I do not have time before I give my last paper and get to the airport for my homeward flight to write a blog. But given that last week I heard that my first book had been banned from a Colorado State prison, and that I was just leaving the UK for Washington D.C., I thought I should reassure people that I am safe and have not been arrested.
I do have to get through security at the airport, but promise to make sure I am not carrying any books which have unusual alphabets or advocate gang membership.
I have been recuperating from nine months of fighting at RHUL during an excellent week conducting intensive research into brands of beer called after Founding Fathers (Samuel Adams is my favourite).
On Monday I went to the theatre where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and watched a musical called 1776 in which Thomas Jefferson warbled his unlikely way through the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.
Yesterday I went to the movies to see Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus, and finally realised what all the fuss is about Gerard Butler. He makes the most convincing Volscian in art since Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.
Living in Antium with this Aufidius could actually have been fun. I want to be a Volscian. Butler has obviously in the past been cast well below his thespian weight. He should drop the war porn (as in 300) and romcoms (as in Jennifer Aniston), let alone the Lloyd-Webber (as in Phantom of the Opera). Roman republican history via Shakespeare, delivered scathingly in a Glaswegian accent, is obviously his true metier. This is my idea of fun.
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