Latin Stories (Second Edition): A GCSE Reader

Latin Stories is an ideal first reader for students of Latin. It offers 100 self-contained passages of manageable length, chosen for their intrinsic interest and adapted from a wide range of ancient authors. Generous help is given, with a short introduction to each story and glossing of all proper names and non-GCSE vocabulary. The collection will also be attractive to older students beginning or returning to the language. Updated to match the 2016 OCR specification, this edition has been restructured to reflect the new examinations, which now have a single language paper. Section 1 provides 30 passages, starting with very short and simple stories and building up to the level of the current OCR GCSE. Section 2 provides 30 differentiated passages of increasing difficulty on historical and miscellaneous topics. Section 3 provides 20 shorter passages of uniform length on mythological topics, with comprehension questions, in the style of Section A of the new GCSE language paper. Section 4 provides 20 passages on historical topics, with comprehension and unseen sections, in the style of Section B of the new GCSE language paper. The new edition is supported by a companion website with an answer key and additional passages.

Henry Cullen teaches Classics and is Director of Studies at St Albans High School for Girls, UK, and is co-author with John Taylor of a new two-volume course, Latin to GCSE (Bloomsbury, 2016).

Michael Dormandy has taught ancient languages at Ashford School and Oxford University, UK. He has published on early modern Latin and is currently undertaking research in Greek textual criticism at Cambridge University, UK.

John Taylor was for many years Head of Classics at Tonbridge School, UK, and now teaches Classics at Manchester University, UK. He is author of Greek to GCSE (new edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and Greek Beyond GCSE (new edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), co-author of Writing Greek (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011) and Greek Stories (new edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), and also author or co-author of a number of Latin textbooks.