Dame Mary Beard: "I’m a tough old bird, but I’m not iron-clad"
The 71-year-old classicist on Beyoncé, family and why it's so important to speak out.
The 71-year-old classicist on Beyoncé, family and why it's so important to speak out.
When I first arrived at Cambridge University, it was very elitist: very white and very male. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say there’s been a revolution in the past 50 years, but some groups are still missing out, especially low-income families.
Education should be for all, and that needs to be fought for.
Although I’ve been ‘retired’ for three years from my job [as a classics professor at Cambridge University], I’m in the privileged position of having a good pension. That has given me the freedom to do other things. There are very few mornings when I wonder what I’m going to do today. I like writing; I’m helping to judge the Booker Prize; and I like making TV programmes.
Just recently, I was making a programme about Herculaneum, and they allowed me to rock the carbonised wooden infant cradle [from 79CE]. Can you imagine that? Mind blowing!
I’ve got three grandchildren, aged between three and six. I babysit, but neither of my children, Zoe and Raphael, live close by, so I’m only called in occasionally. Even if they lived next door, there’s no way I’d want to spend the rest of my days as a free babysitter. I’m too busy!
Zoe and Raphael have ventured into academia, but we never pushed them. You can’t force your kids into a career; you can only hope they find something that makes them happy. And it’s the same with grandchildren. If there comes a time when the little ones want to investigate Virgil in the original Latin, nobody will be more pleased than me!
There have been difficult times in my life. I talked about when I was raped in the 1970s [while backpacking in Italy]. Someone asked me recently if I regretted going public about it. Not at all. Women like me – women with a voice – should be able to talk about it.
We should be able to look at it analytically, and we should feel outraged. Attitudes have changed for the better, but there is more we can do. Just look at some of the things that have been said about me – and other women – on social media.
I’m a tough old bird, but I’m not iron-clad. There have been times when I was tempted to step away from it all, but I always come back to the same argument: it is better to engage with people, even if they don’t agree with you.
When it comes to being interested in Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, people automatically reach for the stereotype: old man, tweed suit, leather elbow patches.
Yes, the classics come with baggage, but what about all those people who went to see Gladiator? Or Christopher Nolan filming a new version of The Odyssey? And in my new book, Talking Classics, I mention that Beyoncé referenced classical sculpture in one of her videos. How can anyone not care about what came before us?
[Hero image credit: BBC]
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