Gods and heroes made human

Nigel Spivey set out to write these stories for his children. He confesses, endearingly, that the children grew up faster than he wrote the book. Perhaps that was as well since the bookshops are well-stocked with Greek myths for children. What he gives us instead is a lively retelling of the main myths and legends for those who missed out on them during their education or for those of us who like to hear them again. The author is a Cambridge classics don, but clearly not a desiccated one. He writes with panache and recreates lively versions of the stories everyone used to know: Herakles and Perseus, the War of Troy, Odysseus’s return home, the murder of Agamemnon in Mycaenae and the story of Oedipus. The classics seem to be back in favour, thanks to television’s discovery of archaeology and the popularity of good, bad and indifferent screen epics. The author of Songs on Bronze might well be signed up to do the screenplay for a season of Greek myths.