Charlotte Higgins

Charlotte Higgins, FSA (born 6 September 1972) is a British writer and journalist.

Quotes

• If the prevailing feeling is that Latin and Greek are for toffs, then Boris [Johnson], frankly, is not the man to dispel that notion.
  • "A classic toff", The Guardian (6 June 2008)

• In north Staffordshire, it is perfectly acceptable, indeed polite social practice, to turn over a plate and inspect the backstamp if you are eating at a friend’s house. Because Stoke has historically had a rather stable, immobile population, memories are long and the tentacular reach of families into the pottery industry goes back generations.
  • "In the bleak Midwinter", New Statesman (15 January 2009)
  • Higgins was born and raised in Stoke-on-Trent.

• The classics and class have always been ­uncomfortably linked. In this country's education system, knowledge of the classics was traditionally the gatekeeper of privilege. If you ­acquired the classics (even as a humble stonemason's son, like Thomas Hardy) you gained a passport to the establishment. Fail (like Hardy's character Jude) and the corridors of power remained out of reach.
  • "By academia or tweet, the classics for all", The Guardian (29 April 2009)

• The wording chills me slightly, with its suggestion of a regular consignment of Eton scholars as if by a law of nature.
• But "the classics" are so much more than this careless and aggressive chucking around of Latin and Greek tags, as if they were bread rolls at a Bullingdon club dinner.
  • "Boris Johnson's love of classics is about just one thing: himself", The Guardian (6 October 2019)
  • Classicist Oswyn Murray, a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, had said of Johnson (to Higgins): "Probably the worst scholar Eton ever sent us – a buffoon and an idler".

• I love the British Museum, despite everything. I have had my eyes opened, my imagination set on fire, my intellect challenged by it too many times to mention. ... A fortnight ago, I stopped by to admire the beauty of the Parthenon sculptures, the galloping horsemen and reclining gods innocent of their role in a diplomatic feud. The museum was full of schoolchildren. The place was vibrating with the energy and excitement that comes from the encounter with glorious, awe-inspiring objects. But taking £50m from a polluter? It fills my heart with dread that the museum should take so wrong a turn.
  • "I love the British Museum, but what I've learned about the depth of its crisis fills me with dread", The Guardian (21 December 2023)
  • See also Parthenon Frieze. For the "diplomatic feud", see a November 2023 BBC News item. The reference to "a polluter" concerns the Museum's announcement of a sponsorship deal with BP (formerly known as British Petroleum) which will last for 10-years during the institution's £1 billion refurbishment.