Game, Set and Match

Len Deighton's Berlin Game. Bit of a pot boiler but the Ipcress File and the Game, Set and Match trilogy have a more realistic, cynical and urbane approach to spy shenanigans than the James Bond industry and we haven't come very far from a world in which the American President is quoted mysteriously as saying 'I am a jam doughnut'. This geopolitical trail has taken me to John Le Carre, Robert Harris and more recently the excellent but exhaustive historical podcasts of Dan Carlin.

Oh you brute!

I'm not sure whether to start this with a Frankie Howard style paraphrase of 'Et Tu Brute?' or Monty Python's "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The Greeks gave us democracy and the Romans gave us Dictatorship.

Of course that isn't really true as many Romans struggled to keep the Senate functioning and resist tyrants like Caesar.

Robert Harris' excellent trilogy on Cicero ending with Dictator is a racy novelisation of history. He portrays the vanity and flaws of his hero but also the bravery and stubborn principles on which political life should be based. He also doesn't shirk from the role that colonisation and conflict played in financing an Empire that we call civilisation.

The big problem with democracy is that it's run by the people for the people and what the people really want, when it comes down to it, is cash for food and entertainment. If anyone can provide that they can subvert the democratic process. Why is it - cue age old rhetorical question - that we never learn from history? Coz we never read abaht it I s'pose!