Mary Beard

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is the Cambridge Professor of Classics, Mary Beard. Hilarious and brilliant, according to Vogue magazine. She's passionate about the relevance of classics to day, from translating David Beckham's Latin tattoo to drawing parallels between President Obama and a Roman Emperor.

Presenter0:51

Although her research is steeped in the ancient world, her commentary is all about the here and now. She writes about power, people, and politics, and is used to causing something of a storm. I do have form on being outspoken, she admits. So intellectual life, Mary Beard, is about having a bit of a ding-dong, is it? Having a good old argument.

Mary Beard1:10

Having a good old argument. It's about having an argument and it's about it's about cutting through the count, I think, that an awful lot of public debate sort of is is buried in. It's it's actually about saying, Look, that doesn't add up, you know, and I'm gonna t

Presenter1:24

Haliwai

Mary Beard1:25

Uh

Presenter1:26

And there is, I'm imagining, a sort of joy in flexing your intellectual muscle when you go public on things that you disagree with.

Mary Beard1:32

A joy and fear?

Presenter1:34

Is that

Mary Beard1:35

Well, you think

Mary Beard1:36

You know, I want to say this, but do I do I really dare? Now I've got a form on it. I think I feel more anxious. I mean, when I was younger and I used to say things and I didn't quite realise how many people read what you put on the web, I was pretty fearless and I didn't, I didn't predict when people got cross about things, I thought that's a bit surprising. Now I kind of think, oh, help, but I'll make myself do it. For me, the point of doing it is to speak to people in the here and now. I think using the word relevant is a bit is difficult. I mean, you know, I'm not sure I could say that ancient Rome was relevant to current concerns. But I do think that it can speak to us and it can make us see our own world differently. Do you think it's important?

Presenter2:24

that um the world that that you live in and promote, that academia, if not the classics, that academia is relevant? Do you feel it has to justify its very existence, given, of course, that it is publicly funded?

Mary Beard2:36

Um I mean, I think that's a complicated one because even when scientists start out, they don't know which is going to be the discovery that they've made that is going to save millions of lives.

Presenter2:48

Yes, the relevance is not immediate by the very nature of the study.

Mary Beard2:49

It is not by

Mary Beard2:51

You know, I can't imagine anybody really wanting to go into university higher education research saying, and the one thing I don't give a toss about is whether this does anybody any good or not, you know, but I'm going to do it because I'm that kind of boffin' and I'm going to sit in the library till I die and I don't care who reads me. Now, I don't know anybody who thinks like that, but some of the things that you do only pay fruit fifty, a hundred years later, and often those are the best ideas.

Presenter3:22

Let's find out a little then about the kind of boffin you are through your music. Tell me about the first disk and why you've chosen it.

Mary Beard3:28

Well, we're going to have Bob Dylan in it from his prime. And Bob Dylan is the only musician that a whole of my family can listen to with pleasure.

Mary Beard3:39

Quite an accolade for a family if they're one of those. I think Bob Dylan would probably be a bit disappointed at the thought of our family all thinking that he was great. But it's not like you go in the car, you put the opera on, the kids in the back say, oh, turn that off. They then have cold play and you sit down. Bob Dylan.

Presenter3:40

Family they have one of those

Mary Beard3:57

Perfect. So we're going to start with it's all over now, baby, do we?

Speaker 44:02

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.

Speaker 44:10

But whatever you wish to keep you better grab it fast.

Speaker 44:18

He understands you orphan with his gun.

Speaker 44:27

Crying like a fire.

Presenter4:29

In the sun.

Presenter4:32

That was Bob Dylan, and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Let's hear a little bit about your beginnings then, Mary Beard. You were born in Shropshire in the 50s. Tell me.

Mary Beard4:41

Tell me more. Born in Shropshire, in the middle of the countryside, my mum was a a left-wing village schoolmistress in Church Preene, and my dad was a kind of wastrel architect of lefty leanings, working mostly in historic buildings. And we lived what I think to myself as I'm sure it was far from what I think to myself as being an idyllic country life, you know, collecting the milk from the farm, hardly a house to be seen, getting the eggs and this sort of stuff.

