Mary Beard (classicist)

Summary

Dame Winifred Mary Beard (born 1 January 1955)[1] is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge.[2] She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.

Mary Beard
Beard in 2017
Born
Winifred Mary Beard

(1955-01-01) 1 January 1955 (age 69)
Spouse
(m. 1985)
Children2, including Raphael
Awards
Academic background
EducationNewnham College, Cambridge (MA, PhD)
ThesisThe state religion in the late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero (1982)
Doctoral advisorJohn Crook
Academic work
DisciplineClassics
Sub-discipline
Institutions
Notable worksThe Roman Triumph
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Beard is the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, for which she also writes a regular blog, "A Don's Life".[3][4] Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist".[5] In 2014, The New Yorker characterised her as "learned but accessible".[6]

Early life and education

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Mary Beard, an only child, was born on 1 January 1955[7] in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Her mother, Joyce Emily Beard, was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader.[5][8] Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard,[8] worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging".[5]

Beard was educated at Shrewsbury High School, a girls' school then funded as a direct grant grammar school.[9] She was taught poetry by Frank McEachran,[10] who was teaching then at the nearby Shrewsbury School, and was the inspiration for schoolmaster Hector in Alan Bennett's play The History Boys.[11] During the summer she would join archaeological excavations, though the motivation was, in part, just the prospect of earning some pocket-money.[7]

At 18 she sat the then-compulsory entrance exam and interview for Cambridge University, to win a place at Newnham College, a single-sex college.[7] She had considered King's, but rejected it when she learned the college did not offer scholarships to women.[7]

In Beard's first year she found some men in the university still held very dismissive attitudes regarding the academic potential of women, which only strengthened her determination to succeed.[12] She also developed feminist views that remained "hugely important" in her later life, although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly cant.[5] One of her tutors was Joyce Reynolds. Beard has since said that "Newnham could do better in making itself a place where critical issues can be generated" and has also described her views on feminism, saying "I actually can't understand what it would be to be a woman without being a feminist."[13] Beard has cited Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, and Robert Munsch's The Paper Bag Princess as influential on the development of her personal feminism.[14]

Beard graduated from Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. As was traditional, her BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab) degree.[15][16] She remained at Cambridge for her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, completing it in 1982 with a doctoral thesis titled The State Religion in the Late Roman Republic: A Study Based on the Works of Cicero.[8][17]

Academic career

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Between 1979 and 1983, Beard lectured in classics at King's College, London; she returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a Fellow of Newnham College and the only female lecturer in the classics faculty.[5][8] The book Rome in the Late Republic, which she co-wrote with Cambridge historian Michael Crawford, was published the following year.[18]

John Sturrock, classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, approached her for a review and brought her into literary journalism.[19] Beard took over his role in 1992[8] at the request of Ferdinand Mount.[20]

Shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Beard was one of several authors invited to contribute articles on the topic to the London Review of Books. She opined that many people, once "the shock had faded", thought "the United States had it coming", and that "[w]orld bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price".[21] In a November 2007 interview, she stated the hostility these comments provoked had still not subsided, though she believed it had become a standard viewpoint that terrorism was associated with American foreign policy.[5] By this point she was described by Paul Laity of The Guardian as "Britain's best-known classicist".[5]

In 2004, Beard, through internal promotion, became Professor of Classics at Cambridge.[2][8]

In 2007–2008, Beard gave the Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.[22] She was elected Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, at which she delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter".[23]

In 2014, Beard delivered a lecture on the public voice of women at the British Museum as part of the London Review of Books winter lecture series. It was recorded and broadcast on BBC Four a month later under the title Oh Do Shut Up, Dear!.[24] The lecture begins with the example of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, admonishing his mother to retreat to her chamber.[25] (The title alludes to Prime Minister David Cameron telling a female MP to "Calm down, dear!", which earned widespread criticism as a "classic sexist put-down".[26][27][28]) Three years later, Beard gave a second lecture for the same partners, entitled Women in Power: from Medusa to Merkel. It considered the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded, and how idioms from ancient Greece are still used to normalise gendered violence.[29] She argues that "we don't have a model or a template for what a powerful woman looks like. We only have templates that make them men."[30]

In 2019, Beard gave the sesquicentennial Public Lecture for the North American Society for Classical Studies, marking the 150-year anniversary of the organisation.[31] The topic of her presentation was What do we mean by Classics now? She delivered the Gifford Lectures in May 2019 at Edinburgh University, under the title The Ancient World and Us: From Fear and Loathing to Enlightenment and Ethics.[32]

