From a column by Lord William Rees-Mogg, originally in the Mail but excerpted here from the Khaleej Times; the ostensible subject is why Prince Charles is a good defender of British culture and/or the purpose of education:

Until the end of the Second World War, the grammar and public schools maintained the tradition of teaching Latin and Greek, and the major classical authors. William Pitt the Elder, who became Lord Chatham, was the leading British Minister of the period of the Seven Years’ War, in which India and Canada were both added to the British Empire, at the expense of France. He was, with Churchill, the greatest of British war Ministers; perhaps, in terms of strategic insight and global judgment, he was the greatest of them all. Thomas Pitt, his nephew, went up to Cambridge in 1754, around the time that the decisive 18th Century war for world empire begun. Chatham wrote occasional letters to his nephew, encouraging him in his studies. He repeatedly recommends the study of John Locke, the late-17th Century liberal philosopher who himself wrote an essay on education.

Chatham writes of the great classic authors. ‘I rejoice to hear that you have begun Homer’s Iliad; and have made so great a progress in Virgil. I hope you taste and love those authors particularly. You cannot read them too much: they are not only the two greatest poets, but they contain the finest lessons for your age to imbibe: lessons of honour, courage, disinterestedness, love of truth, command of temper, gentleness of behaviour, humanity, and in one word, virtue in its true significance.’ English literature, particularly Shakespeare and the King James Bible, is every bit as capable of developing these qualities as Homer or Virgil. I am not even sure that little children cannot be introduced to them. My mother read me Macbeth when I was three, and I can still remember from that reading the gleeful cackling of the witches and the cumbrous jollity of the porter. Naturally, I identified with Lady Macduff’s son who is so plucky in the murder scene: ‘He has killed me, mother: run away, I pray you.’

... if nothing else, Chatham expressed his thoughts rather more clearly ...