A Time Of Gifts is a marvelous book, I have a copy by my desk, but I'm not sure how one could read it and come away with a notion that fascination with the ancient world culminates in Fascism. The author is hugely engrossed with classic literature even as a teenager on walkabout -- the passage where he frightens a passerby because he's solo-reenacting scenes from epic poetry rather too enthusiastically, to keep himself entertained while on the trudge, is very memorable -- and it wasn't long after that journey concluded that he volunteered to go fight Fascism in the most literal sense possible.