sunday Times
'go out and buy it at once, while it is still fresh and beach-ready'
Independent
'Full Circle is imbued with the same wit as its predecessor and is both entertaining and thought-provoking'
The Economist
'characteristically witty prose'
The Oldie
'...this is a delightful book: rumbustious, eclectic, erudite and stimulating, the vade mecum of a fine mind ... its brilliance is something sui generic: quite its own'
Country Life