This engagingly written and entertaining study of the reception of classical antiquity in Victorian Britain is the first volume to be published in a new series entitled ‘Classics after Antiquity’. The book is introduced by a ‘Series editors’ preface’ written by the three editors (Alastair Blanchard, Shane Butler and Emily Greenwood), placing Richardson's volume within the new tradition of exploring ‘horizontal studies’ of classical reception (xiv). Thus R. addresses a number of individuals from the sidelines of Victorian classical scholarship — the scholars, scoundrels and generals of his title. Mostly, but not entirely, male, some were drunkards, or murderers. As soon as I began to read, I was swiftly drawn into R.’s narrative and responded enthusiastically to the lives and activities of his characters and themes.

I shall dwell on three particular issues among the wealth of fascinating material. First, the book provides a very well informed and thoughtful contribution to the growing body of work on classical reception. R.’s contemplation of figures on the margin of the history of study clearly articulates an interest in the complexities of how people have drawn upon the classical past. I was particularly struck by his attempt to contextualize the development of ‘the unbroken line’ in classical scholarship and the argument that this was predominantly a development of the later nineteenth century (165–5). This was a time when fields of scholarship were developing their own disciplinary rules and boundaries to exclude the uninitiated. In this context, the direction taken in this book returns to an alternative tradition of study by exploring Romanticism's revival of the classical past as tentative and fragile (102), a theme that R. pursues through his case studies.

Second, I found the section of the book that focuses on the links between military activity and archaeological research particularly rewarding. Although R. concentrates mostly on classical learning and language, he brings out clearly the relevance of the material remains of classical civilization to a Victorian gentleman. He addresses the way that the British characterized the Crimean War (1854–6) as an attempt to recreate the classical Greek past of that region. R.’s sustained analysis draws upon military tactics, journalistic reports and a programme of archaeological research undertaken by Duncan McPherson to create a narrative for how classical knowledge informed British actions during this conflict. Rival conceptions of the classical past motivated both sides in the war — a British wish to recreate classical Greek civilization in the Crimea and a Russian desire to recreate the region as part of a New Byzantium (85).

Indeed, the recovery of the classical past in Britain was as significant for Victorians and I was expecting to see some of the familiar names of antiquarians and archaeologists amongst R.’s scholars, scoundrels and generals, but I noticed none (cf. Richard Hingley, The Recovery of Roman Britain 1586–1906 (2008)). There has been a good deal of research into how Britain's national Roman past provided the foundation for much of the imperial thinking of British generals and intellectuals. Sometimes this appears to have drawn upon the concept of the eternal stability of British national life (a theme popular with some politicians today), but this theme is not too relevant in this book, which has a very different agenda. R. argues that ‘the quiet assurance of the eternal has never clung to the classical’ (127) and, in these terms, failure plays a structural rôle in many of R.’s examples. This leaves me wondering about the activities of some Victorian antiquaries who contemplated the Roman ruins of Britain as an inspiration for the eternal. For example, John Collingwood Bruce's attempts to communicate the national and imperial importance of Hadrian's Wall and John Clayton's clearing and rebuilding of the monument made claim to the inheritance and stability of imperial order that linked imperial Rome to Victorian Britain. Is there something effectively timeless about the uncovering and display of Roman antiquities that encourages contemplation of the eternal?

Last, R.’s book raises the relationship between classics and other scholarly fields. Levine explored the growing professionalism of academic fields during the period when the idea of ‘an unbroken line’ in the classical tradition was developing (Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886 (1986)). Many of the characters in R.’s book contributed little of lasting value to classical studies, but this was often a result of the society in which they lived. R. observes that, although classical knowledge was seen to provide a way for people to move upwards through the social hierarchy, in reality the nature of Victorian society largely prevented people from achieving social mobility through intellectual achievement (35). Other academic subjects also may have appeared to provide Victorians with opportunities for social advancement. However, the careers of the archaeologist Charles Roach Smith and the geologist/palaeontologist Gideon Mantell suggest that the self-made scholar in Victorian society may always have had to struggle to gain social standing.

As these few remarks indicate, R.’s stimulating and highly readable book is a delight to read. It is also an excellent volume for the first title in what promises to form a significant new series of books that contemplate horizontal classical reception.