Confronting the Classics

Mary Beard is one of the world's best-known classicists - a brilliant academic, with a rare gift for communicating with a wide audience both though her TV presenting and her books. In a series of sparkling essays, she explores our rich classical heritage - from Greek drama to Roman jokes, introducing some larger-than-life characters of classical history, such as Alexander the Great, Nero and Boudicca. She invites you into the places where Greeks and Romans lived and died, from the palace at Knossos to Cleopatra's Alexandria - and reveals the often hidden world of slaves. She takes a fresh look at both scholarly controversies and popular interpretations of the ancient world, from The Golden Bough to Asterix. The fruit of over thirty years in the world of classical scholarship, Confronting the Classics captures the world of antiquity and its modern significance with wit, verve and scholarly expertise.

Review: With such a champion as Beard to debunk and popularise, the future of the study of classics is assured * Daily Telegraph *
She's pulled off that rare trick of becoming a don with a high media profile who hasn't sold out, who is absolutely respected by the academy for her scholarship ... what she says is always powerful and interesting * Guardian *
witty, erudite collection...To Beard, the classical past is alive and kicking - and she has the great gift of being able to show just why classics is still a subject worth arguing about * Sunday Times *
an irrepressible enthusiast with a refreshing disregard for convention * FT *
She stands in the great tradition of myth-puncturing Latin classicists * New York Review of Books *
Beard is the best...communicator of Classics we have * Independent on Sunday *
highly engaging * Sunday Telegraph *
sparkling * The Lady *
so engaging, and at times so very funny -- Edith Hall * Times *
this is the perfect introduction to classical studies, and deserves to become something of a standard work in the future * Observer *