Mary Beard

Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge

Mary Beard is one of Britain's best-known Classicists. She is Fellow of Newnham College and a Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge where she has taught for the last 25 years. She has written numerous books on the ancient world, including Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2009) which portrays a vivid account of life in Pompeii in all its aspects from food to sex and politics, The Roman Triumph (2007), Classical Art from Greece to Rome (2001) and books on the Parthenon and the Colosseum as part of a series on wonders of the world. Her interests range from the social and cultural life of ancient Greece and Rome to the Victorian understanding of antiquity. Beard is also Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and writes a blog, A Don's Life, a selection of which has just been published in book form, It's a Don's Life (2009).