Among the unexpected pieces of information in this enjoyable ramble among the picturesque ruins of the Latin language is the name of a good restaurant if you should find yourself at Larroque in Tarn. The advice comes under B, for Bonum vinum laetificat cor hominis, ‘good wine cheers the heart of man’, an adage written calligraphically on the wall of the Restaurant Le Roucanel. (The thought comes from Psalm 104, though Mr Gray doesn’t mention that.)
No great Latinist myself, I was glad to find Long Live Latin to be the welcoming Hampton Court Flower Show of Latin; Chelsea gold medallists might no longer care to walk among such (to them) familiar blooms. But Long Live Latin is no bare seedsman’s catalogue.
It has the readability of a diary rather than a dictionary. We discover that John Gray has not wasted the years since he took early retirement from the law (which now, he frequently laments, spurns the use of Latin).
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