Why Horace?

With guest appearances by Milton, Basil Bunting, Donald Davie and Eavan Boland.

Horace is my favourite of the classical Latin poets. In fact, the first Latin poem I read as a teenager was one of his — Odes 3.13, ‘o fons Bandusiae’, is included in the Oxford Latin Course (or at least it used to be). You don’t forget your first encounter with something this good and I remember exactly where I was (in a beach-hut in Suffolk) as I pick…