There is a simple answer to the question understood by the subtitle of this book. Homer matters because he has mattered to people for some three thousand years or even longer. He matters because he is the father of European literature. Homer, Adam Nicolson writes, ‘is the foundation of truth and beauty … Homer is alive in anyone who is prepared to attend. Homerity is humanity.’

But who was Homer? Was there indeed ever a single Homer? And if there was, when did he live and when were the Iliad and the Odyssey composed? Did they have the same author? There is no certain answer to these questions. Nicolson has no doubt that ‘the poet of

Literary Review

May 2014

Categories

Allan Massie

Becoming George Orwell

How Late It Was

Anni Mirabiles

Over the Sea to Skye

Great Scott!

A Convivial Chap Led Easily Astray

A Class Act

Peter Pan Laid Bare

An Old-fashioned Kind of Spy

Character Building

Much More Useful than Writing Novels

Aesthete with a Cause

In Brigand Country

Law by Name, Lawless by Nature

He Took the Path of Most Resistance

Diary: Proust’s Progress

Pillaged People

Even So, He Had No Right to Beat Up Bibbles

A First-Rate Education

Toxic Relations

A Writer Who Needs to be Saved From His Admirers

Ruddy Old Gore

Border Patrol

25 Million and Counting

Byron Tells All