Teachers encouraged to use Taylor Swift lyrics to make Latin accessible

Cambridge University academic writes guide suggesting Latin should be taught more creatively

Latin teachers are being encouraged to use Taylor Swift’s lyrics, Disney songs, Minecraft and fan fiction to help make the ancient language of Virgil and Cicero more accessible to their 21st-century students.

In recent decades, schoolchildren – mainly in private schools – have mastered the early stages of Latin through the tales of Lucius Caecilius, a Pompeii banker who lived in the first century AD, and his family, as described in the popular Cambridge Latin Course, soon to be published in its fifth edition.