Its been a fast news day!

No sooner had I set the record straight from the article in the Independent on Sunday but the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail come out with equally extreme versions of the Indy's argument!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6259500/Ancient-myths-threatened-by-new-book.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218082/How-Alexander-mummys-boy.html#

My book doesnt "threaten" ancient myths and I am not "shattering" ancient legends - my point is to explore them! From reading these articles you would feel that I was single-handedly bringing down ancient Greece and grinding it into the dust under my heel! Nothing could be further from the truth - by writing about it, I want to build up its reputation and importance, not destroy it!

Thankfully there seem to be some level-headed commentators out there who have added their voices to the on-line articles - with perhaps the best comment being this: "lets reserve judgement on what the book really says till we read the book" I couldn't agree more - read the book and you will see the esteem in which I hold the ancient world!

Hopefully that came across also in my discussion of the book on this morning's radio 4 Today Programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mztyd/Today_05_10_2009/

Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist and I were discussing the arguments in the book - particularly thinking about the relevance the example of 4th century Athens has for the 21st century.

Was very happy to see that people were taking the on-line commentators' advice to read the book: at close of play it had risen to 195th bestselling book on amazon.co.uk!

Lets put the ancient Greeks where they deserve to be: front and centre of our attentions!