The Muse of History

Reviews / Votes

Both elegant and outspoken ... It has long been one of Murray's priorities to liberate the Republic of of Letters, or at least the Republic of History, from the constraints of national or linguistic boundaries. His new book is part autobiographical memoir, part analysis of how the subject of ancient Greek history has changed since the eighteenth century, and part manifesto for classical history and the study of history more generally ... A masterclass [from] one of the most thoughtful ancient historians in Britain over more than half a century -- Mary Beard * Times Literary Supplement * A magisterial and deeply humane testament to the virtues of intellectual open-mindedness, studded with personal anecdotes from a lifetime of scholarship ... characterised by a salutary breadth of vision and a welcome hostility to the often unexamined assumptions of Anglo-Saxon empiricism -- Henry Day * Literary Review * Majestic ... enthalling ... places centre-stage the multifarious evaluations and (mis)understandings of Athenian democracy that have marched in tandem with our own history since the Enlightenment [and] reveals Murray's unwavering commitment to the need for history to continue to be written ... no other practitioner of the discipline has ever reflected with such synoptic intensity on the relationship between real-world contemporary historical developments' -- Edith Hall * BBC History Magazine * Fascinating... no other historian can match this achievement; no other war, or for that matter no other historical subject, is so much the product of its reporter ... the book is a joy to read, thought-provoking and amusing. It's a lifetime of work but provides a wealth of education -- Oliver Webb-Carter * Aspects of History, Books of the Year * A quietly amazing book, written with an elegance and insight worthy of his mentor Arnaldo Momigliano -- Nino Luraghi, Wykeham Professor of Greek History, University of Oxford Splendid ... The Muse of History is throughout curious and humane, so that the reader keeps wishing to learn more about Murray's subject-the modern writing of history of the Greeks, especially with an eye to Britain-as well as about Murray himself. Both wishes are amply granted ... [the book has] the aphoristic brilliance of the 18th century, the novelistic sense of character of the 19th, the methodological sophistication of the 20th. It is a fitting summa of those centuries of historical writing * Bryn Mawr Classical Review * 'This is intellectual history at its best, amply demonstrating how modern authors, famous and forgotten alike, repeatedly and dynamically recast the ancient foundations on which the ideals and the very idea of Western civilization have continued to be constructed -- Kenneth Lapatin, Curator of Antiquities, The Paul J. Getty Museum