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12 January 2015updated 09 Sep 2021 1:59pm

“Err… Socrates didn’t write anything“: Mary Beard burns Culture Secretary Sajid Javid

Classic put-down.

By Media Mole

What do you get when you pit a top classicist against our Secretary of State for Culture? A depressing indictment of all that is wrong with the way government ministers are appointed, via a blinkered web of loyalty and patronage rather than talent for one’s brief, OF COURSE. (For the benefit of the sarcastically challenged, this is a joke. In fact, what you get is a chance to learn something about the ancient world you might not know.)

Here, the jolly classicist and fierce twitterer Mary Beard brilliantly (and relatively kindly) points out a rather embarrassing mistake in an article by the Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid:

Classic error.

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