Presenter5:16

Why do you say you think now it it must have been far from? Causes you to

Mary Beard5:20

Well you have two choices about your childhood, don't you? Either reinvent it as wonderful idyllic and nothing was rocking the boat or you invent it as kind of torrid and hell-like. And I've chosen to go for the idyllic version. But when I think about the reality for my parents, it must have been hard work. You know, we had a house, nice house. It didn't have an inside loo, it had a bucket in a in a shed across the courtyard. And one of my memories is at Saturday mornings going with my mum to empty the bucket in a hole dug next to the stream in the nearby field. And I now think

Presenter5:38

Uh

Mary Beard5:57

That must have been a job that she cannot have enjoyed. She must have pretended to me that it was all kind of good fun. And that isn't a deli.

Presenter6:06

No, it definitely isn't idyllic. And and you say your father a wastrel. An interesting word. What? A drinker? A womanising drinker?

Mary Beard6:12

Then a what?

Mary Beard6:13

Alcohol was their favourite hobby. Waste was unfair. He was slightly laid back. A man who was never going to make too much of a profit because he had too many fun things to do. I remember them as being different from other people's parents.

Mary Beard6:32

which is not necessarily a bad thing. In some ways a good thing. I mean, my m my mum had never given up work.

Mary Beard6:38

I mean, I was a terrible mistake. She was relatively old. She had me when she was forty. You know, it was a failure of contraception. When did you find that out?

Mary Beard6:48

I suppose I found it out.

Mary Beard6:52

In talking to my mum when she wa when she was older about

Presenter6:55

Yeah.

Mary Beard6:56

This came in the conversation in a way that was utterly unthreatening to me.

Presenter6:58

Yeah.

Presenter7:01

He asked.

Mary Beard7:01

The thing that I think was most striking about them for me was was the fact that she worked. Yes. I remember going to visit friends of mine and their mums were baking cakes and things. And my recollection but again, you can never tell whether this isn't what you do to it later. You know, perhaps at the time I thought, well, I wish my mum made cakes. My recollection was wondering what they did the whole day. You know, wondering how you filled your time if all you had was the house.

Presenter7:32

More about the young Mary Beard in just a second. For now, tell me about uh disc number two.

Mary Beard7:37

Well, this is Janet Baker singing Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. And I've chosen it up, it's a lovely piece of music which is so terribly sad I don't think you can listen to it too often on your island. But what it reminds me of is, you know, seeing the back story of European literature through it. And it is the love story of European literature, Dido and Aeneas and the abandonment of Dido. So I've got to have this as a way of remembering Dido.

Speaker 48:37

Okay.

Presenter9:01

That was Janet Baker singing Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Nineas. Um tell me then about the day you were five, I think, when your parents made the trip with you to the British Museum. It was a big and important day.

Mary Beard9:14

Yeah, it was a turning point in my life, really. And two things happened on the trip.

Mary Beard9:20

And one was going and seeing the Algonor Parthenon marbles.

Mary Beard9:25

And I'd somehow thought that people in the past were always less good at things than us.

Mary Beard9:30

And here was something that was just really in your face brilliant. And it was two thousand years old.

Presenter9:37

Do you think you were untypical though? I mean th I I'm imagining lots of people with five-year-olds would be thinking, Gosh, if I could get if I could take them round to British Museum and they they would be interested in that, I'd be doing pretty damn well.

Mary Beard9:47

I think it depends who you go with. My mum was a very good teacher. Has she taught

Presenter9:53

Has she taught you?

Mary Beard9:54

Uh I had been at her school for a little while. Had you how did that go?

Presenter9:56

But

Mary Beard9:57

Um, you know, it's terrible, terrible to be taught by your mum because you're naughty in the day and you know, if you've been naughty at school and you're most people, you go home and your mum doesn't know you've been naughty and they're nice to you. So, you know, all my peccadillos during the day, you know, carried over to the evening meal. So I quickly moved to school. Did you ask her if you could move, or did she say your mum? Moving Jin my dad knew perfectly well this wasn't a wasn't on.

Presenter10:18

Later.

Presenter10:21

And you were also shown and th this wasn't in the cafe you were shown a very old piece of bread. Tell me about the old piece of bread.

Mary Beard10:25

Piece of bread. Tell me about the old piece of bread. Yeah, well we went to the Egyptian gallery and I'm sure we were making for the mummies. Who could not find a mummy? Interesting. And I was quite small and the cases were quite high.

Mary Beard10:37

And

Mary Beard10:38

One of the warders saw that I couldn't see, and came and unlocked the case, and got out of the case a piece of carbonised bread. And this must have been, I don't know, three thousand years old.

