I had thought of moving on after Virginia Woolf to the writers of the period after the Second World War, since I would not describe as classic any other writers of the inter–war period, apart from those I have written about. But it occurred to me that this would leave out many memorable works, since, of course, several writers produced individual pieces of great distinction.

Amongst my absolute favourites amongst all books published during this period is I, Claudius by Robert Graves, which I still think the most memorable historical novel ever written in English. It had enormous influence on me that it governed my determination to study classics, and to concentrate heavily on Roman history. I was never particularly good at this, but I have always cherished the comment of the scholar who took my first term of Roman history tutorials, that we got on very well because he was not so much a historian as a dramatist. Sensibly, if sadly, I opted to return to my own college for the rest of the course because I felt I would do little work otherwise. I had had a wonderful summer engaging in fervent discussions of the personal motivations and relationships of the extraordinary characters who dominated Rome during its long revolution, but scholarship seemed to me to require more. Now, having engaged in more study of politics through the ages, and been involved in it to a limited extent myself in Sri Lanka, I realize that Graves' approach was spot on. Understanding people gives one much greater insights into the complexities of politics than political theory does.