麻豆社

Author and journalist Charlotte Higgins explores our ancient fascination with mazes and labyrinths, and reflects on their significance - in art and in mythology, in literature and in life.

Her own interest was inspired by a childhood visit to the palace of Knossos on the island of Crete - where, according to legend, King Minos ordered the construction of a labyrinth to house the half-bull, half-man Minotaur. The monstrous creature was slain by the hero Theseus, who famously managed to escape from the labyrinth with the help of a ball of red thread supplied by Minos's daughter, Ariadne.

"This is where it began," writes Higgins, "my longing for the labyrinth..."

It was also the beginning of her career as a classicist: "I tried to learn my way back there," she says, going on to study Greek and Latin at school and then at Oxford.

As for her own sense of direction: "I have never been able to find my way. Turn me loose in a city without a map and panic rises, as if I were a child who had lost the grip of a parent's hand in a crowd."

And in life? "What frightens me more than the wrong turns I have taken ... are the right turns, the ones I so nearly didn't take...."

Written and read by Charlotte Higgins.

Charlotte is the chief culture writer of the Guardian and the author of three previous books on the ancient world, including Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, short-listed for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction. She is also the author of This New Noise: the Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the 麻豆社.

Abridged and produced by David Jackson Young.

First broadcast on 麻豆社 Radio 4 in July 2018.