Mary Beard (classicist)
Dame Winifred Mary Beard, DBE, FSA, FBA, FRSL (born 1 January 1955)[1] is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge.[2] She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.
Not to be confused with Mary Ritter Beard.
Mary Beard
- Wolfson History Prize (2009)
- Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2018)
- Princess of Asturias Awards (2016)
- Bodley Medal (2016)
Beard is the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, where she also writes a regular blog, "A Don's Life".[3][4] Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist".[5] In 2014, The New Yorker characterised her as "learned but accessible".[6]
Early life and education[edit]
Mary Beard, an only child, was born on 1 January 1955[7] in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Her mother, Joyce Emily Beard, was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader.[5][8] Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard,[8] worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as "a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging".[5]
Beard was educated at Shrewsbury High School, a girls' school then funded as a direct grant grammar school.[9] She was taught poetry by Frank McEachran,[10] who was teaching then at the nearby Shrewsbury School, and was the inspiration for schoolmaster Hector in Alan Bennett's play The History Boys.[11] During the summer she would join archaeological excavations, though the motivation was, in part, just the prospect of earning some pocket-money.[7]
At 18 she sat the then-compulsory entrance exam and interview for Cambridge University, to win a place at Newnham College, a single-sex college.[7] She had considered King's, but rejected it when she learned the college did not offer scholarships to women.[7]
In Beard's first year she found some men in the university still held very dismissive attitudes regarding the academic potential of women, which only strengthened her determination to succeed.[12] She also developed feminist views that remained "hugely important" in her later life, although she later described "modern orthodox feminism" as partly cant.[5] One of her tutors was Joyce Reynolds. Beard has since said that "Newnham could do better in making itself a place where critical issues can be generated" and has also described her views on feminism, saying "I actually can't understand what it would be to be a woman without being a feminist."[13] Beard has cited Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, and Robert Munsch's The Paper Bag Princess as influential on the development of her personal feminism.[14]
Beard graduated from Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. As was traditional, her BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab) degree.[15][16] She remained at Cambridge for her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, completing it in 1982 with a doctoral thesis titled The State Religion in the Late Roman Republic: A Study Based on the Works of Cicero.[8][17]
Beard was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to the study of classical
civilisations.[72]
In April 2013 she was named as Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.[73] Beard was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford University in June 2018.[74] She also received an honorary degree from Yale University in May 2019.[75]
In 2018, an unofficial Lego figure of Beard was created by a fan.[76]
Social media[edit]
Beard is known for being active on X (formerly Twitter), which she sees as part of her public role as an academic.[77] Beard received considerable online abuse after she appeared on BBC's Question Time from Lincolnshire in January 2013 and cast doubt on the negative rhetoric about immigrant workers living in the county.[78][79] She asserted her right to express unpopular opinions and to present herself in public in a way she deemed authentic.[80] On 4 August 2013, she received a bomb threat on Twitter, hours after the UK head of Twitter had apologised to women who had experienced abuse on the service. Beard said she did not think she was in physical danger, but considered it harassment and wanted to "make sure" that another case had been logged by the police.[81] She has been praised for exposing "social media at its most revolting and misogynistic".[43]
In 2017, Beard became the target of considerable online abuse after she made the case that Roman Britain was more ethnically diverse than is often assumed. The source of the controversy was a BBC educational video depicting a senior Roman soldier as a black man, which Beard defended as entirely possible after the video received backlash.[82] There followed, according to Beard, "a torrent of aggressive insults, on everything from my historical competence and elitist ivory tower viewpoint to my age, shape and gender [batty old broad, obese, etc etc]."[83]
In February 2018, in response to a report in The Times of Oxfam employees engaging in sexual exploitation in disaster zones, Beard tweeted "Of course one can't condone the (alleged) behaviour of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere. But I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain 'civilised' values in a disaster zone. And overall I still respect those who go in and help out, where most of us would not tread."[84] This led to widespread criticism, in which Mary Beard was accused of racism.[85] In response, Beard posted a picture of herself crying, explaining that she had been subjected to a "torrent of abuse" and that "I find it hard to imagine that anyone out there could possibly think that I am wanting to turn a blind eye to the abuse of women and children".[86]
Beliefs[edit]
Beard has been a Labour Party member and describes herself as having a socialist disposition, being a committed feminist and an anti-racist.[95][96][97][98][99]
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.[100] She was a member of the Labour Party until Tony Blair became leader.[101] 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."[102] For the 12 December 2019 general election, she was a proposer for the successful Cambridge Labour candidate Daniel Zeichner.[103]