#TalkingClassics #NetGalley
206 pages
Essays-History
Pub date: 21 May 2026
Five stars *****
My thoughts:
I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Mary Beard in the pages of this short book. She reflects on the classics and her experience with them, noting that her love began early (with a stale piece of bread).
I enjoyed the way in which Beard spoke about the classics without adhering to a view that everything was better then (what about slave and women, for instance) or that the lessons from the time are written in stone and can only be interpreted in one way.
Description:
from the publisher
The incomparable Mary Beard is back, and she’s talking all things classics.
Why the ongoing fascination with the ancient world? This witty, approachable book asks why—for better or (sometimes) worse—antiquity continues to exert such a powerful hold on the contemporary imagination. Recalling a formative childhood encounter with a four-thousand-year-old piece of bread in a museum, Beard introduces the idea of thauma, or wonder, that kick-started a lifetime engaging with classics. It was not the canonical “greats” of ancient literature and art that initially drew her in, she confesses, but rather the more intimate, messy, and humdrum evidence of daily life in the remote past.
Confronting the uses and abuses of symbols of the ancient world, Beard reminds us that the traditions and “masterpieces” of Greece and Rome have certainly been politicized, but they belong to neither the left nor the right. Happily, no one owns the past. She warns us not to let a sense of reverence or overfamiliarity dampen the “shock of the old,” arguing that one of the most important things that classics teach us is how to grapple with complicated and controversial things. “The Greeks and Romans are long dead, they cannot answer back, and you can say what you like about them,” she reminds readers. “The simple fact that classics belong to none of us can offer a safe space to argue about the most difficult debates we face now.”
Beard welcomes everyone into classics. “It is not compulsory to be excited by the ancient world,” she writes. “But it can be a shame not to be.” This charming, sharp, and readable book from one of the world’s most entertaining classicists offers something for both new and established fans of classics, bringing new wonder and curiosity to even the most ancient of ideas.
From the Publisher:
Editorial Reviews:
Review
“If classics has a grande dame, it is the actual Dame Mary Beard. . . [W]ide-ranging and entertaining . . . . Talking Classics is full of Beard’s old joy at the unexpectedness of ancient realities.” — Sarah Ruden, New York Times
“Few scholars make ancient Greece and Rome come alive as vividly—or seem as relatable—as Beard, the popular British classicist. Her latest book is a kaleidoscopic survey of some of the ancient people and objects, both awe-inducing and ordinary, that have delighted and intrigued her over her life and career—starting with a formative encounter at age 5 with a 4,000-year-old bread roll at the British Museum.” — New York Times Book Review
“Like that ancient hunk of Egyptian bread that fascinated Mary Beard as a child, Talking Classics offers readers plenty to chew on.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR, Fresh Air
“The master of the epic blockbuster takes on the granddaddy of all epics with this summer’s The Odyssey. . . . Why should we care about (literally) ancient history? The benefits of a classical education are enumerated with style and passion in the latest book by Beard, the recently retired Cambridge professor best known for her riveting books on Ancient Rome. Beard’s case for antiquity is articulate and rich in her trademark historical insight—but also animated by a contagious joy and curiosity. Her bone-deep love for digging into these long-ago civilizations was sparked, she writes, by a piece of fossilized bread. Yours just might come from the movies.” — Calum Marsh, New York Times
“This companionable book, by a Cambridge classicist, marvels at the ancient world. Beard’s subjects range from artistic achievements to signs of ordinary life: scrawled Roman graffiti, a piece of ancient bread. Simultaneously rendering the past less remote while relishing its radical foreignness, Beard presses readers to grapple with alien ideas, reckon with gaps in their knowledge, and confront complexity. She also critiques the Classics’ history of exclusionary requirements, such as mastering accent marks the ancient Greeks never used, and challenges modern leaders who signal legitimacy through simplistic references to Greece and Rome. Throughout, she shows how the classical world can sneak ‘up from behind, as it were, to surprise us, and make us think again.’” — New Yorker
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