{related_entries id="evnt_auth_1"} {/related_entries} talks to {related_entries id="evnt_chair"} {/related_entries}

Former editor of The Times Sir Peter Stothard blends politics, memoir and ancient history with a look at a group of four men involved with Margaret Thatcher who all had a taste for the Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist Seneca.

Stothard’s latest work follows his recent diaries, On the Spartacus Road and Alexandria, in which he also blended memoir with ancient and modern politics. There are portraits of the Senecans – businessman and Thatcher adviser David Hart, parliamentary sketch writer Frank Johnson, dramatist and Thatcher speechwriter Ronald Millar, and newspaperman Woodrow Wyatt. Through it all Stothard interweaves his own story and that of Seneca.

Stothard was editor of The Times between 1992 and 2002 and editor of The Times Literary Supplement between 2002 and 2016.

Here he talks to FT Weekend editor Alec Russell, a fellow classicist and former foreign correspondent, and considers Seneca’s lessons for the Trumpian age.

This event lasts 45 minutes.