Mary Beard

Mary Beard is an English classical scholar and professor emerita at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature. She is the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement and writes the blog "A Don's Life," which appears regularly in The Times. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public commentary have led to her being described as “Britain’s best-known classicist.”

Beard earned her BA (Hons) at Newnham College, Cambridge, later converted to an MA, and completed her Ph.D. in 1982 with a thesis titled The State Religion in the Late Roman Republic: A Study Based on the Works of Cicero. She lectured at King’s College London from 1979 to 1983 before returning to Cambridge in 1984 as a fellow of Newnham and the only woman lecturer in the Classics faculty. That year, she co-authored Rome in the Late Republic with Cambridge ancient historian Michael Crawford.

She became classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement in 1992 and has held the position of Professor of Classics at Cambridge. In 2008–2009, she was Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where she delivered a lecture series on "Roman Laughter."

Beard has appeared in numerous documentaries and television programs, including Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town and Channel 4’s Jamie’s Dream School. She wrote and presented the three-part series Meet the Romans with Mary Beard on BBC Two and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s A Point of View, delivering essays on topics ranging from Miss World to the Oxbridge interview.