In 2020, Beard was appointed a trustee of the British Museum.[33] In 2023, Profile Books published Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World. Writing for Literary Review, Harry Sidebottom called it "her best book so far".[34]

Approach to scholarship

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University of Chicago classicist Clifford Ando described Beard's scholarship as having two key aspects in its approach to sources. One is that she insists that ancient sources be understood as documentation of the attitudes, context and beliefs of their authors, not as reliable sources for the events they address. The other is that she argues that modern histories of Rome must be contextualised within the attitudes, world views and purposes of their authors.[35]

Television work

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In 1994 she made an early television appearance on an Open Media discussion for the BBC, Weird Thoughts,[36] alongside Jenny Randles among others. This was characterised in an article in 2021 as follows:

Weird Thoughts, where Tony Wilson chairs a panel of experts debating why the 1990s seem so very strange. There are a lot of familiar faces here – the late James Randi, Fortean Times founder Bob Rickard, esoteric scholar Lynn Picknett – but today the biggest name is the one hovering around the back of the gathering: a young Mary Beard. As a respectable academic, Professor Beard was presumably brought in to back up Randi, but her views are interestingly hard to define. She agrees with Picknett's suggestion that 'weird' should be reclassified as 'other', noting this is how the ancient world referred to overseas lands. This suggestion that UFOs should be bracketed with, say, Perth shows why Beard, particularly in this company, is a very modern thinker.[37]

In 2010, on BBC Two, Beard presented Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, submitting remains from the town to forensic tests, aiming to show a snapshot of the lives of the residents prior to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.[38] In 2011 she took part in a television series, Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4, in which she taught classics to teenagers with no experience of academic success. Beard is a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4 series, A Point of View, delivering essays on a broad range of topics including Miss World[39] and the Oxbridge interview.[40]

For BBC Two in 2012 she wrote and presented the three part television series, Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, which concerns how ordinary people lived in Rome, "the world's first global metropolis". The critic A. A. Gill reviewed the programme, writing mainly about her appearance, judging her "too ugly for television".[41] Beard admitted that his attack felt like a punch,[42] but swiftly responded with a counter-attack on his intellectual abilities, accusing him of being part of "the blokeish culture that loves to decry clever women".[41] This exchange became the focus of a debate about older women on the public stage, with Beard saying she looked an ordinary woman of her age[43] and "there are kids who turn on these programmes and see there's another way of being a woman", without Botox and hair dye.[44] Charlotte Higgins assessed Beard as one of the rare academics who is both well respected by her peers and has a high profile in the media.[45]

In 2013 she presented Caligula with Mary Beard on BBC Two, describing the making of myths around leaders and dictators.[46] Interviewers continued to ask about her self-presentation, and she reiterated that she had no intention of undergoing a make-over.[47]

In 2015, Beard was again a panellist on BBC's Question Time from Bath.[48] During the programme, she praised Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for behaving with a "considerable degree of dignity" against claims he faces an overly hostile media. She said: "Quite a lot of what Corbyn says I agree with, and I rather like his different style of leadership. I like hearing argument not soundbites. If the Labour Party is going through a rough time, and I'm sure it is rough to be in there, it might actually all be to the good. He might be changing the party in a way that would make it easier for people like me to vote for."[49]

2016 saw Beard present Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard on BBC One in March.[50] While May 2016, brought about a four-part series shown on BBC Two, titled Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit.[51]

Beard's standalone documentary Julius Caesar Revealed was shown on BBC One in 2018.[52] In March, she wrote and presented "How Do We Look?" and "The Eye of Faith", two of the nine episodes in Civilisations, a reboot of the 1969 series by Kenneth Clark.[53]

In 2019, Beard appeared in an episode of The Grand Tour, having dinner with host James May, in his effort to get his car photographed by paparazzi.[54]

In 2020, Beard became the host of the newly developed topical arts series Lockdown Culture, which was later renamed Inside Culture and is broadcast on BBC Two.[55][56][57] She also released The Shock of the Nude - a two-part TV documentary tackling controversies surrounding the naked body in the arts, from ancient classics to the visual cultures of today.[58]

In April 2013 she was named as Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.[59] Beard was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford University in June 2018.[60] She also received an honorary degree from Yale University in May 2019.[61]

