Mary Beard (classicist)

For the American historian and women's rights campaigner, see Mary Ritter Beard.

Mary Beard OBE FSA FBA
Beard filming in Rome, 2012
Born	Winifred Mary Beard (1955-01-01) 1 January 1955 Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Occupation	Classical scholar
Awards	Wolfson History Prize (2008) for Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town OBE (2013)

Winifred Mary Beard OBE FSA FBA (born 1 January 1955) is an English Classical scholar.

She is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of ancient literature. She is also the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog, "A Don's Life", which appears in The Times as a regular column. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist".

Youth and education

Beard, an only child, was born on 1 January 1955 in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Her mother, Joyce Emily Beard, was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader. Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard, worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging".

Beard attended Shrewsbury High School, a private school for girls. During the summer she participated in archaeological excavations; this was to earn money for recreational spending.

At the age of eighteen she was interviewed for a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, and sat for the then-compulsory entrance exam. She had thought of going to King's, but rejected it when she discovered the college did not offer scholarships to women. Although studying at a single-sex college, she found in her first year that some men in the university held dismissive attitudes toward the academic potential of women, and this strengthened her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that remained "hugely important" in her later life, although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly cant. Beard has since said that "Newnham could do better in making itself a place where critical issues can be generated" and has also described her views on feminism, saying "I actually can't understand what it would be to be a woman without being a feminist." Beard received a BA (Hons) at Newnham, which in time was converted to an MA. She remained at Cambridge for her 1982 Ph.D. thesis entitled, The state religion in the late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero.

Career

From 1979 to 1983 Beard lectured in Classics at King's College London. She returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a Fellow of Newnham College and the only woman lecturer in the Classics faculty. Rome in the Late Republic, which she co-wrote with the Cambridge ancient historian Michael Crawford, was published the same year.

Beard became Classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement in 1992. In 1994 she made an early television appearance on an Open Media discussion for the BBC, Weird Thoughts.

Arms of the University of Cambridge

Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She opined that many people, once "the shock had faded", thought "the United States had it coming", and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price" (the so-called "Roosting Chickens argument"). In a November 2007 interview, she stated that the hostility these comments provoked had still not subsided, although she believed it had become a standard viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign policy.

In 2004, Beard became Professor of Classics at Cambridge. She also was elected Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter".

In December 2010, on BBC Two, Beard presented the graphic historical documentary, Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, submitting remains from the town to forensic tests, aiming to show a snapshot of the lives of the residents prior to the eruption of Vesuvius. In 2011 she took part in a television series, Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4, and for BBC Two in 2012 she wrote and presented the three part television series, Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, which concerns how ordinary people lived in Rome, "The world's first global metropolis". Beard is a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4 series, A Point of View, delivering essays on a broad range of topics including Miss World and the Oxbridge interview.

Beard received considerable online abuse after she appeared on BBC's Question Time from Lincolnshire in January 2013 and spoke positively about immigrant workers living in the county. Beard quoted abusive comments that she had received on her blog as a result, and reasserted her right to express unpopular opinions and to present herself in public in an authentic way. On 4 August 2013, she received a bomb threat on Twitter, hours after the UK head of that social networking site had apologised to women who had experienced abuse on the service. Beard said she did not think she was in physical danger, but considered it harassment and wanted to "make sure" that another case had been logged by the police.

In July 2013 Beard admitted that she knowingly, repeatedly, and illegally rode her bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street.

In April 2013, she was named as Royal Academy of Arts professor of ancient literature.

In August 2014, Beard was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to the September referendum on that issue.

In December 2015 she was again a panelist on BBC's Question Time from Bath.

Honours

• Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for "services to classical scholarship"
• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (2005)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) shortlist for Confronting the Classics (2013)

Books

• Rome in the Late Republic (with Michael Crawford, 1985, revised 1999); ISBN 0-7156-2928-X
• The Good Working Mother's Guide (1989); ISBN 0-7156-2278-1
• Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (as editor with John North, 1990); ISBN 0-7156-2206-4
• Classics: A Very Short Introduction (with John Henderson, 1995); ISBN 0-19-285313-9
• Religions of Rome (with John North and Simon Price, 1998); ISBN 0-521-30401-6 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-45015-2 (vol. 2)
• The Invention of Jane Harrison (Harvard University Press, 2000); ISBN 0-674-00212-1
• Classical Art from Greece to Rome (with John Henderson, 2001); ISBN 0-19-284237-4
• The Parthenon (Harvard University Press, 2002); ISBN 1-86197-292-X
• The Colosseum (with Keith Hopkins, Harvard University Press, 2005); ISBN 1-86197-407-8
• The Roman Triumph (Harvard University Press, 2007); ISBN 0-674-02613-6
• 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)
• Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations (Profile Books, 2013); ISBN 1-78125-048-0
• Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up (University of California Press, 2014); ISBN 0-520-27716-3
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Profile Books, 2016); ISBN 9780871404237

Personal life

In 1985 Beard married Robin Cormack. She had a daughter called Zoe in 1985 and a son called Raphael in 1987.

See also

• Classical Tripos
• The Sigmund H. Danziger, Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities

External links

• Mary Beard's blog at The TLS
• Debretts People of Today