Did it for 4 years at high school in the late ‘60s, in the Scottish education system it was compulsory at our level. We all felt it was a real grind, and questioned its relevance in the modern world. Right after my last Latin exam (1970), I went out into the backyard and burned my books.

But 50 years later I’m glad we did it. Quite apart from opening a window into the classical world, it taught us intellectual discipline, gave us a grounding to help with learning the “romance” languages, (Italian, Spanish, French etc), and introduced us to logical language structure (in later years that helped me with Chinese).

On a lighter note, our Latin teacher Mrs M (also house mistress for my school “house”), looked and sounded just like Hogwarts’ Professor McGonagall, except that she didn’t wear the pointy hat ( but we _knew_ she was a witch!)