University Challenge

[Nick Armstrong]

You know who it is, don't you?

Yes, one can only hear a phrase like "Such was my first introduction to the classics..." in one voice!

... and it is as ferney says!

[vinteuil]

I'm guilty too, but our HM, an Oxford classicist, wrote his own book which was used throughout the school. His

SHORTER
LATIN
PRIMER

was not particularly affectionately known as

SHORTBREAD
EATING
PRIMER

... you cannot be that ancient - he surely died in 1889!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Hall_Kennedy

[ Now, if it were Makropulos who claimed this... ]


PS yikes indeed -

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/09/the-sexual-secr.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-of-a-lifetime-kennedys-latin-primer-by-benjamin-hall-kennedy-942649.html

[Nick Armstrong]

PS yikes indeed -

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_...xual-secr.html

Yes here's the Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/education...ighereducation

I found it earlier this afternoon when checking I'd quoted the Malo poem correctly...

[Nick Armstrong]

Went to Harrow

"If you're going through hell, keep going."

[mercia]

The extract is often cited as proof of the uselessness of Latin, but it isn't, really.

the extract isn't proof, or Latin isn't useless ?

[jean]

In the sentence you have before you, the only noun it could refer to is extract.

If I'd wanted it to refer to Latin, to make any sense I'd have needed to use the adjective useless rather than the noun uselessness, wouldn't I?

[Mary Chambers]

Oddly enough, I can't remember the titles or authors of any of my school textbooks in any subject. French may have been Whitmarsh. My first Latin book began with the story of Romulus and Remus, illustrated. I don't think it contained any interesting innuendo, but I wouldn't have have recognised it anyway.

I'm sure Britten was well aware of the content of Miles's Latin lesson.

[teamsaint]

All the latin I was ever taught seemed to concern military matters. I often wondered how they used to do things like buy a loaf of bread.....


Incidentally, I see over on "The Choir 'that Oxford and Cambridge are allowed to enter multiple teams for Choral Evensong.

So at least it is consistent.

[mercia]

In the sentence you have before you, the only noun it could refer to is extract.

If I'd wanted it to refer to Latin, to make any sense I'd have needed to use the adjective useless rather than the noun uselessness, wouldn't I?

oh yes I knew it was worth asking

So we just need an extract that does prove the uselessness of Latin

[jean]

Yes here's the Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/education...ighereducation

I didn't know this!

Perhaps it explains why we didn't have Kennedy at my school, though he resurfaced in a slimmer and I assume expurgated edition at the school where I later taught.

Gildersleeve and Lodge. North and Hillard. Bradley's Arnold, revised Mountford...how could I ever forget those names?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Incidentally, I see over on "The Choir 'that Oxford and Cambridge are allowed to enter multiple teams for Choral Evensong.

So at least it is consistent.

Are London and Durham?

[jean]

So we just need an extract that does prove the uselessness of Latin

No we don't.

You won't find one, in any case.

[jean]

Are London and Durham?

I don't know about Durham, but aren't what used to be constituent colleges of London University now universities in their own right?

[ardcarp]

... you cannot be that ancient - he surely died in 1889!

Er no. Ours wasn't by Kennedy. It was the Shorter Latin Primer. Whether our HM nicked the title from elsewhere, I've no idea.

[jean]

...Ours...was the Shorter Latin Primer...

So was Kennedy's. Are you sure your HM wasn't responsible for one of its revisions, of which there were many?

Mary Beard throws some intriguing light on the matter here:

...Kennedy had had less to do with it that we had all imagined. He had been responsible for a dreadful and unsuccessful first version, the Public School Latin Primer. The Revised, as its title hints, was his second go. Why did it do so much better?

Cherchez les femmes. The answer is that old Professor Kennedy took a back seat while the organisation, layout and details were taken over by his daughters, Marion and Julia. It was their enterprise and talents that managed to arrange the rules of Latin in a comprehensible way...

Could they have been the ones responsible for those lists?