Her enormous energy and enthusiasm are infectious...No-one before Bettany Hughes, a highly accomplished communicator, has thought to weave Socrates examined life into so rich and dense a tapestry

The Hemlock Cup is another vibrant and atmospheric work from this well-known promoter of the ancient world...this is an exciting book that puts the reader into the footsteps of Athenians of the 5th century BC

Hughes' prose is the literary equivalent of CGI, re-creating for the reader a sense of the clamour and dazzle of the classical city that has rarely been bettered. Not only that, she is expert in knowing when to alter and vary her focus. Sometimes we are led by her through the streets of modern Athens, sometimes across an archaeological site, and sometimes down into the basement of a provincial museum, where rare treasures lie hidden. She spares no effort in bringing the world of Socrates alive. Hers is an ancient Greece that is authentically cutting-edge.

No physical aspect of life as experienced by an Athenian man is left out...Hughes's expert attempts to make him flesh and blood, to fill in the gaps...teach us about the value of the real as well as the philosophical.

Bettany Hughes’s The Hemlock Cup delivers an exuberant, fascinating portrait of Socratic Athens.

Bettany Hughes' biography is far more than just that: this tour de force is a vivid political and social history of Athens in the 5th century BC. Hughes evokes a city steeped in change, looking past the Golden Age of democracy, new wealth and power to the reality of a century tempered by war and infighting. With the plan of his life as a backbone, the book covers the whole experience of 5th-century Athenians, yet paints a picture of Socrates as a marvellous eccentric, paddling the streets barefoot, conversing with strangers and refusing to conform...this approach produces an extremely exciting narrative. Dripping with colour; the city itself is dirty, smelly, defiantly alive. And what other historian has spared a thought for the buttock pain of ancient jurors sat on hard stone seats in court? This is not a study of Socrates' philosophy but his world. As thought-provoking as it is thrilling, the book is a beacon for the relevance and interest of classics today.

As vivid, vital and scholarly a work on Ancient Athens as you could ask for.

Passion is very much Bettany Hughes’s trademark, much on display in this lively biography of Socrates, focusing particularly on his trial in May 399BC for 'corrupting the young and denying [Athens’s] gods’. As gossipy as it is erudite, Hughes’s meticulous research has worked miracles to uncover the life of the Greek philosopher who wrote almost nothing down. Noisy, greedy, gillyflower-strewn fifth-century BC Athens, with its loose tribal apartheid and ambivalence about its own democratic processes, is as much a character of this book as is the calm, witty and ultimately doomed Socrates.

Radical. Hughes recreates the dusty streets of Greece in which Socrates' dialogues took shape, and revisits archaeological sites around the glittering city of Athens. It reads like an investigation and, in trying to find the man, Hughes uses the skills of historian and documentarian combined to create a fresh and surprisingly pacy biography.

Compelling.

Bettany Hughes has done it again; she brings to life not only Socrates himself but the whole of Periclean Athens. Here is a work of dazzling erudition which remains hugely readable - what more can one ask?

Riveting, passionate and learned...The Hemlock Cup is a biography of Socrates, and also a lot more than that...As she unfolds the tale, she brings us an edited history of fifth-century BC Athens, too. This isn’t padding, or even scene-setting (atmospheric though it always is). Without overstating the case, she shows how the city’s life runs alongside the philosopher’s, and then takes a different course... There’s some terrific and passionate writing about a philosopher whose heroism is unquestionable (though that heroism resides in a constant questioning); and as lively and learned an introduction to classical Athens as you could want.

Like many of today’s best scholars Hughes thinks in visual terms, and tells history by using images as much as words. Her first book, on Helen of Troy, was a great success. Now she turns to Socrates. Her approach to this immensely difficult subject is delightfully new…Hughes is learned, resourceful, lively, ultra-modern and confiding as well as confident. So although she conveys a great deal of knowledge she does so painlessly. …there is no reason why this work should not achieve its laudable object of introducing the masses pleasurably to Socrates’ world and thought. The most valuable thing a writer on Socrates can do is to encourage readers to go back to the dialogues, read them carefully, and make up their own minds about the various difficulties. This task Bettany Hughes carries out with tumultuous confidence and relish, and I think Socrates himself would have a kindly word for her efforts.

From the ancient Greek world’s most beautiful woman to one of its self-acknowledged ugliest men is quite a step, but one that Hughes accomplishes without breaking strides or pausing for breath…Her enormous energy and enthusiasm are infectious. She writes up a storm. At the end of the road we may not be any closer to certainty or closure on the biggest issues of Socrates’ inordinately rich life and afterlife but, as with the search for the historical Alexander or Jesus, travelling hopefully is quite possibly as good, and as much fun, as arriving. The journey is the reward…No one before Bettany Hughes, a highly accomplished communicator, has thought to weave Socrates’ examined life into quite so rich and dense a tapestry of democratic Athens’ teeming high-culture and mundane experience… Readers will be drawn by Hughes’ beguiling prose into exploring the highways and byways of Athens’ topography… The Hemlock Cup is, moreover, beautifully produced, filled with a host of stunning illustrations and tricked out most inventively on its endpapers with a plethora of extraordinary Socratic quotations running from Montaigne and Lydia Child (both 1588) to Nelson Mandela. The good life is an elusive concept but, however defined, arguably no search for it would be dangerously impeded by buying this handsome volume and reading it through, critically, as Bettany Hughes’ Socrates would have devoutly wished.

