Vote for Caesar: How the Ancient Greeks and Romans Solved the Problems of Today

The expansion of London's congestion charge zone, prices going up on the Underground network, bendy buses – all ideas brought about to try to make the traffic situation in Britain's capital run more smoothly. Surely there must be a better way? In fact there is. In Roman times, when the streets were even more crowded, Caesar decreed that all vehicles (except those involved in building work) were banned from the city, while Nero took advantage of a major fire to broaden the streets to improve access. Whatever the problem, from the leader whose deputy wants to replace him to the question of how to make democracy really work, you can guarantee that our Classical forebears faced the same situation and came up with some far more effective solutions than our current politicians.

In this enthralling, informative and hugely entertaining book, Peter Jones, one of the UK's leading Classicists, highlights just how much we have to learn from the past and how things really were once so much better.   Peter Jones was educated at Cambridge University and taught Classics at Cambridge and at Newcastle University, before retiring in 1997. He has written a regular column, 'Ancient & Modern', in the Spectator for many years now and is the author of various books on the Classics.