Mary Beard10:53

And it was real. It was real. It was the sheer fact that it was real and it survived.

Presenter10:54

It was real.

Mary Beard10:58

And also I think what was also magical about that was that someone opened the case for me.

Presenter11:05

Let's break now for some music to tell me what's next.

Mary Beard11:08

I'm gonna have Elizabeth Kenny playing Darlin's Lachrimai.

Mary Beard11:12

I don't want all my things to have words to them. And if you listen to the Desert Island and it's all words, it would get you down. And also this makes me feel so terribly English listening to this darland.

Mary Beard11:24

Over my lifetime.

Mary Beard11:26

It's sort of become very unsexy to be English. I don't feel British, I feel English. And I think back to Shropshire and I think back where I came from, and I could listen to this loop music, close my eyes, and I could be on the long mind in Shropshire. Wonderful.

Presenter12:33

Elizabeth Kenny playing John Dowland's Lacrimai. Um Mary Beardy what age were you when your intellect and its potential began to reveal itself? I was always a clever little thing.

Mary Beard12:45

Oh yeah.

Presenter12:45

Oh yes, kind of

Mary Beard12:46

Good at school.

Presenter12:47

Hopefully

Mary Beard12:49

Go on, I'm allowing you to boast. Tell me, how do you see?

Speaker 412:50

Tell me how do you see it?

Mary Beard12:53

When I got to eleven I was bumped up a year. So they must have thought that was appropriate. I'm not sure it was socially the best thing. There's a diff big difference between being ten and being eleven. At a crucial age, at that sort of prepubescent. Yes, and everybody else was getting bras before me in my class and that was sort of crushing. It was very crushing. You had to change the games and it would be revealed that you're still wearing a vest, a chillproof vest, and no bra. Yeah, it's quite hard that, I think.

Presenter13:01

Yeah.

Presenter13:04

Yeah.

Presenter13:06

Yeah.

Presenter13:16

Stoolproof vest and no

Mary Beard13:21

Um I was pushed very hard. They were they were pushing me it seems to me now in ways that are absolutely appropriate, you know, like saying, Okay, you're doing very well in French, here's a novel. Would you actually like to try reading a French novel?

Mary Beard13:35

Always saying, you know, No, you can do one better, you can do better than that, you can do something more interesting, pushing you and opening you up as far as you could possibly, possibly go into realms that are difficult to think about and where you won't manage it, and where actually sometimes you, you know, you'll fail at things.

Presenter13:51

Let me return for a moment to you and your vest then. I'm imagining that's the beginning at least of huddles of children round the school gates or boys talking to you for the first time. Did you find it difficult to be part of that along with your classmates? Did you feel distanced from those activities?

Mary Beard14:10

I had lots of um close friends, or s several close friends at school, but I was dramatically unsuccessful in the boy department. Because they didn't like the clever girls.

Mary Beard14:20

That might be it. It that's not that's not what I thought at the time. It was the child profess that I thought about at the time. Um we were in close relations. It was a girls' only school close relations with Shrewsbury School, boys' school, and our girls were invited up to the dances. And as he went into the hall,

Presenter14:23

That's the challenge.

Presenter14:32

Mm-hmm.

Mary Beard14:39

The boys would be lined up.

Mary Beard14:42

The girls would walk in past them, and they would be grabbed by one of them. And if you managed to go along this line of blokes and not get grabbed, your only option was to go back and do it again until some one grabbed you.

Mary Beard14:57

And

Mary Beard14:58

This was dead humiliating.

Presenter15:00

And was your I mean, did you think at that point, This is awful and humiliating and I shouldn't be doing it?

Mary Beard15:04

Yeah.

Mary Beard15:06

I thought two things. I thought, This is awful and humiliating and I shouldn't be doing it. And I simultaneously thought, I wish someone had grabbed me.

Mary Beard15:14

I think it's hard to be a feminist at s

Presenter15:15

16th. Good time for a piece of music. And good time for this piece of music. Tell us what you've chosen.

Mary Beard15:20

Oh, this is uh Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox. Singing Sisters are doing it for themselves, and I've chosen this because I went at a single sex girls' school and

Mary Beard15:32

I've been proud to be at Newnham College in Cambridge for most of my life since then, and it's a wonderful place to be, and it's partly made me what I am, and sisters are doing it for themselves, is what it's all about, really.

