The Dream of Rome
by Boris Johnson
HarperCollins £18.99, pp210

The problem with the European Union, concludes Boris Johnson in this amiable if scattergun survey, is that it isn't more like the Roman Empire. Why, for instance, is there no garum, a sort of 'Euro-ketchup' that graced every Roman's table and represented 'harmonisation without regulation'? Why did the single currency catch on then and not now? How did the empire recover from a military disaster such as the massacre in the Teutoburg Forest and hold sway for another 400 years?

Johnson's answers, a bit like him, start with apparent waywardness but, on closer inspection, seem quite sensible. Rome, for example, targeted a society it wanted to overpower and then sucked up to its elites, seducing them with the prospect of 'swanking and glory chasing'; Johnson mischievously likens them to EU freeloaders, unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. Its emperors, particularly Augustus, successfully launched personality cults (unlike, it can be inferred, today's faceless technocrats) at the same time as quietly co-opting Christianity. And, perhaps most significantly, the empire acted as 'a gigantic Moulinex', swirling together nationalities (even though the swirling sometimes took place with uncompromising force).

The parallels are sometimes strained but almost always amusing. And his natural enthusiasm, which finds expression in a style that is short on detail and long on vivid portraiture, makes this a perfectly enjoyable and mostly convincing gallop through the might and main of Rome. And the final blast - an imprecation to admit Turkey to the EU as tribute to the past - is nothing if not bracing.