Description

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Mary Beard's by now famous blog A Don's Life has been running on the TLS website for nearly three years. In it she has made her name as a wickedly subversive commentator on the world in which we live. Her central themes are the classics, universities and teaching - and much else besides. What are academics for? Who was the first African Roman emperor? Looting - ancient and modern. Are modern exams easier? Keep lesbos for the lesbians. Did St Valentine exist? What made the Romans laugh? That is just a small taste of this selection (and some of the choicer responses) which will inform, occasionally provoke and cannot fail to entertain.

About the Author

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Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS). Her books include the acclaimed and best-selling Pompeii, The Roman Triumph and The Parthenon (in the Wonders of the World series of which she is general editor).

Praise For…

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'Britain's most outspoken classicist is hilarious, staggeringly knowledgeable and utterly brilliant' - Vogue

'Delightful ... it has the virtues of brevity, eclecticism and learning worn lightly ... Beard is a very funny and penetrating commentator on academic life - and has a fantastic knack for controversy. If they'd had Mary Beard on their side back then, the Romans would still have their empire' - Daily Mail