I was stopped by a random man in the street who asked me if I wanted to give the Rumble lecture. He said it had to be on a subject related to Graeco-Roman culture. I said I had an antipathy to classical civilisation. He said, ‘Great, make it about that’. Of course he only asked me because I am a minor celebrity and that it might bring a little publicity and glamour to this obscure corner of the further education industrial complex. I thought it might be interesting to unpick why exactly I have such an allergy to Kraters and Petrarch. I start from a place of complete ignorance and have no ambition to go anywhere else. I tried to get AI to write this abstract but it was useless which made me think maybe I was on to something! My dislike of ancient Greece and Rome is not necessarily aligned to any fashionable ideological causes. The classics are often used to bolster or lend credibility to a right wing, authoritarian, patriarchal, Eurocentric, white supremacist view of the world, but that is not principally why I dislike them. For me it is more personal, more irrational, more enjoyable. I love a good grievance.

Sir Grayson Perry