Speaker 415:47

So we're coming out of the kitchen. Cause there's something we forgot to say to you

Speaker 415:55

Yeah.

Speaker 415:57

Oh, you said

Speaker 416:01

And I'm gonna alter me.

Speaker 416:04

Bang it up.

Presenter16:14

Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox and sisters are doing it for themselves. You've said of yourself, Mary Beard, that you were both a rebel and a swat. You were applying for specifically Cambridge when you were a teenager, so that was the sort of the swat side of you coming good. What

Speaker 416:23

Uh

Mary Beard16:27

Good. What were you up to out of school? Um well, I was not wearing any shoes because I was expressing my solidarity with those who didn't have shoes. Um I was, you know, wishing that I hadn't come just a bit too late for the summer of love, that I was wearing very long dresses. Were you were you pursuing your own summer of love?

Presenter16:36

Yeah.

Mary Beard16:46

I always. What I discovered uh was that the boys at Shrewsbury School aged eighteen weren't really for me and I certainly wasn't for them. So I found I had much better time with men who were much older than myself. I shudder now to think about what I did. You know, when you get to be a middle-aged woman and you see eighteen year olds, seventeen year olds, eighteen year olds flirting with you know your own husband, like I used to do with other people's husband, you get an awful void about your wickedness starts to open. It

Presenter17:12

Nine.

Presenter17:19

Were you I mean, were you wicked? Did you more than flirt? I did more than flirt.

Mary Beard17:23

Yeah.

Presenter17:24

Uh

Mary Beard17:24

Yeah.

Presenter17:24

Yeah.

Mary Beard17:24

Uh

Mary Beard17:25

Every seventeen, eighteen year old girl is in love, aren't they? I I was sleeping with men twice my age and enjoying it and not thinking about the morality

Mary Beard17:39

I am the transgression that it involved.

Presenter17:42

Your husband, Mary Beard, you've mentioned your family. Your husband is the art historian, Robin Cormack. Is is it difficult to be m married to another academic?

Mary Beard17:50

No. I can't imagine what it would be like not being. Really? Why is that? Well, maybe maybe women's an unusual academic, but academic life it gets under your skin, it's terribly time consuming, it doesn't have fixed hours. You know, it's it's all encompassing being an academic. It's bloody hard work.

Presenter18:08

Yes, let's talk a little about the bloody hard work, because just looking at the the dates throughout your life, there is a period I notice between starts of 1984-ish up until 1987 where you're appointed fellow at Newnham College, you then marry Robin, you have your first child, that's in 1985, you then have your second child in 1987. How did you manage all of that at once? Did you at any point feel as though you were going half mad? Yes. Yes, you could.

Mary Beard18:35

Half mad. Yes. Yes. I'm I'm comforted by that. I think you get to a point where you're just on autopilot. You've got two kids under three. You've got a full-time job. And in the end, you haven't got any money either. You you're terribly happy because it is a happy time.

Mary Beard18:54

But you are absolutely

Mary Beard18:57

crippled in in terms of energy and all the rest.

Presenter19:01

And you were the only uh woman working uh lecturing in in the classics department at that point. Um how were you treated by your your fellow lecturers?

Mary Beard19:09

Hello lecturers.

Mary Beard19:12

An absolutely classic mixture. People were terribly supportive and terribly helpful. But there are some areas in which they sort of simply don't see. And the classic case I remember for me was when I had the the first child. I was secretary of a university society and the secretary had to turn up every Thursday when the meetings were at 4.30 and read the minutes of the previous meeting out. And in fact I went and read the minutes at the meeting about five days after the first baby was born. I thought I'm not going to let those guys say I didn't turn up.

Mary Beard19:47

Ten years later, I was talking to a colleague. He said, We're looking for another secretary, what you did for the called the Philological Society. And he turned to me and he said, Oh, yes, you were the person who used to come, read the minutes of the previous meeting, and then just leave without hearing the lecture. And I thought,

Mary Beard20:05

I thought I was being heroic. I thought I had, you know, breasts exploding with milk. I had to go home and feed the baby.

Mary Beard20:12

And I thought this was heroism. What these guys remembered was that I didn't stay till the end of the meeting. They didn't remember the heroism. They remembered the dereliction of duty. I was trying to be bloody superwoman. And it's not even as if it's appreciated. Somehow, if they said you were so brilliant, you know, you came your breasts exploding with breast milk, but you still read the minutes of the philological. At least I've got something out of it. They just said you didn't stay till the end of the lecture.

