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Mary Beard Edit Profile

also known as Dame Winifred Mary Beard

classicist scholars

Mary Beard is one of the most original and best-known British classicists working today. She is a Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement (TLS).

Background

Mary Beard was born on January 1, 1955, in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England, to Roy Whitbread (an architect) and Joyce Emily Taylor (a teacher) Beard.

Education

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

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

Beard graduated from Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts degree: as per tradition, her BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts degree. She remained at Cambridge for her Doctor of Philosophy degree: she completed it in 1982 with a doctoral thesis titled The State Religion in the Late Roman Republic: A Study Based on the Works of Cicero.

Career

Mary Beard is one of Britain’s best-known classicists, Professor at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. She has written numerous books on the ancient world including the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town; has presented highly-acclaimed TV series, Meet the Romans and Rome: Empire without Limit; and is a regular broadcaster and media commentator. Mary is one of the presenters for the BBC’s recent landmark Civilisations series. Mary is also a classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and writes a thought-provoking blog, A Don’s Life.

Achievements

  • Beard was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2013 Queen's New Year Honours list for her services to Classical Scholarship. She was awarded the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the Study of Classical Civilization.

Works

All works

Religion

Mary Beard is non-religious.

Politics

Mary Beard is a socialist. 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. 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."

Views

In Beard's first year she found that some men in the university still held very dismissive attitudes regarding the academic potential of women, which only strengthened her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that remained "hugely important" in her later life, although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly cant.

Quotations: "Most women over 50 know what women over 50 look like. And they look like me. They can pretend like they don't, but really they look like me. I'm a classicist, not an autocue girl."

"I've been around long enough to know that most people if they want to kill you, they don't send you a tweet first."

Membership

  • Corresponding Member

    Archaeological Institute of America

    2009

Interests

  • Writers

    Germaine Greer -The Female Eunuch, Kate Millett - Sexual Politics, Robert Munsch - The Paper Bag Princess

Connections

Beard married Robin Cormack, a classicist and art historian, in 1985. Their daughter Zoe is a historian of South Sudan and their son Raphael is a scholar of Egyptian literature.

Father:
Roy Whitbread Beard

Mother:
Joyce Emily Taylor Beard

Spouse:
Robin Cormack
Robin Cormack - Spouse of Mary Beard

Daughter:
Zoe Cormack

Son:
Raphael Cormack

colleague:
John North
John North - colleague of Mary Beard

colleague:
John Graham Wilmot Henderson