Talking Classics by Mary Beard

What's exciting about a piece of bread 4,000 years old? Or some pots of paint abandoned in the eruption at Pompeii? Why should we be bothered with the distant past anyway? What's the point? The life, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome have something to offer everyone. They are not the property of wealthy white men only. They make us wonder how to make sense of people who lived long ago – and to think harder about our own world, to look at it differently. In Talking Classics, Mary Beard points to the surprising connections between antiquity and the present. From revolutionaries to dictators, Bob Dylan to Beyoncé, she joins forces with the varied modern characters who have been transfixed by the ancient world.