And how does Beard herself fare with the dormouse test? Sure enough, some three-quarters of the way through Pompeii, we are shown the illustration of a "dormouse-jar": a curious pot in which the wretched rodents could be kept alive while being fattened up. It is an image that perfectly sums up the portrait of Pompeii we are given in this learned and fascinating book: a myth that is not wholly a myth, but something even more remarkable and strange. In 2013 she presented Caligula with Mary Beard on BBC Two, describing the making of myths around leaders and dictators. [44] Interviewers continued to ask about her self-presentation, and she reiterated that she had no intention of undergoing a make-over. [45]

Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town - Mary Beard - Google Books Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town - Mary Beard - Google Books

In The Fires of Vesuvius, Cambridge University classics professor Mary Beard restores Pompeii in all its bustling everydayness… But as vivid and detailed a depiction as Beard is able to provide, what is equally fascinating about Pompeii is how much we do not know… Beard calls this the ‘Pompeii paradox,’ the fact that ‘we simultaneously know a huge amount and very little about life there.’ That’s also what makes this learned but lively account a rather haunting read. Oddly familiar images of daily life two millenniums distant are juxtaposed with a sense of impenetrable mystery. ‘A visit to Pompeii almost never disappoints,’ Beard insists. To read this book is to agree. ” —Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science MonitorJanice Hadlow, then controller of BBC2, read the book on holiday, and persuaded Beard to turn it into a TV programme. “I was terrified there’d be lots of people dressed up in sheets,” said Beard. But it was her moment: at the time, the BBC was being sued for age discrimination by presenter Miriam O’Reilly and the paucity of older women on air was becoming painfully obvious. “Janice said: ‘You’ve complained there are loads of wrinkly, crusty old men presenting documentaries and no women over 35, and now I’m offering you the chance – you’re not going to tell me you’re not going to do it, are you?’” It was a turning point. Hitherto, her readers had numbered in their thousands. The documentary was watched by 3.4 million.

The Fires of Vesuvius — Mary Beard | Harvard University Press The Fires of Vesuvius — Mary Beard | Harvard University Press

Career 1984 Appointed fellow of Newnham College; 1985 Rome in the Late Republic; 1992 Appointed classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement; 2000 The Invention of Jane Harrison; 2004 Appointed professor of classics at Cambridge; 2007 The Roman Triumph; 2008 Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Beard exemplifies something rare, said Jonty Claypole, the BBC’s director of arts and one of the executive producers of the new Civilisations. “It’s never about her,” he said. “To be a true public intellectual is like offering a form of public service. A lot of people don’t realise that: they confuse being a public intellectual with their ego.” He counted off those he regarded as her predecessors: “Bertrand Russell, Kenneth Clark, Susan Sontag, Robert Hughes, Germaine Greer, Stuart Hall, Simon Schama … ” Figures like these emerge only once in a generation, he said. “She looks at the world through the deep lens of the ancient world, and she shifts arguments.” The Fires of Vesuvius] offered me a wealth of riveting information on the vanished city, written with clarity, wit and a detective’s eye for solving conundrums. ” —Alberto Manguel, Times Literary Supplement Sometimes, she overcompensated for her femininity. After her first baby, she decided to continue with her duties as secretary of the Cambridge Philological Society, a fortnightly faculty club where papers were presented. Her job was to read out the minutes from the last session. “I thought: I’m bloody well not going to let them say I had ratted on that obligation. Four or five days after Zoe was born, I went and read the minutes, and after a few minutes of the paper I slipped away.” For the rest of the term, she did the same: read the minutes, and discreetly slipped away to feed the baby, feeling utterly heroic. But heroism, it transpired, was not what the blokes saw. They saw a shirker. A decade later, she was in the pub with a colleague. “And he said: ‘Oh yes, you were the one who used to turn up, and then not hear the paper.’” Beard recalled: “My breasts were exploding.”You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. a b c d e f g Laity, Paul (10 November 2007). "The dangerous don". The Guardian. London, UK . Retrieved 16 July 2008. Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2008); ISBN 1-86197-516-3 (US title: The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found; Harvard University Press) Cambridge professor under fire for Boston immigration comments on BBC Question Time". Boston Standard. 21 January 2013. Archived from the original on 11 January 2014 . Retrieved 24 January 2013.