Instant Classics: Talking Classics with Mary Beard

Episode Date: April 16, 2026
Host: Vespucci (Charlotte Higgins & Mary Beard)
Guest: Mary Beard (featured as co-host/guest in conversation)

Episode Overview

This episode celebrates the release of Mary Beard’s latest book, Talking the Shock of the Old, and explores her lifelong relationship with the ancient world. Through stories, memories, and critical thoughts, Beard and Higgins discuss why studying the classics matters, the tension between familiarity and difference with antiquity, and the ongoing relevance—and contentious uses—of classical studies in the modern world. The discussion is intimate, reflective, and rich with personal anecdotes, critical insight, and a strong belief in the necessity of humanistic study.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins and Spirit of Talking the Shock of the Old

• Book Genesis & Style (04:25)
  • The book developed from lecture series Beard gave at the University of Chicago and Edinburgh.
  • Challenge: Converting engaging, interactive lectures into book form without losing personal connection.
  • Solution: Beard integrated autobiography/memoir elements to reflect her personal journey and engagement with classics, stating,

    “I can't speak for everybody, but I've done this for 50 years and as I look back on that, this is what got me started. This is what I found exciting.” (06:40)

2. Formative Encounters with the Ancient World

• Mary Beard’s Childhood Memory (08:52–12:33)

  • Age 5, visit to the British Museum: Fascinated not by treasures, but a 4,000-year-old piece of Egyptian bread, brought close by a curator, which Beard describes as “a kind of sort of close to time travel moment.”
  • She never forgot the gesture:

    “He opened the case for a little kid, right. And said, well, welcome to the ancient world was what he was saying. And cases can be open. Things don't always remain on the other side of the glass.” (11:32)

  • The moral: Accessibility—“You’ve got to let other people in too.”

• Charlotte’s Story & the Power of Imagination (14:03–17:02)

  • Inspired by stories from the Iliad & Odyssey and a childhood visit to Knossos, where an adult guide went out of her way to include her.
  • The importance of kindness and being met as a child by someone who "gave more than twopence about a kid."
  • Both stories underscore the power of small acts in shaping lifelong passions.

3. The Tension Between Similarity and Difference

• Reconciling Ancient and Modern (18:22–23:45)

  • Beard and Higgins reflect on how studying classics simultaneously makes the ancient world feel familiar (“we bake bread, we make love”) and unfathomably different (e.g., most ancients never knew their own faces).
  • Beard:

    “If the Greeks and Romans or whoever, anybody from the past, if they really were just like us, it wouldn’t be a very interesting subject, actually. We'd just be rediscovering ourselves back then.” (19:40) “The excitement for me...is never quite getting my head around what the past was, what it was like what it would have been like to be there...but also it makes me think differently about myself.” (21:47)

• Value for Contemporary Perspective (23:45–24:31)

  • Higgins:

    “The action of understanding that not everyone thinks like you...is something you can practice via the ancient world, where the stakes are lower.”

  • Classics as a “great laboratory” for exercising empathy and perspective.

4. The Role of the Humanities & Classics in Society

• Humanities as Essential Practice (24:31–25:59)

  • Beard:

    “If there is a real essentialness to modern culture, the modern democratic process, you name it...it is that ability to learn through other people of what it would be like not to be me.”

  • Humanities (esp. classics) enable skills of argument, empathy, and responsible political debate.

• Herodotus and Early Relativism (25:59–27:01)

  • Importance of Herodotus in modeling cultural relativism: describing and acknowledging other societies without privileging one’s own.
  • Classics, not as upholding superiority, but embracing difference.

5. Entering Classics: Accidents & Access

• Why Rome? Why not Egypt? (29:26)

  • Happenstance—classics was available at school, and the proximity to Roxeter Roman City in Shropshire enabled direct, messy engagement.
  • Early archaeological experiences: tangible contact with the past, camaraderie (“boys and beer”), and personal independence.

    “You’re the first person to put your hand on that since it was dropped 2,000 years ago.” (30:36)

  • Also, lament that modern archaeology is less open to untrained youths.

• Messiness of the Ancient World (32:52–34:46)

  • Beard:

    “You got to get dirty in the past. You’ve got to look at the messy bits...you miss out a huge amount if you just look at the columns and the statues and the posh bits.”

6. Reframing Classics: Whose Stories, What Stories

• Louis MacNeice & the Ancient Underbelly (34:46–38:03)
  • Quoting Autumn Journal—classics isn’t just about “paragons of Hellas,” but the market crooks, slaves, and the everyday.
  • Beard:

    “He is writing, you know, in the 30s and he has his mind on the underbelly of the ancient world...it's the people you meet in the marketplace that we're interested in, not just the glories of Hellas.” (36:30)

  • Awareness that interest in the “dark side” of antiquity is not just a modern development.

