Bryan Ward Perkins, in his The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, discusses A.M.H. Jones and comments on the latter’s “measured twentieth-century prose.”
That got me thinking about twenty-first-century prose. In his BMCR review of the above book and Peter Heather’s The Fall of Rome: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, James J. O'Donnell bemoans “…the flippant lecture-platform style. Many pages read as if they were taken from the lectures at Oxford on ancient history by Colonel Blimp’s great-grandson addressing the grandchildren of Bertie Wooster.” (on Peter Heather)
Although his comment is rather over the top and “uppity,” to use his own phrase, I'm with Professor O'Donnell here. I wonder whether later generations will have to rush to the dictionary when they read, in Heather’s book, lepcisgate, or ‘of the straightforward yah-boo-sucks variety’ (on St. Augustine).
spin doctor is a term beloved by many authors…
Even our friend Adrian Murdoch (The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West) has the occasional lapse: ‘cliché-ridden management speak,’ and non-U. The latter is probably not comprehensible even now to readers outside the UK, unless they are language mavens or Nancy Mitford fans. (For those who aren't but want to know, here is a primer: U and non-U English at Wikipedia.)
But what do I know … I'm just a little old lady in tennis shoes …
Happy Holidays!
