In this free-ranging discussion of contemporary society, the former editor of the TLS argues that many aspects of life today are eerily close echoes of the ancient world. He takes a look, inter alia , at food, sex, exercise, art and science and the ways in which modern patterns of behaviour unconsciously echo the past, considering on the way D.H. Lawrence, dating websites, Nigella Lawson, Richard Dawkins and much else. Of course, in the words of Monty Python , the Romans (and Greeks) did a lot for us. But this book is not so much about that rather hackneyed theme as the idea that the roots of western civilisation are still visible today, suggesting that our age is not as forward-looking and self-consciously modern as we might think.