The Greek Myths

"As far as I know, every single myth and every single variation, every single little nugget of Greek myth that isn’t necessarily even complete, is in there. This is my Greek myth bible. Robert Graves was the most amazing ancient history scholar and a marvellous writer as well. One of my great sadnesses is that I don’t actually read ancient Greek , I was never taught at school and I’ve never learnt. So I’ve always had to rely on translations and, for me, he’s the best. He’s read them in the original and then he tells them himself. So they are his tellings, but they’re not meant to be flowery or literary. They cram in absolutely everything. He has the most massive footnotes as well and references to where he found the actual myths: usually Hyginus or Diodorus Siculus or somebody that before I read Graves I’d never even heard of. In fact I now have my own copies of Apollodorus and Diodorus Siculus and Hyginus. The footnotes are just amazing. I learned so many different nuggets there, it’s almost worth reading just for them. If you want to know all the Greek myths then definitely read it. You can’t say you really know about Greek myths until you have read it. But I wouldn’t say sit down and think you’re going to do it all in one go. Take it in chunks. No, absolutely not. He was writing things like The White Goddess and studying The Golden Bough and all those things. He was just steeped in the whole thing."