Bettany Hughes’ terrifically readable life of the philosopher, The Hemlock Cup, is more than just a life; it is also an evocation and an explanation of the world that created this extraordinary figure… The Hemlock Cup makes a vivid and persuasive case for the study of Socrates as a valuable means to understanding how our way of thinking about our own world came to be, and a guide to how we might understand it better.

Hughes cleverly extracts the man from the dramatic scene-setting in the Platonic dialogues and puts him in his life and times by reconstructing ancient Athens and putting the same questions to us that he puts to adherents and fellow citizens. Hughes credits two editors for saving her from ‘extreme colloquialism’ but enough survives to give this intelligent, bright-eyed, vigorous book a life as vibrant as that lived by its subject.

Hughes conjures up the life in which Socrates worked and lived.'...This book will come as a revelation to most of my brothers and sisters in the philosophical community

For Perfect Presents Just Look To The Past – Hughes spins the few available facts for all they’re worth, set against a richly detailed background of 5th century Athens on which she is an expert. Enthusiastic and colourful.

An ambitious book, taking us through the 70 years of Socrates' life during one of the most exciting moments in world history...its scholarship is impeccable and Hughes' command of the sources daunting

Hughes's beguiling prose draws the reader into the devices and desires of the world's first democratic regime, and a Mediterranean world of sex, violence, sympotic carousing and great man-made beauty. She does full justice - as perhaps the Athenian People did not! - to the religious and philosophical endeavours of a unique career fatally shadowed by the ultimately disastrous Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). All that - and a beautifully produced book too

Bettany Hughes breathes life into Socrates, the thinker Athens both revered and condemned. Socrates’ has benefitted from Hughes’ considerable skills...Hughes’ expert attempts to make him flesh and blood, to fill in the gap, do him no harm. They teach us about the value of the real as well as the philosophical.

So it is that the life of her hero becomes a peg from which to hang a vivid depiction of Athens in its golden age, from the pinnacle of its greatness to the abyss of its ultimate defeat... Hughes's prose is the literary equivalent of CGI, re-creating for the reader a sense of the clamour and dazzle of the classical city that has rarely been bettered. Not only that, she is expert in knowing when to alter and vary her focus. Sometimes we are led by her through the streets of modern Athens, sometimes across an archaeological site, and sometimes down into the basement of a provincial museum, where rare treasures lie hidden. She spares no effort in bringing the world of Socrates alive. Describing Athens amid the death-agonies of the Peloponnesian war, Hughes comments that it "must have been reminiscent of Kabul 2002-10: ragged, war-torn, veiled women in the streets with no husbands, brothers or sons". Hers is an ancient Greece that is authentically cutting-edge.

One can plunge enthusiastically into the seething world inhabited by Socrates that she recreates for us...This is the grand sweep of Athenian history during its most politically inventive and culturally exciting period...It all makes for a rich mixture; Socrates' early days as a keen natural scientist, his military career, his growing sense of what is important in life, his political scrapes, and his execution are played out in the company of Plato, Xenophon, Pericles, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, Aspasia, free men and slaves, shoemakers and sculptors, intellectuals and thugs – a cast of millions – against a backdrop of Athens with its markets, back streets, military engagements, theatrical performances, plague, triumph and disaster. Channel 4 must be licking its lips. It will make irresistible television

She does a very good job of re-creating the material world in which Socrates lived, presenting ancient Athens as a much gaudier, dirtier, smellier and in some respects more industrial place than we often imagine. She is up to date on recent archaeological discoveries ...and she is full of vivid descriptions of what many of the famous landmarks look like to the modern visitor: run-down, and littered with fag ends and Coca-Cola cans. She can also be realistically unsentimental about the culture of classical Athens...she writes frankly of the nastiness of the world in which Socrates grew up and lived.

Bettany Hughes’ dazzling new book.

A wonderfully rich and nuanced evocation

…this fabulous Book of the Week

Fifth-century Athens has never sounded so vibrant and alive...This is more than one man's biography: it is a rich picture of a society on the brink of a fully-fledged democracy, where ideas and inventions are erupting with as much gusto as a volcano. Bettany's use of language and her vocal delivery are just as powerful as her subject matter, and bring Ancient Greece vividly to life.

Selected amongst the books of the year for 2010 by Sir Andrew Motion