Presenter20:41

And was Superwoman attempting you said your mother wasn't the kind of mum who baked cakes. Were you the kind of mum who baked cakes? Were you trying to be everything to everybody in your life? Yes.

Mary Beard20:49

You know, I think I was a bit. That's how I am.

Presenter20:52

You know, I can't change it. Let's break now for some music. Tell me what's next.

Mary Beard20:57

Ah, this goes back to my childhood. This is a wonderful number called The Man That Waters the Workers' Beer.

Mary Beard21:05

It's the kind of left-wing anthem that I like because it isn't puritanical. I can't bear the puritanical left. I like to celebrate the drunkenness of the working class and me. And both my parents were left wing in various different ways, but what held them together was they thought that the left was about pleasure, not about puritanism.

Speaker 321:31

The fat and healthy working class are the thing that I most fear So I reached me hand for the walching can and I walked to their workers wear

Speaker 421:32

Uh

Mary Beard21:32

And I'll go.

Mary Beard21:36

So I read

Mary Beard21:39

Yeah.

Speaker 321:41

But I'm the man, the very fat man, that waters the workers' beer I'm the man, the very fat man, that waters the workers' beer. And what do I care if it makes them ill, if it makes them terribly queer? I have a car, a yacht, and an air of plane and a waters and workers' beer.

Mary Beard21:56

And I

Presenter21:59

Roy Harris and the Pump and Pluck Band and the Man That Waters the Workers' Beer. I didn't get into trouble saying that. I said it very carefully there. You manage, Mary Beard, to cram in a fair amount along with all of your academic work. You do book reviews for general consumption. You've got this very popular blog. All of this has brought you the nickname Britain's best known classicist. Do you proud of that? You comfortable with that? No.

Mary Beard22:24

Comfortable with that? No. No, no. Um I mean it is very, very important for me to see and this is the left wing mum coming out really that what I do contributes to wider culture.

Presenter22:27

Okay.

Mary Beard22:39

That said, sometimes you think.

Mary Beard22:42

Things I'm supposed to have said about, say, nine eleven or whatever, uh just deflect attention from that. You know. Best known classicist? I don't know. If you wanted to be famous, would you become a classicist? Of course you wouldn't. Sure.

Presenter22:55

You mentioned nine eleven. This might be a good time there then to to talk about it. So let me just remind people of of what you said. And it was in it was just a matter of three weeks after September the eleventh that happened.

Mary Beard23:06

It was published three weeks after, but it was written about three days after.

Presenter23:09

Right, and this is what you wrote. You said, when the shock had faded, more hard-headed reactions set in. This wasn't just the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think. World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price. You stand by that? Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Beard23:10

Titan

Mary Beard23:34

Yeah. Yes. I stand by what I meant by that. Tell me more.

Presenter23:39

Tell me more.

Mary Beard23:41

I don't uh some people interpreted it, and I think it's clear that it was not saying that when you read it in full.

Mary Beard23:49

as if I was saying that I thought the people in the Twin Towers deserved to die.

Mary Beard23:53

And that was not what I was saying, and of course they didn't deserve to die, it was a terrible tragedy. Um what I was saying is that there was a logical consequence of unfair and imbalanced geopolitics, which if you have a world superpower and if some people f

Mary Beard24:15

feel themselves utterly disempowered.

Mary Beard24:18

in the world order.

Mary Beard24:20

Their only recourse is going to be to what we like to dismiss as terrorism. Now you can see that in the Roman Empire. You know, I most of my work when I'm you know, really doing my day job is in another culture, the Roman Empire, in which there was a total monopoly of force on the part of the imperial power. The only way that anybody can attack, get their view across to those total dominating geopolitical systems is by using alternative means. And they are horrible, but there's a logic to it.

Presenter24:57

You said that you wrote that piece three days after the Twin Towers had come down. It was published three weeks after. Do you think it was the appropriate time for the concision of the academic to be applied to that, or do you think it would have been smarter and more appropriate to leave it to six months later, or a year later?

Mary Beard25:14

I mean what's interesting is of course that six months, a year later many people were saying that.