7. Political Uses and Abuses of Classics

• Fascism, Empire, and Classicism (39:20–46:19)

  • Recounting Hitler’s 1938 tour of ancient Roman sites with Mussolini, guided by anti-fascist classicist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli.

    “Hitler clearly knows a lot more about the ancient world than Mussolini does.” (43:46) "[Bandinelli] goes through all these, all these reasons that, you know, that we all go through. What would have happened, you know… Would it have done any good anyway?” (42:40)

  • How Roman antiquity in modern Rome is Mussolini’s vision—“We can't see Rome without seeing it through Mussolini's eyes now is the bottom line.”

• Classicism’s Political Double Edges (47:52–52:51)

  • Beard argues that classics doesn’t possess inherent politics; it can be invoked to bolster both reactionary and progressive causes:

    “Classicists who don’t have their eyes open to that, I think, are being irresponsible...It has become fashionable...to see the unacceptable things that Classics has promoted or been used to legitimate rather than the other side of the story.” (47:52)

  • Example: Manchester Guardian recruited classicists to denounce empire, just as others used classics to uphold it.
  • Classicism as a rhetoric and resource for argument about who “we” are, across the political spectrum.

8. “Loving” the Classics?

• Is Love the Correct Word? (52:51–54:49)

  • Beard resists the idea of “loving” the ancient world:

    “No, I don’t love the Romans...There are things, absolutely deplorable things in Roman culture that you can't possibly set out or agree to love. And I think there’s something a little tiny bit patronizing in the use of that word love.” (53:14) “I work on it because thinking about the classical world is eye opening. It’s destabilizing. It makes you think again about yourself, not just about the ancient world.”

  • For both, engagement is about fascination, challenge, expansion, not affection.

• Summary Thought by Higgins: (54:49)

  • “It’s an endlessly fascinating world for me and it’s endlessly generative...it makes the world bigger...it is a book that allows us the chance and the opportunity to expand the boundaries of what we think the world consists of.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mary Beard on Encounters:

  “Cases can be open. Things don't always remain on the other side of the glass. And for me that became quite important. Moral, actually about studying the ancient world. You've got to let other people in too.” (11:22)

• Mary Beard on Similarity & Difference with the Ancients:

  “There is a community between us and them...and yet we also know that they’re weird and alien and close to incomprehensible.” (19:57)

• Charlotte Higgins on Empathy via the Classics:

  “It really does matter for us to try and imagine what it is to think differently in our contemporary world.” (24:01)

• Mary Beard on Humanities:

  “If there is a real essentialness to modern culture, the modern democratic process, you name it...it is that ability to learn through other people of what it would be like not to be me.” (24:40)

• On ‘Loving’ the Classics:
  Beard:

  “People don’t go up to a virologist...and say, oh, you spent all your life on virology. You must love viruses. I work on it because thinking about the classical world is eye opening. It’s destabilizing.” (53:14)

• Final Reflection:
  Higgins:

  “Classics makes the world bigger and it would have been on the front cover. So maybe one day.” (56:05)

Segment Timestamps

• Introduction & Book Launch: 00:00–04:25
• How Lectures Became a Book: 04:25–08:02
• Mary’s Childhood Encounter with Antiquity: 08:52–13:18
• Charlotte’s Childhood and Imaginative Roots: 14:03–17:02
• Feeling Close & Far from the Past: 18:22–23:45
• Empathy, Fiction & Humanities: 24:31–28:04
• Why Classics, Why Rome: 29:26–34:46
• Louis MacNeice and Everyday Antiquity: 34:46–38:03
• Fascism & the Uses of Classics: 39:20–46:19
• Classics and Political Legacy: 47:52–52:51
• Loving vs. Engaging with the Past: 52:51–56:04
• Conclusion & Reflections: 56:04–End

Takeaway

Mary Beard’s celebration of her new book is not just about her career, but a model for why the study of the ancient world is still vital: for empathy, for intellectual challenge, and for seeing ourselves—and others—with greater depth. The episode combines warm memories, critical edge, and a refusal to simplify the moral or political weight of ancient studies. As Beard herself puts it, classics “makes the world bigger”—a phrase both hosts wish could be emblazoned on the cover of every classics book, and perhaps, on the entrance to every museum.

For listeners who missed the episode, this conversation is a masterclass in why the past matters, how it matters, and the joys and difficulties of keeping dialogue with the ancients alive and sincere in the 21st century.