Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin
By Nicholas Ostler
HarperPress £25, 400 pages
FT bookshop price: £20

A few years ago the study of Latin appeared to be in terminal decline, owing perhaps to its negative association with rod-backed private education. But there are signs that it is reviving, and as Nicholas Ostler remarks in the preface to Ad Infinitum, “now is the time for a book about Latin”. Indeed, his is the second study to appear this year, hard on the heels of Wilfried Stroh’s Latein ist tot, es leben Latein! (Latin is dead, long live Latin!) – a book that followed recent studies by Francoise Waquet in Paris and Bo Lindberg in Lund.