Presenter25:15

Uh

Presenter25:19

Is that why you

Mary Beard25:19

Is that why you

Presenter25:20

Uh

Mary Beard25:20

What a design Bit man.

Presenter25:21

Yeah.

Mary Beard25:21

Do

Presenter25:21

Did you f I mean, you've you've you've said that you're you're you're an ambitious person and you like to be noticed.

Mary Beard25:25

Was it I think it was much more raw, actually. It was much more raw than that.

Presenter25:28

But it's not

Mary Beard25:29

I thought, actually, that I was pretty well representing.

Mary Beard25:35

A fairly major strand in the conversations I've been having.

Mary Beard25:40

And so actually both

Mary Beard25:42

Me and the London Review of Books, where it was published, were actually surprised when it caused the outcry it did. Can you give me a flavour of it? What sort of derision was heaped upon? I had hate mail, people threatening to put shit through my letter books, people threatening emails, saying I'll come and smash your face in. Okay, look.

Presenter25:54

Oh, I had to

Presenter26:02

Well

Speaker 426:02

Yeah.

Presenter26:02

Yeah.

Mary Beard26:05

I'm an academic, I didn't lose my life over this, I just had a full e- email tray.

Mary Beard26:10

I started then to write to everybody who emailed me.

Mary Beard26:15

I got

Mary Beard26:17

into all sorts of interesting relationships, and some of the most um moving were the people who, after several exchanges of email, would say, Look, I still don't agree with you, but I see where you're coming from, and I'm still in touch with some of them.

Mary Beard26:33

I also learnt, I suppose, that sometimes thinking very carefully about how you choose your words, if you are going to be quoted selectively, might have been a better idea. And I did I didn't

Presenter26:44

I just want to ad

Mary Beard26:45

Hippo.

Presenter26:45

It's

Mary Beard26:46

No, I think had it coming.

Presenter26:46

No, I think Haddick

Mary Beard26:48

probably sounded worse, particularly when quoted on its own, than either in full context or also as I I meant it.

Presenter26:57

Let's have some music, tell me about disc number six Daniel.

Mary Beard27:00

Oh, it's Janice.

Mary Beard27:03

It's me and Bobby McGee and

Mary Beard27:07

The one thing that I was very sad about in terms of what the nine eleven business was that people thought I hated America. I love America and talking about uh particular forms of American politics is completely different from loving the place. And although this is sad, there's a still a kind of celebratory element of the wide open spaces of America, which I think are just great.

Speaker 427:32

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Speaker 427:38

I mean nothing hunt if it ain't free.

Speaker 427:42

And feeling good was easy to win it sign up, you know

Speaker 427:53

Good enough for me and my Bobby area.

Presenter27:58

That was Janice Joplin and me and Bobby Magee. You've uh you've mentioned that you've got two children, your daughter Zoe, your son Raphael. Um they're in their twenties now. Yeah. Um y you talked about th the

Presenter28:10

The gentle expectation from your parents that you would sort of funnel your intellect. What were your expectations of your children? Did you have any?

Mary Beard28:19

One must have done, but it's very hard to reconstruct what they were accurately. You end up being frightfully sort of sentimental about this kind of thing because it'd be very easy to say, Yes, I really wanted them to be successful, but you know, yeah, I do, but I want them to have a good time, have a good life. What do they do?

Presenter28:37

What do they do?

Mary Beard28:39

Currently they're both at Oxford. Raphael is reading classics at Oxford, so he's following in the family tradition. And Zoe, of course, has taken a path of saying, I'm going to choose to do something that you cannot possibly interfere in my life. I you know, I I admire that and she's doing a master's course in um African studies. Let's have some more music then. Tell me about your uh seventh track today. Uh well this is really for my uh husband who

Presenter28:54

I know I

Mary Beard29:08

Decided rather late in life that he would learn to play the hopsichord, and he's currently managing Eau Claire de la Lune, not badly.

Mary Beard29:19

You're sort of saying that through dritted teeth. Goldberg variations, in the hope that one day Robin will be tinkling out with this upstairs while I'm working in the kitchen.

Presenter30:40

That was Ralph Kirkpatrick playing the aria from Bach's Goldberg variation, something for your husband Robin to work towards, I think, Mary Viers. Um you were appointed Professor of Classics at Cambridge in two thousand four, I think, is that right?

