'The Táin' (meaning ‘The driving-off cows of Cooley’) is a legendary Irish tale set in the first century AD. It tells of a war against Ulster by the Connacht queen Medb and her husband Ailill, who intend to steal the stud bull Donn Cuailnge and are challenged by the Ulster hero Cú Chulainn. Written in the 12th century and set in the pre-Christian first century, the Táin is the central text in the ‘Ulster Cycle’. These stories from the Tain were edited with glossary by the Celtic, G...

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work.

Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human preten...