Butterfield is a classics don at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and an authority on the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius, which may help explain his passion for The Spectator. He has written this labour of love in a lively, even jaunty style. This serves the reader well for two thirds of the book, though his declared indifference to politics ensures that we learn less about the Spec’s attitude towards Hitler (ambiguous for too long) or the Suez invasion (admirably savage) than about the mysterious identity of a waspish academic gossip columnist trading as Mercurius Oxoniensis (Hugh Trevor-Roper, it turns out, not Rod Liddle).
