Widely regarded as the world’s most famous classicist, Prof Mary Beard, 68, is a television and radio presenter, trustee of the British Museum, classics editor of the TLS, and the author of more than 20 books on classical history, feminism and academic life, including the bestsellers Pompeii, SPQR and Women & Power. In 2022 she retired from a 40-year academic career at the University of Cambridge. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2018 and has appeared on programmes as varied as Question Time and The Grand Tour. Her new book, Emperor of Rome, looks at the facts and fictions around the Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus.
Where does Emperor of Rome stand in relation to your previous books – I’m thinking of SPQR and Twelve Caesars?
It obviously relates to the Twelve Caesars but that was about modern images of Roman emperors and this is very firmly ancient. It picks up where SPQR left off in a thematic sense, because as I say in that book, for 200 or so years at the beginning of the Roman empire, nothing much changes. So what the new book is trying to do is say – if nothing much changes, how do you go about telling its story?
