On the Spartacus Road: a spectacular journey through Ancient Italy

The author retraces Spartacus's route round Italy as far as it is known, with musings about his brush with cancer and the people he meets on the way as well as the ancient authors who mention Spartacus, however glancingly.

This just didn't gel for me. If it hadn't been a bookclub choice I doubt if I'd finished it.

Another book that I really wanted to love. And yet, I couldn't quite come to grips with it. Peter Stothard, editor of the TLS and renowned classicist attempts to trace the steps of the famous Thracian gladiator about whom very little is really known. And so he wanders around the backroads bringing to life now obscure towns and regions. But for me I couldn't quite grasp the thread of the narrative, couldn't quite bring the ancient world to life. So I came away a little disappointed. But I would still recommend it

Interesting prose with erudite elocution, personal battle with cancer, and a travelogue about Spartacus.

Running low on (paper) reading material, I selected this from the English-language section of a bookstore in Rome. Stothard is or was a journalist who presumably wrote for a living, but you'd never know from this. Uncertain in its structure, needlessly roundabout in its syntax, rambling in narrative, this book annoyed me so much I read Economist and Outside magazines instead of this book on a plane and left it, 2/3 unread, in an airport.