{"id":432130,"date":"2026-04-12T15:20:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T15:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/432130\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T15:20:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T15:20:17","slug":"what-are-historians-in-the-future-going-to-find-weird-about-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/432130\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What are historians in the future going to find weird about us?\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renowned Roman and Greek classicist Mary Beard<\/a> and I trade small talk in her cute kitchen \u2013 her cabinets are the azure blue of a Cretan sky. She makes the coffee while I try desperately to mask a burgeoning crisis of intellectual confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMilk?\u201d she says with a smile, proffering not a carton but a glass bottle \u2013 how very ancient. Meanwhile, I am beginning to fret that this celebrity Cambridge<\/a> don, one of Britain\u2019s foremost public thinkers, may soon realise that her inquisitor is really an idiot.<\/p>\n

This crisis of confidence has arisen because I am no expert on classics, yet here I am, grinning across the table at one of the world\u2019s top experts in the field. Rome to me is primarily a Ryanair getaway. I learned my only Greek while ordering beer by a Kefalonian pool.<\/p>\n

The prodding little pangs of neurosis had started earlier, stepping off the train in the university city of Cambridge, an hour or so north of London. Beard (71) no longer teaches at the prestigious institution, but she is a fellow emerita and still lives nearby.<\/p>\n

A whiff of intellectualism hangs in the Cambridge air. Everybody in the town looks as if they\u2019re musing on something. Even my taxi driver from the station to Beard\u2019s house, Gaspar from Braga in Portugal, is a thinker, riffing eloquently on everything from economics to the risk of global conflict.<\/p>\n

Gaspar once lived in Switzerland. I ask him about the stereotype that some Swiss can seem a little repressed. \u201cYes, because they\u2019re surrounded on all sides by mountains. Shortened horizons can affect some people\u2019s way of thinking about the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

From the back seat where I am doing last-minute interview preparation, I look up from my notes, struck by this wisdom. If only Gaspar was coming to Beard\u2019s home too.<\/p>\n

He drops me at her four-storey terraced house on a leafy road where she lives with her husband, Robin Cormack, a classicist and expert on Byzantine art. Theirs is undeniably the home of academics. The house may sink under the weight of all the books.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0How Do We Look\/The Eye of Faith by Mary Beard review: compelling subset of BBC\u2019s \u2018Civilisations\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m stirring my coffee, I pray that Beard doesn\u2019t ask me what I studied.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you study?\u201d she says. I reveal a rather prosaic education in business and journalism. Beard, in jest, suppresses a little grimace, causing both of us to giggle. Then we get down to business \u2013 her latest publication.<\/p>\n

Beard, a prolific broadcaster and writer, and possibly the most famous classicist alive, has a new book out this month, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old. It delves deep into the worlds of ancient Rome and Greece \u2013 and the lives of ancient Greeks and Romans \u2013 to make cogent arguments about why classics is relevant today.<\/p>\n

As well as learning about history and art, she believes we should also consider what the ancient world may have actually felt like to its inhabitants. Study of the ancients can also help to bust modern myths, she suggests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teacher in me regularly speaks out when I see the ancient world being misrepresented in support of poisonous causes [today],\u201d Beard writes in the book. \u201cI\u2019m always very happy to rub the nose of any inveterate racist in the fact that most ancient sculpture was originally not white at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

She uses the contemporary example of Beyonc\u00e9<\/a> and Jay-Z<\/a> (together The Carters), who filmed the video for their 2018 single Apeshit in the Louvre in Paris: \u201c[They] joyfully put two fingers up to the mythical \u2018purity\u2019 of classical sculpture \u2013 by placing black and brown singers centre stage alongside such white marble classics as the Venus de Milo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another amusing passage in the book is built around an ancient story of a young man shagging a statue of Aphrodite. Beard revels in eschewing formality.<\/p>\n

She asks \u201cwhat is the point of the classics?\u201d. She avoids getting bogged down in the usual arguments, such as how Athenian democracy inspires modern politics. Instead, she suggests that classics, with its focus on Greek and Latin, most notably \u201cteaches us to read difficult things\u201d. This is a vital skill for modernity.<\/p>\n

