The daffodils are up and the sun is occasionally shining – spring is back and so is the Classics for All newsletter. I hope you enjoy reading about all our latest news.
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Save the date: Our annual Impact Awards are back
Friday 26 June | Doors open from 6pm | 113 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1PL
Each year we invite teachers, network coordinators and special guests to recognise the transformative work of some of our best and brightest teachers from across the country.
Get in touch at [email protected] if you would like to come and raise a glass to celebrate their achievements.
Meet our newest coordinator: Darren Lester, South West
Welcome to Darren Lester, our new South West Network Coordinator. Darren is Head of Latin for an online school and a doctoral researcher at the University of Reading, researching the careers of language teachers and how CPD can help to support their career goals. He also hosts the Saturday Breakfast Show on Teachers Talk Radio, where he gets to be geeky about educational research.
Darren is already off to a flying start, having launched his half-termly teacher book club withThe Buried City by Gabriel Zuchtriegel. If you are a teacher in the South West interested in joining the conversation get in touch with Darren at [email protected]
School of the month: St Ambrose High School, Scotland
St Ambrose High School serves a broad range of communities in North Lanarkshire and the east of Glasgow, with more than half the pupils living in some of the most deprived areas in the country. In 2023, with our training, teacher Emma Noble achieved her General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) accreditation required to be able to teach Classics on curriculum in Scotland. In just two years she has managed to take her school from zero Classics provision to providing teaching for every single one of the school's Secondary 1–2 pupils (ages 11–13) about the ancient world (an annual total of 542 pupils).
Our Chief Executive, Jo Hobbs, recently visited the school and was amazed to see the exciting work going on at the school and the passion of students and teachers.
ClassicsFest at the Lit & Phil, Newcastle
Thursday 14 to Saturday 16 May 2026 | The Lit & Phil, 23 Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1SE
Enjoy a feast of events including food demonstrations, wine tastings, performances, lectures and discussions.
Highlights include:
- On Thursday 14 May | Sally Grainger, historian and experimental archaeologist, discusses her new book 'Roman Recipes for Modern Cooks' with Karen Phillips, who runs cookery courses at Linnels Farm, Northumberland and Dr Kathryn Tempest, Roman Historian at Leicester University. Food samples will be available.
- On Friday 15 May | 6pm – 8pm | Taste and explore wine from Roman times to today, with experts revealing methods, additives and health impacts, followed by a tasting of ancient-inspired wines.
- Reimagining Euripides’ Bacchae – a staged reading of selected scenes introduced by Professor Athanassios Vergados, followed by a creative response led by writer and poet Kirsten Luckins, featuring young writers from New Writing North’s Creative Writing Programme.
- Trimalchio’s Dinner (from Petronius’ Satyricon AD 66), where a lavish banquet is hosted by the ostentatious, wealthy freedman Trimalchio, is re-invented and situated in North East England, where preoccupations of class are still current. Staged at the Tyneside Cinema Coffee Rooms and performed by professional actors, preceded by a mediated creative process engaging sixth form students and their teachers (working with Classics for all North) to unpack the piece's themes through the lens of the North East. Led by writer and poet Kirsten Luckins and Dr Kathryn Tempest.
Classics for All has a limited number of tickets to the Thursday and Friday evening events. Please get in touch with [email protected] if you would like to attend either of them.
Join the Lawyers' Group: Last few tickets available to Dr Kathryn Tempest’s lecture
Tuesday 28 April | Doors open 5:30pm | Twenty Essex Street, London WC2R 3AL
Lawyers’ Group members are invited to book their ticket to an evening with historian, author and lecturer at the University of Leicester, Dr Kathryn Tempest. If you would like to attend this Lawyers’ Group exclusive event and others like it, please join here.
Corruption as symptom and cause: Cicero and the decline of the Roman Republic
In this lecture and Q&A, we will use Cicero’s speeches to explore how Romans debated the meaning of corruption, what legal mechanisms they devised to restrain it, and why they ultimately came to see the moral and political decay of their leaders as a cause, and a symptom, of the Republic’s collapse.
Read: Have they found the foot of one of Hannibal’s battle elephants?
An elephant foot bone has been discovered by archaeologists in southern Spain, they believe it could be the first concrete proof of Hannibal’s troop of battle elephants famous for crossing the Alps in 218BCE.
You can read all about it on the BBC.
Play: Have you joined our weekly quiz yet?
Fancy a Thursday lunchtime pick-me-up? Get a classics-themed crossword, acrostic, word search or quiz straight into your inbox every Thursday.
