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Bishop Thomas Grant School

Lord Butler Visits Aspire Students

Lord Robin Butler is most famous for his report on weapons of mass destruction in the Iraq war. In an illustrious career he was also an Oxford “blue” for his sporting achievements and became Master of his former Oxford College, University College. He had a prominent role as a senior civil servant and advisor to prime ministers, having been private secretary to Margaret Thatcher and cabinet secretary to both John Major and Tony Blair.

It was his love of the Classics which has been his inspiration throughout his life, and this was the theme of the talk he gave to Bishop Thomas Grant School’s aspiring students in a packed Theatre for the Friday Aspire Da Vinci Lecture.
Lord Butler is both a linguist and a classics scholar. In the six stages of his love affair with the classics he described how he liked puzzles as a child and enjoyed puzzling his way to the Latin roots of English words. He liked the logic of Latin as well as the stories of the Trojan War, Odysseus, the Greek gods and how classical themes pervade English literature . When he started to write his own Greek and Latin verse he discovered his facility with words, and once armed with the knowledge of these languages he set off on his travels to discover the classical world for himself. The encounter with art, sculpture and literature of ancient Greece and awakened the romantic in him when he proposed to his wife on the Acropolis!

Lord Butler left our students with a strong message that study of the classics can give you the skills to achieve at the very highest level. His capacity to think straight and express himself well enabled him to achieve the highest stations in UK government – a strong message to Bishop Thomas Grant School’s students of Latin, Ancient Greek and Classical Civilisation!

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