What do you get when you pit a top classicist against our Secretary of State for Culture? A depressing indictment of all that is wrong with the way government ministers are appointed, via a blinkered web of loyalty and patronage rather than talent for one's brief, OF COURSE. (For the benefit of the sarcastically challenged, this is a joke. In fact, what you get is a chance to learn something about the ancient world you might not know.)

Here, the jolly classicist and fierce twitterer Mary Beard brilliantly (and relatively kindly) points out a rather embarrassing mistake in an article by the Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid:

whoops. I'm all with this sentiment, but..err .. Socrates didn't write anything (that's the point of Plato). pic.twitter.com/SyIIIlH23h — mary beard (@wmarybeard) January 11, 2015

Classic error.