My Favourite Books

Number 14 - I Claudius - Robert Graves This is a very obvious one really. You'll see from the cover that my purchase of the book (and its companion 'Claudius the God') was contemporaneous with the (wonderful) BBC television adaptation (circa 1978), with Derek Jacobi magnificent as Claudius. A 'factionalisation' of the most exciting period of the Roman Empire, this book effectively takes the juiciest bits of Suetonius's 'The Twelve Caesars' and spices them up even further to provide the best possible introduction to the decadence and depravity of Imperial Rome. The Emperors whose reigns are dealt with in the book are Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. All are fascinating, with Caligula a stand-out both on the written page and on the screen (John Hurt's greatest role?). With unlimited Imperial power came unlimited and loathesome depravity and licentiousness. Lovely jubbly. Graves spares us nothing - love, lust, intrigue, murder, incest, insanity, nymphomania, parricide, fratricide, matricide, anything else ending in -cide, it's all here in spades. Graves spent most of his life on the Mediterranean island of Majorca and he's buried there. Last summer when our tribe were on holiday there we were touring about the island and one day we were up in the mountains near to where Graves lived. I failed in my endeavours to encourage the other philistines to detour off our route to visit this literary landmark. I thus failed to see Graves' grave.