WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Devalued by greed and debased by intolerance
JOHN GREEN sees uncomfortable parallels between the demise of ancient Greece and the accelerating decline faced today by Britain and the US
PAST REVISITED? (L to R) Solidarity with Julian Assange demonstration; Socrates – Roman copy of a Greek original of c350 BC, often attributed to Lysippos, one of the three greatest sculptors of the Classical Greek era
[Socrates pic: Marie-Lan Nguyen/CC] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
WHAT is termed the Classical Greek period lasted around 200 years (5th and 4th centuries BC), the period that saw the greatest florescence of Greek culture, dominated largely by the city state of Athens.
Much of the early defining politics and thinking of that period — architecture, sculpture, philosophy, science, and drama — had a powerful influence on the later Roman empire and became the foundation of Western civilisation. We still refer to Greece for inspiration and for examples of civilised living.
A unified Greek state as we know it today was non-existent at that time, and what is termed “Greek” was largely Athenian, as the city state of Athens was the dominant force in that region.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
JOHN GREEN isn’t helped by the utopian fantasy of a New York Times bestseller that ignores class struggle and blames the so-called ’progressives’
