The Bull from the Sea

by Mary Renault

Delighting in the quest for wisdom and ‘the good’ that Plato challenges us all to take, the teenage Mary was propelled to St Hugh’s College Oxford, to read English under the tutelage of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Lucky her.

guiding principle of the Greek world was xenia. Almost impossible to translate, xenia means guest–host friendship – an unwritten rule of understanding that if our species is to thrive and survive we must welcome strangers and old friends, memories and new ideas, the future and the past, across our thresholds.

‘It is the mark of little men to like only what they know; one step beyond and they feel the black cold of chaos.’