Mary Beard30:52

Yeah, I think so. Did your mother live to see that? No, she died about um fifteen years ago now. She lived to see me uh getting a university lecture ship. My father didn't live that long. Um what what did your mother make of your achievements?

Mary Beard31:09

She was fantastically proud.

Mary Beard31:12

But also she's quite rooted. Sh she wasn't gooey about it really. She thought that I'd worked jolly hard, I was pretty bloody clever and I'd done jolly well. Um and it's something a mum could be proud of. But, you know, she didn't think I was a genius, and I'm not, you know.

Mary Beard31:28

Yeah.

Presenter31:28

So you will be on this desert island, of course, without them. There'll be no blog, there'll be no TLS, there'll be no London Review of Books. Some sort of

Mary Beard31:36

Hell, really? Absolute hell. You know, I'm the kind of person that can't even shut myself in my office for a morning to write. I've got a very, very, very low concent short concentration span.

Presenter31:47

Dim.

Mary Beard31:48

I choose the kind of office that no other academic wants, because it's absolutely right near the front door where people are going past, because if I'm not in the swim of things, I get a bored, I b cry because I can't write things whereas if I'm right in the middle of my wonderful faculty,

Mary Beard32:08

When I get bored, I go and say hi to somebody and then I go back. I have, you know, half an hour concentration span.

Presenter32:13

A lot of tears then on the Yeah.

Mary Beard32:14

Yeah.

Presenter32:14

Yeah.

Mary Beard32:15

Eleventh.

Presenter32:15

Yeah.

Mary Beard32:16

It's going to be sheer hell. I I can see absolutely no mitigating quality for me whatsoever. Absolute hell.

Presenter32:25

My apologies. Tell me about your final disc then.

Mary Beard32:28

Well

Mary Beard32:29

I really love classics, and I love the way that the ancient world has.

Mary Beard32:37

Helped us think about almost everything that there is worth thinking about. We couldn't get rid of the Greeks and Romans if we try. I've chosen for the last record a bit of Handel's opera Semele, who's the mother of the god Dionysus, and gets very unfortunately zapped by Jupiter. But it's wonderfully reworked by Handel in this opera as a kind of story of the blindness and stupidity of passion.

Speaker 433:11

Gentleness and always the other

Speaker 433:20

In the spring, it is brave.

Speaker 433:32

Can we angel?

Speaker 433:39

Singing toys on

Mary Beard34:00

Where's the

Presenter34:08

Kathleen Battle, singing the aria Endless Pleasure, Endless Love from Handel's Semele. So we come to the point then, Mary, where I'm going to give you your books. They are, of course, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. And the book that you're going to choose, what's that?

Mary Beard34:22

I agonised about this for ages and then I suddenly saw that what I was going to miss.

Mary Beard34:29

On this desert island was things, it was going to be objects. And so I chose a wonderful book.

Presenter34:32

Yeah.

Mary Beard34:36

Ah, it's by Marjorie Cagle.

Mary Beard34:38

and it's called Treasures of the British Museum.

Mary Beard34:41

And it is lavishly illustrated with all the things I'm going to miss.

Presenter34:46

Including the Elgin marbles, I imagine.

Mary Beard34:47

Including Elkins.

Presenter34:48

That's yours, and a luxury too.

Mary Beard34:52

Well, that's where the Elgin Marbles get to come in, I think, because I thought I might arrange a loan of the Elgin Marbles, because I could then really enjoy them up close and personal.

Presenter35:05

I wouldn't

Mary Beard35:05

I wonder if

Presenter35:05

There'd be more than one government that would have something to say about that, I think. But yes, since it's Desert Island Discs, we will give you on loan.

Mary Beard35:09

But yeah

Presenter35:12

For an unspecified time.

Mary Beard35:14

Well, I'm not going to be there very long. They can go back to the British Museum very soon, but I shall just have them to keep me company.

Presenter35:20

They're yours. And I'm going to force you to do that terrible thing now, to choose just one of the eight disks. If you had to save one disc, which one would it be?

Mary Beard35:28

Well, I'll have the gopher

Mary Beard35:31

Bob Dullin's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.

Mary Beard35:34

Partly'cause it's miserable and I'm going to be deeply miserable on this island, and partly it's the only one that I can think of all my family enjoying.

Presenter35:42

Professor Mary Beard, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Highland Discs.

Mary Beard35:47

Thank you.

Presenter36:33

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc. co dot uk slash radio four.