Parochialism in time and space

You can’t visit the past, but you can read about it. When you read an old writer, it’s like talking to an immigrant from the past who knows nothing of your country, but can tell you a lot about theirs.

We do this less than we did, I suspect. An educated person of the eighteenth century could read Latin fluently. He would have been taught Cicero and Virgil, and if he wanted, he could read many other authors going back two thousand years. Many were common knowledge.

• David Hugh-Jones