At the moment, the answer to the question of why we should read Homer's Odyssey seems rather straightforward: so we can more intelligently voice our opinions on Christopher Nolan's new blockbuster film adaptation. A quarter-century ago, the matter was somewhat less clear.

If you smooth out Homer’s epic poem and modernise it too much, you lose what made it so important to begin with

Christopher Nolan's ambitious adaptation of Homer's epic poem tells us more about the America that made it than about the ancient Greece it depicts