and there is no new thing under the sun
What he could have written:
“He came to the task of government in his mid-fifties with excellent and unrivalled credentials. But his character was dour and introspective, with more than a touch of melacholia and insecurity. Above all, he lacked the consummate political adroitness of Blair. Men could never be quite sure what was going on in Brown’s mind. This led to the view that he was a hypocrite; in fact this stemmed from the system which he inherited, the product of the great illusionist Blair.”
What he did write:
“He came to the task of government in his mid-fifties with excellent and unrivalled credentials. But his character was dour and introspective, with more than a touch of melacholia and insecurity. Above all, he lacked the consummate political adroitness of Augustus. Men could never be quite sure what was going on in Tiberius’s mind. This led to the view that he was a hypocrite; in fact this stemmed from the system which he inherited, the product of the great illusionist Augustus.”
From The Oxford History of the Roman World; David Stockton writing about the Roman emperor Tiberius.
