Mary Beard Questions Future Historians’ Perceptions of Modern Society

Mary Beard made coffee in a Cambridge kitchen painted an intense azure. She offered milk from a glass bottle, an old-fashioned touch.

The interviewee felt out of her depth as she sat opposite the famed classicist. Beard is 71 and a fellow emerita at Cambridge.

She lives nearby in a four-storey terraced house packed with books. Her husband is Robin Cormack, a Byzantinist and expert in Byzantine art.

New book and central themes

Her latest book is Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old. It is published by Profile Books.

The book argues that studying Greek and Latin remains relevant today. Beard urges readers to consider how the ancient world felt to its own people.

She also pushes back against modern misuses of classics. She notes that many ancient sculptures were originally painted, not uniformly white.

Beard cites Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 2018 Louvre video Apeshit as a modern rebuke to claims of classical purity. She includes lively ancient stories, even an odd tale about a statue of Aphrodite.

Reading difficult things

Beard argues that classics teaches people to read difficult texts and think critically. She sees that skill as vital for modern life.

She wants the subject to be open and useful to a wide public. The book aims at readers who have not thought much about classics.

Accessibility versus elitism

Beard rejects the idea that classics belongs only to the elite. She says the subject should be for clever people from all backgrounds.

She warns against reverence that freezes questions. Her position is that classics matters more if we revere it less.

Life, work and public encounters

Beard remembers an early academic phase when she tried to sound like a man. A senior colleague told her bluntly that her voice then was not convincing.

She experienced heavy trolling after rising to public prominence. She also faced harsh criticism from the late AA Gill about her television appearance.

Beard has written about sexual violence and once disclosed being raped in her twenties by a man she met on a train in Italy. She uses classical texts to help talk about difficult subjects.

Politics and public debate

She had a public debate with Boris Johnson in 2015, when he was London mayor. Observers generally judged her performance superior.

Beard says Johnson understands classics but sometimes misrepresents the past. She supported Jeremy Corbyn at one point, but later criticised his handling of anti‑Semitism.

She expressed disappointment in Keir Starmer, comparing hopes for him to a postwar Attlee‑style leader. She is wary of easy comparisons between modern leaders and Roman emperors.

Other roles and upcoming work

Beard chairs this year’s Booker Prize judging panel. Fellow judges include Rebecca Liu, Jarvis Cocker, Raymond Antrobus and Patricia Lockwood.

The panel read 160 books in six months. The prize winner will be announced in November.

She co-hosts the podcast Instant Classics and serves as classics editor at the Times Literary Review. Her book tour will visit Britain, the United States, Dublin and Belfast.

Looking forward

Beard asks what future historians will find strange about our era. She urges historians to question how later generations will view our perceptions of modern society.

She gives penal policy as an example. Future historians might ask why minor offences drew harsh punishments in our time.

Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old is published by Profile Books. Filmogaz.com covered this conversation as part of its cultural reporting.