In 2018, an unofficial Lego figure of Beard was created by a fan.[62]

Social media

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Beard is known for being active on X (formerly Twitter), which she sees as part of her public role as an academic.[63] Beard received considerable online abuse after she appeared on BBC's Question Time from Lincolnshire in January 2013 and cast doubt on the negative rhetoric about immigrant workers living in the county.[64][65] She asserted her right to express unpopular opinions and to present herself in public in a way she deemed authentic.[66] On 4 August 2013, she received a bomb threat on Twitter, hours after the UK head of Twitter had apologised to women who had experienced abuse on the service. Beard said she did not think she was in physical danger, but considered it harassment and wanted to "make sure" that another case had been logged by the police.[67] She has been praised for exposing "social media at its most revolting and misogynistic".[43]

In 2017, Beard became the target of considerable online abuse after she made the case that Roman Britain was more ethnically diverse than is often assumed. The source of the controversy was a BBC educational video depicting a senior Roman soldier as a black man, which Beard defended as entirely possible after the video received backlash.[68] There followed, according to Beard, "a torrent of aggressive insults, on everything from my historical competence and elitist ivory tower viewpoint to my age, shape and gender [batty old broad, obese, etc etc]."[69]

In 2018, in response to a report in The Times of Oxfam employees engaging in sexual exploitation in disaster zones, Beard tweeted "Of course one can't condone the (alleged) behaviour of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere. But I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain 'civilised' values in a disaster zone. And overall I still respect those who go in and help out, where most of us would not tread."[70] This led to widespread criticism, in which Mary Beard was accused of racism.[71] In response, Beard posted a picture of herself crying, explaining that she had been subjected to a "torrent of abuse" and that "I find it hard to imagine that anyone out there could possibly think that I am wanting to turn a blind eye to the abuse of women and children".[72]

Personal life

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Beard filming in Rome, 2012

Beard married Robin Cormack, a classicist and art historian, in 1985. Their daughter Zoe is an anthropologist and historian based at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Oxford.[73] Their son Raphael Cormack is an author, editor and translator specialising in Arabic Cultural History and Literature.[74][75]

In 2000, Beard revealed in an essay for the London Review of Books reviewing a book on rape that she too had been raped, in 1978.[6][76][77]

Her blog, A Don's Life, gets about 40,000 hits a day, according to The Independent (2013).[78]

Beard was set to retire in 2022 and started a scholarship as a "retirement present" worth £80,000 in order to support two disadvantaged students' classical studies at Cambridge.[79][80]

Beliefs

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Beard has been a Labour Party member and describes herself as having a socialist disposition, being a committed feminist and an anti-racist.[81][82][83][84][85]

In August 2014, Beard was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[86] She was a member of the Labour Party until Tony Blair became leader.[87] In July 2015, Beard endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. She said: "If I were a member of the Labour Party, I would vote for Corbyn. He actually seems to have some ideological commitment, which could get the Labour Party to think about what it actually stands for."[88] For the 12 December 2019 general election, she was a proposer for the successful Cambridge Labour candidate Daniel Zeichner.[89]

Honours

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Filmography

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Film

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Year Title Notes Ref.
2023 Sultana's Dream Cameo appearance [104]

Television

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Year Title Notes
2010 Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town
2012 Meet the Romans with Mary Beard 3 episodes
2013 Caligula with Mary Beard
2016 Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed
2016 Rome: Empire Without Limit 4 episodes
2018 Julius Caesar Revealed
2018 Civilisations 2 episodes
2020 Shock of the Nude 2 episodes
2022 Mary Beard's Forbidden Art 2 episodes

