Today I’m just going to link to a few interesting articles in the Guardian review.

The first one is an article called Entering Minerva’s temple, by Edith Hall. It’s about the ancient Greeks and their culture but includes lots of information about other ancient cultures. When I was at school the only people who did Greek language were the few oddbods who wanted to become church ministers, and of course in those days they were chaps. I hadn’t realised that Thomas Hardy was writing from his own experience when he described the struggles which Jude had to get an education in Jude the Obscure, surely his most depressing novel. Anyway, I intend to read some Greek plays in the future, it’s ages since I’ve done anything like that, I think the last classic of that type I read was Plato’s Republic.

The Book of the Week is Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History by Francis O’Gorman. The article is a must read for all worriers. A vegetarian diet is recommended for all worriers as it reduces the epic struggle of menu reading! I don’t know about you – but I just want fewer choices all round, it would make life easier anyway.

I’ve often heard that some middle-aged women complain that they have become invisible now that they are older. Maybe they mean professionally invisible within the workplace, I wouldn’t know about that as I’m no longer working, but I believe that age discrimination is as much a problem for men as women. I’ve recently just celebrated a birthday which means I’m now closer to my 60th birthday than to my 50th birthday, but I have had the opposite experience in that as I’ve got older I’ve become more confident and definitely couldn’t care less what anybody thinks of me, so different from the insecurities and worries of my younger age. Anyway, there’s a review of a book called The Invisible Woman by Helen Walmsley-Johnson which some people might find interesting.

Man Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power by Eva Tutchell and John Edmonds is about how to close the gender gap, something which seems to be more of a problem in some parts of the UK, not lucky enough to be Scotland or Wales.

Last but definitely not least – there’s an article about Audrey Hepburn – Frozen Beauty. There’s an exhibition of rare photographs of her, sadly it’s at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Maybe it’ll get to Edinburgh or Glasgow sometime in the future.