Jasper Griffin obituary
Influential Oxford classicist who brought new insights to the study of the Iliad and the Odyssey
Messy handwriting reveals mystery translator: Queen Elizabeth I
Researcher at Lambeth Palace follows ‘usefully messy’ fragment of Roman history to its royal source
Poem of the week: Sonnets from Idea’s Mirror by Michael Drayton
These Jacobean verses pay courtly tribute to the poet’s muse – and let rip on his critics
Myles Burnyeat obituary
Scholar whose detailed analysis of classical texts sustained his sense of wonder in philosophy
Reader, I downloaded him: boom times for the literary long listen
Whether on Radio 4 or Amazon Audible, the appetite for classic works in audio form has never been greater
From Kafka to Gogol via Pynchon: top 10 absurd quests in fiction
From seeking how to stop being an ass to finding out where a month has gone missing, these stories are as weird as life
Poem of the week: from Hesiod’s Theogony
This classical allegory of the poet’s role has intriguing modern resonance
Sir Fergus Millar obituary
Classicist whose work transformed the study of ancient history
Saving ‘woman hand’: the artist rescuing female-only writing
Kana let women express themselves freely and was used to write the world’s first novel – then it was wiped out. Meet the master calligrapher keeping the script alive
Rediscovered classics: the best books based on myths
Authors have always used stories from the past as a way to view the present, from the Iliad to Faust
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes review – women of the Trojan war
The latest novel to retell Greek epic from the women’s point of view is a panoramic portrait of the true cost of conflict
Epic win! Why women are lining up to reboot the classics
Natalie Haynes is the latest novelist to explore the Homeric epics from a female perspective – joining Pat Barker and Madeline Miller in a timely act of reinvention
We gotta get out of this place! The artists snared by the lure of the labyrinth
From Daedalus’s prison to Mark Wallinger’s plaques, labyrinths have always intrigued artists. Our writer makes a beeline to a new show inspired by their confounding paths
Cate Blanchett on her S&M-themed play: ‘I see theatre as a provocation’
Cate Blanchett has played queens, vagabonds and Bob Dylan. Now the double Oscar-winner is hitting the London stage and hinting at a farewell from acting. We talk to the team behind the avant garde play about sexual domination
Pat Barker: ‘You could argue that time’s up: we’re at the end of patriarchy’
The author of the Regeneration trilogy on Brexit, #MeToo – and rewriting the Iliad from a female perspective for her Costa-shortlisted novel The Silence of the Girls