Is there a source from the ancient world that you find yourself coming back to when you want to feel better? I distinctly remember, when I took it out of its packaging, thinking what a lovely image it was.
Indeed, when I subsequently somehow managed to loose the book, I immediately ordered a replacement copy, and was duly horrified when this arrived:. Can you tell me a bit about the painting and its context?
Whether the girl is human or divine is debatable. She has most often been identified as the nymph Flora, associated with flowers, signalling the season of Spring. I subsequently went back to see it several times when it was later on display for the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum in London. What is it about the fresco that appeals to you most?
It has a very uplifting, hope-filled feel about it. It has a hint of that start-of-the-long-hot-holiday thrill to it. And finally⦠what do you do, outside of Classics, to cheer yourself up? Go back to Narnia, or Middle Earth, or some of E. I can so easily lose myself completely in all the imaginative associations of an old-favourite story.
And then emerging from that totally immersive reverie is like waking, thoroughly refreshed, from the soundest, soul-soothing sleep. Sod mindfulness! To tackle the intellectual Enlightenment havoc wrought on his mind by such relentlessly rational scientific thinking, Steve self-therapised himself with a Renaissance recovery regime that targeted hoovering up enough Open University Classical Studies courses to clock up three BAs.
