Of all the great misquotations in political history, none can surely be more persistent that the use of the phrase “rivers of blood” in reference to the speech given by the controversial British politician, Enoch Powell, forty years ago on Sunday (on 20 April 1968). What Powell in fact said was, “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.” He did not talk about “rivers of blood” as such. A classical scholar,...