Books

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  • Rome in the Late Republic (with Michael Crawford, 1985); ISBN 0-7156-2928-X
  • The Good Working Mother's Guide (1989); ISBN 0-7156-2278-1
  • Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (as editor with John North, 1990); ISBN 0-7156-2206-4
  • Classics: A Very Short Introduction (with John Henderson, 1995); ISBN 0-19-285313-9
  • Religions of Rome (with John North and Simon Price, 1998); ISBN 0-521-30401-6 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-45015-2 (vol. 2)
  • The Invention of Jane Harrison (Harvard University Press, 2000); ISBN 0-674-00212-1
  • Classical Art from Greece to Rome (with John Henderson, 2001); ISBN 0-19-284237-4
  • The Parthenon (Harvard University Press, 2002); ISBN 1-86197-292-X
  • The Colosseum (with Keith Hopkins, Harvard University Press, 2005); ISBN 1-86197-407-8
  • The Roman Triumph (Harvard University Press, 2007); ISBN 0-674-02613-6
  • Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2008); ISBN 1-86197-516-3 (US title: The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found; Harvard University Press)
  • It's a Don's Life (Profile Books, 2009); ISBN 978-1846682513
  • All in a Don's Day (Profile Books, 2012); ISBN 978-1846685361
  • Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations (Profile Books, 2013 / Liveright Publishing, 2013); ISBN 1-78125-048-0
  • Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up (University of California Press, 2014); ISBN 0-520-27716-3
  • SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Profile Books, 2015 / Liveright Publishing, 2015); ISBN 9780871404237
  • Women & Power: A Manifesto (Profile Books, 2017 / Liveright Publishing, 2017); ISBN 978-1788160605
  • Civilisations: How Do We Look / The Eye of Faith (Profile Books, 2018 / Liveright Publishing, 2018, published in the U.S. as How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization; ISBN 978-1781259993
  • Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Princeton University Press, 2021) ISBN 978-0691222363
  • Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World, Liveright (2023); ISBN 978-0871404220