\"MaryMary Beard, aged 17. Photograph: Diana Bonakis-Webster <\/p>\n

Beard has long claimed standard socialist and feminist ideals. She insists that classics is not \u201cthe exclusive property of the elite\u201d. She also notes that \u201cplenty of the worst villains in history have been strikingly unimproved by their classical education\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet she believes it can still improve the rest of us. As we chat away, she tells me she wants the book to \u201cspeak to people who haven\u2019t really thought much about classics\u201d. It is a stimulating read but still an accessible one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho wants to teach a subject that only posh boys can do?\u201d she says, leaning into the argument that classics is a bulwark of the English class system \u2013 think of a blond-tousled Boris Johnson<\/a> reciting Homer\u2019s Iliad with a knowing half-grin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very keen on clever posh boys: I\u2019ve taught loads. But I want classics to be for clever anybodies \u2013 the clever non-posh, clever girls, women, clever working class,\u201d says Beard.<\/p>\n

But not everybody is clever, I reply. What use is classics to limited brains?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re right to pick me up on that. I stressed the clever part because places such as Cambridge that teach classics are still very selective. Is classics only for the smart or clever? Emphatically no, it is not. For all of us, thinking about what happened a long time ago is a really important way of thinking about the complexities of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, Beard says, \u201cnot many people are really thick\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Classics can give us a language to talk about difficult things. For me, those paintings and stories are asking me every day to say: \u2018So how do we deal with this?\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She insists that classics \u201cmatters more if we revere it less\u201d. She means this as an argument against elitism. Yet I\u2019m not so sure. How can we not revere it?<\/p>\n

Beard is the only child of an architect and a head teacher. She is the product of an elite education and a high-flying academic career as a don. She has made television documentaries, written a dozen books, given lectures worldwide. She epitomises \u201celite\u201d.<\/p>\n

I suggest that hers may, in fact, be an elite argument. Only someone of privilege could afford to regard classical art and literature with \u201cirreverence\u201d. For the working class, the precariat, the fruits of classical Greek and Roman art are so far removed from their ordinary lives that the only logical and reasonable response is to look at it all with wonder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a good way of putting it,\u201d Beard says.<\/p>\n

She recalls, when she was a student, a professor telling the class to call him by his first name \u2013 to be less reverent. Uncomfortable doing this, she says, the result was that the class spoke up less. What was meant as a friendly intervention became a barrier.<\/p>\n

\"HistorianHistorian Mary Beard at the National Gallery, London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski\/PA <\/p>\n

Beard \u201cnever felt 100 per cent at home as a Cambridge classicist\u201d. It was a man\u2019s world when she joined. Beard also hails from the English midlands county of Shropshire, and retains the broad accent to prove it. Her trajectory may have led her to the elite, but she wasn\u2019t a purebred of that rarefied world when she entered.<\/p>\n

Even after she gained prominence by making television series later in her career, Beard was the target of trolling for her refusal to get too obsessed with her appearance as a woman. Notoriously, the late culture critic AA Gill once criticised her looks by saying she shouldn\u2019t be let anywhere near television. Beard is phlegmatic about such barbs. She tries to reason with her trolls.<\/p>\n

She says she got through the early part of her career by basically \u201cpretending to be a bloke\u201d. She recalls writing one of her first big papers aged about 25. Excited, she sent it to a senior colleague, a man. He took her out for a \u201cboozy lunch\u201d and told her it was okay, but boring. He was right, she says, and she had been weakly aping a male voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lunch was boozy because he was nervous to tell me this. But it was the right thing for him to say. I realised: \u2018This isn\u2019t me. I\u2019m not convincing.\u2019 I knew I had things to say but it would only be interesting if I found my own way to say them.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took her a few more years, she says, but eventually she learned not to worry about how, for example, the tone of her voice might affect her academic authority.<\/p>\n

