I came across May's book Love: A History, quite by chance in a charity book shop. I was Immediately intrigued by why a history was even necessary – surely there is nothing more universal and natural than love? The pages of May's Book, laden with millennia of Western philosophy suggest otherwise. It is an ever-shifting phenomenon that has been understood very differently by each age. The musings of modern luminaries like Cardi B are only the latest iteration in a line that goes back to the Hebrew

In the seventh century BC, Thrasybulus, the brutal tyrant of Miletus was asked how he managed to maintain his throne. He responded by taking the man on a walk through a field of wheat, stopping to scythe down the tallest and best plants. The message conveyed was that the tyrant pre-empted challenges to power by removing those outstanding individuals powerful or brave enough to threaten him. This ancient parable told in the oldest work of history is just as relevant to despots today as in antiqui

When Napoleon first beheld the island of St Helena, the site of his second and final exile, it is said that the emperor contemplated it in dread silence. This has defined its place in our imaginations since; the rocky prison where Bonaparte spent the remainder of his life, shivering and slowly succumbing to illness. This dot of Britain lost in the blue immensity of the South Atlantic between Angola and Brazil has been inhabited by thousands for more than two hundred years since. I spoke with Dr

Edith Hall is one of our greatest experts on the vanished universe of Aristotle and Aristophanes, author of 30 plus books, and frequent television and radio contributor. Yet she still lives very firmly in our own world, as she campaigns tirelessly for a just Classics bereft of the classism that has long plagued the discipline. Profile initially spoke to Edith about her bestselling book, Aristotle's Way. It was mesmeric to hear Aristotelian wisdom freed from dusty, leather-bound volumes to be so