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Prof. Mary Beard profile". Debrett's People of Today. Archived from the original on 23 March 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Appointments, reappointments, and grants of title". Cambridge University Reporter. CXXXV.20 (5992). 2 March 2005.
  3. ^ "A Don's Life". The Times Literary Supplement. Archived from the original on 20 November 2012. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
  4. ^ "Mary Beard: A Don's Life Archives – TheTLS". TheTLS. Retrieved 19 February 2018.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Laity, Paul (10 November 2007). "The dangerous don". The Guardian. London, UK. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
  6. ^ a b Mead, Rebecca (25 August 2014). "The Troll Slayer". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  7. ^ a b c d McCrum, Robert (24 August 2008). "Up Pompeii with the roguish don". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d e f "BEARD, Prof (Winifred) Mary". Debrett's People of Today. 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
  9. ^ Laity, Interview by Paul (10 November 2007). "A life in writing: Mary Beard, Britain's best-known classicist". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  10. ^ McCrum, Robert (23 August 2008). "Interview with Mary Beard, the classical world's most provocative figure". The Observer. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
  11. ^ "James Klugmann, a complex communist". openDemocracy. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
  12. ^ Patterson, Christina (15 March 2015). "Mary Beard interview: 'I hadn't realised that there were people like that'". The Independent. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
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  16. ^ Collins, Nick (12 February 2011). "Oxbridge students' MA 'degrees' under threat". The Daily Telegraph. London, UK.
  17. ^ "The state religion in the Late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero". idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  18. ^ Beard, Mary; Crawford, Michael (1985). Rome in the Late Republic:Problems and Interpretations. London: Gerald Duckworth.
  19. ^ Beard, Mary (16 August 2017). "Remembering John Sturrock – TheTLS". TheTLS. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
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  21. ^ Beard, Mary (4 October 2001). "11 September attacks". London Review of Books. 23 (19): 20–25. Archived from the original on 4 September 2012. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
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  29. ^ Beard, Mary (3 March 2017). "Video: Women in Power". London Review of Books.
  30. ^ "Mary Beard: We are living in an age when men are proud to be ignorant". Evening Standard. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
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  32. ^ "The Ancient World and Us: From Fear and Loathing to Enlightenment and Ethics". The Gifford Lectures. 15 April 2019. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  33. ^ "Defiant British Museum appoints Mary Beard as trustee". The Guardian. 28 March 2020. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
  34. ^ "Harry Sidebottom - Demigod Behind a Desk?". Literary Review. 24 January 2024. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
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  37. ^ Weird ’90s – Weird Night, article in Horrified magazine, 17 May 2021, accessed 10 November 2021
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  41. ^ a b John-Paul Ford Rojas "Mary Beard hits back at AA Gill after he brands her 'too ugly for television'", Daily Telegraph;, 24 April 2012
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  43. ^ a b Williams, Zoe (23 April 2016). "Mary Beard: 'The role of the academic is to make everything less simple'". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  44. ^ O’Donovan, Gerard (26 July 2013). "Mary Beard takes on Caligula, the emperor with the worst reputation in history". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  45. ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (28 April 2012). "Mary Beard: the classicist with the common touch | Observer profile". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
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  48. ^ "Question Time". BBC One. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
  49. ^ Demianyk, Graeme (10 December 2015). "BBC Question Time: Cambridge Scholar Mary Beard Thinks Jeremy Corbyn Has Acted With 'Dignity' Against Hostile Media". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  50. ^ "Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard". BBC One. 3 March 2016. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
  51. ^ "Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit". BBC Two. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
  52. ^ "Julius Caesar Revealed". BBC One. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  53. ^ "Civilisations". BBC Two. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  54. ^ Bley Griffiths, Eleanor (2 October 2018). "Classicist Mary Beard makes unlikely cameo in The Grand Tour series three". Radio Times. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
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  56. ^ "Inside Culture Season 1". Radio Times. 8 September 2020. Archived from the original on 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  57. ^ "Mary Beard to tackle post-lockdown life in new series of Inside Culture". belfasttelegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
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  60. ^ "Honorary degree recipients for 2018 announced | University of Oxford". Ox.ac.uk. 22 March 2018. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
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  63. ^ Patterson, Christina (15 March 2013). "Mary Beard interview: 'I hadn't realised that there were people like". The Independent. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  64. ^ Dowell, Ben (21 January 2013). "Mary Beard suffers 'truly vile' online abuse after Question Time". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 August 2013.
  65. ^ "Cambridge professor under fire for Boston immigration comments on BBC Question Time". Boston Standard. 21 January 2013. Archived from the original on 11 January 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
  66. ^ Turner, Lark (15 February 2013). "In Britain, an Authority on the Past Stares Down a Nasty Modern Storm". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 February 2013. I've chosen to be this way because that's how I feel comfortable with myself," Beard said. "That's how I am. It's about joining up the dots between how you look and how you feel inside, and I think that's what I've done, and I think people do it differently.
  67. ^ "Bomb threat tweet sent to classicist Mary Beard". BBC News. 4 August 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
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  69. ^ Sarah Boseley (6 August 2017). "Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain's ethnic diversity". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
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  72. ^ O'Connor, Roisin (18 February 2018). "Mary Beard posts tearful picture of herself after defence of Oxfam aid workers provokes backlash". The Independent. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
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  75. ^ "Interview with Raphael Cormack, author of "Midnight in Cairo": From dust to glory – the divas of Egypt's roaring 20s - Qantara.de". Qantara.de - Dialogue with the Islamic World. 21 April 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  76. ^ Beard, Mary (24 August 2000). "Diary". London Review of Books. pp. 34–35. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  77. ^ Beard, Mary (8 September 2000). "The story of my rape". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
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  84. ^ Beard, Mary (22 December 2018). "My feminist icon: Mary Beard reveals who inspires her". Stylist.co.uk. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
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  97. ^ "Mary Beard joins list of famous names including Stephen Hawking and Hilary Mantel to receive Bodleian Libraries medal". Oxford Mail. 22 February 2016. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  98. ^ "List of Laureates: Mary Beard". Princess of Asturias Awards. Fundación Princesa de Asturias. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
  99. ^ "Honorary graduates | University of St Andrews". Archived from the original on 7 July 2016. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
  100. ^ "Honorary graduate archive". Congregations - University of Kent. 29 April 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  101. ^ "Mary Beard : UC3M". UC3M. 4 September 2017. Retrieved 14 October 2017. Mary Beard [...] will be invested as Honorary Doctor of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) for her important academic and professional merits...
  102. ^ "Honorary Doctorates for Daniel Dennett, Mary Beard, Stephen Pacala and Jeroen Brouwers". Radboud University. Archived from the original on 15 August 2021. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  103. ^ "No. 62310". The London Gazette (Supplement). 9 June 2018. p. B7.
  104. ^ Mclennan, Callum. "Isabel Herguera's Awaited 'Sultana's Dream' Gets First Trailer as San Sebastian Competition Beckons (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
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  • Mary Beard at IMDb
  • Mary Beard profile, classics.cam.ac.uk
  • Mary Beard's blog, A Don's Life
  • Beard, Mary (8 September 2000). "The story of my rape". The Guardian.
  • Beard, Mary (14 February 2014). "The Public Voice of Women". London Review of Books.
  • Debretts People of Today
  • To understand aversion to powerful women look to the Greeks - Aeon, 1 October 2020
  • Appearances on C-SPAN