I am a classical scholar, and you are not

• BuyEnoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politics and Philosophy of Enoch Powell edited by Lord Howard of Rising
  Biteback, 320 pp, £25.00, June 2012, ISBN 978 1 84954 310 1

John Enoch Powell was an eminent classical scholar, as his entry in Who’s Who proclaimed: Craven Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1931; First Chancellor’s Classical Medallist; Porson Prizeman; Browne Medallist, 1932; fellow of Trinity, 1934-38; professor of Greek at the University of Sydney, 1937-39. He was 25 when he was appointed to the chair at Sydney. There was a classicist called John Powell, so it was as Enoch that he became known. Enoch at 100, we’re warned at the outset, offers a sympathetic reassessment of a prophet by his admirers. On the page facing the contents, an encomium that appeared in the Telegraph at the time of his death in 1998 is reprinted: ‘Powell will survive more surely than any other British politician of the 20th century except Winston Churchill.’ The dozen or so contributors do not rely on their own arguments to persuade us of that: nine of Powell’s speeches are also reprinted.