The abuse of women and depictions of atrocities such as rape feature prominently in Greek and Roman art and literature. Beard has, in the past, written of her own experience of being raped in her 20s by a man she met on a train in Italy.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018When we look back at the Greeks and Romans, we see their weirdness to us. What are historians in the future going to find weird about us?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Mary Beard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Have Beard\u2019s own life experiences shaped her insight into these depictions, and has the art in turn helped her to better understand what was perpetrated against her?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a way, the answer to that would be \u2018yes\u2019. Classics can give us a language to talk about difficult things. For me, those paintings and stories are asking me every day to say: \u2018So how do we deal with this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t shut down the topic of what happened to her all those years ago. But she doesn\u2019t dwell on it either. Nor do I.<\/p>\n

Beard is known in Britain as a pugnacious debater who relishes pushing back against her critics. She has a famously mixed history with Boris Johnson, for example, who also presents himself as a serious classicist. When he was London mayor in 2015, he challenged Beard to a public debate. She is widely seen as having trounced him.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Confronting the Classics (2014) by Mary Beard: Fascinating and funOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Does she think Johnson is a good classicist?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he is sincerely interested in it. He is not ignorant. But the difficult thing with Boris is that he will argue fast and loose to win, and that sometimes means misrepresenting the ancient world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does she like him?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot as a prime minister. But for a drink? Yeah. There is also still a kind of decency to him which we sometimes forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beard was a prominent backer of Johnson\u2019s former opposite number, the one-time Labour<\/a> leader Jeremy Corbyn<\/a>. Her opinion of him has changed since. \u201cI went off him. I felt in the end he wasn\u2019t getting anywhere. He didn\u2019t handle the anti-Semitism thing in a way that was dignified for anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about the current Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed because I thought he was going to be a kind of [postwar Labour prime minister Clement] Attlee \u2013 a bit dull, but maybe what we needed. But it hasn\u2019t worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0How often do you think of the Roman Empire? Quite a lot if you are Mary BeardOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

She is weary of being asked which Roman emperor was most like US president Donald Trump<\/a>. She thinks none of them were, but she does see a parallel in how he and some imperial Romans have used power.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe chops and changes and we think he can\u2019t make his mind up. But actually \u2013 and this kind of vacillation was hugely important in imperial power \u2013 the ruler changing his mind is precisely how he shows control. The advisers must jump to the new thing he says.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MaryMary Beard with other Booker Prize 2026 judges (from left): Rebecca Liu, Jarvis Cocker, Raymond Antrobus and Patricia Lockwood. <\/p>\n

She no longer teaches at Cambridge, but Beard has much to keep her occupied. She is the chair of the judging panel for this year\u2019s Booker literary prize<\/a> \u2013 \u201c160 books in six months! You don\u2019t need to ask me how I fill my days\u201d. The prize will be announced in November.<\/p>\n

She also co-hosts a podcast, Instant Classics, and is the classics editor of the Times Literary Review. Meanwhile, her book tour for Talking Classics this year will take her all over Britain, to the US and also to Dublin and Belfast in Ireland.<\/p>\n

Much of Beard\u2019s life has been about looking into the ancient past. What does she think about the future?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look back at the Greeks and Romans, we see their weirdness to us. What are historians in the future going to find weird about us? That is a question that every historian now should ask themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does Beard think people will find weird in future? She says our notion of crime and punishment, such as threatening to lock people up for minor infractions such as dodging train fares.<\/p>\n

\u201cUndergraduates in the future are going to be writing about penal policy in the 21st century, asking \u2018What the hell did they think they were doing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old by Mary Beard is published by Profile Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renowned Roman and Greek classicist Mary Beard and I trade small talk in her cute kitchen \u2013 her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[12283,30417,9,10,58081,13,14,6,3181,92972,5446,20568,11,12,15,16,192313,5,7,8,2212,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-432130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-beyonce","tag-boris-johnson","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-cambridge-university","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-jay-z","tag-jeremy-corbyn","tag-keir-starmer","tag-labour-party-uk","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-mary-beard","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-weekendreview","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116392416124513469","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}