Confronting the classics, by Mary Beard

I only read one and a half books on holiday this year (as opposed to five last year) - a sad indication of something, though I am not sure what. Anyway, this is the one that I finished.
I was initially disappointed, having picked it up in haste and not realised that it was a series of essays when I would have preferred a connected narrative, but having said that, it did make it easier for the kind of pick-up put-down reading that holidays prompt. It was also disappointing that it was a reprint of essays and book reviews published some years ago, rather than original and new work, though I don't know why I carp about that as I hadn't read any of them before.
I have always had a yen to go back to the classics - to pick up the Latin I learnt at school, to get some of the Greek I wasn't allowed to learn at school, and to weave that in with classical history and literature. It was going to be a project for my retirement, until I saw how few and far between opportunities for such adult education were, and how blisteringly expensive. Many places have ceased to teach Latin and Greek. I seem to have missed the boat.
Therefore I am grateful to Mary Beard for dragging the classical world back into the limelight.  One day I really will read Herodotus (even though he is apparently unreliable) and the other classical authors.  And of course it helped that I read the book beside the sea - mostly on this jetty, facing the Roman settlement of Alcudia - and there is nothing like Mediterranean sunshine to make you feel a connection with history.