Mary Beard
Classicist and Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge; author of SPQR and Pompeii; writes A Don's Life for the TLS.
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Where they publish
Blog A Don's Life Her long-running column for the TLS, moved there from LiveJournal.
Link verified 25 Sept 2026.
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But, for me and still for many of my students, it's a book that really opened my eyes. It showed me that you could theorize about things that you had always taken for granted and thought didn't need explaining.
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I think I've chosen these books because all of them made a big difference to me. I wouldn't be the person I am today without them. With Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology by Moses Finley it's all about politics.
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But also there is this incredible influence it has on anyone studying Pompeii. It's the classic Pompeii disaster story everybody replays when they write about Pompeii.
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This is one of the books that made me decide that classics was worth spending a lifetime on.
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