Mary Beard's Blog, page 77

Escaping exams

I am knackered -- for a myriad of reasons, but partly because I have just finished being chair of our Part 1a exams. OK I am sure that taking exams is more exhausting than marking them; but marking takes it out of you too, and you don't get all the sympathy/ (The picture shows the examiners consuming a well-deserved lunch after their labours.)

It's tiring not only because of all those scripts to mark (pushing 200 in my case) but because of the absolute obligation to make the process as...

The Roman Mysteries -- on DVD

A few years ago I was the consultant to a series of BBC drama documentaries which were filmed in Tunisia. One of the perks I got (but not a free one, I hasten to add) was a visit to the set -- Empire Studios-- at which the programmes were made. This is a 'rebuilt' Roman town, near Hammamet, and was launched by Tunisian film mogul, and friend I am told of Berlusconi, Tarak Bem Ammar.

It is carefully advertised as having a non-unionised work force, not just the crew, but also the...

myoxbridgechoice.com -- what a scam

Today's Sunday Times carries a very positive feature on a new website, myoxbridgechoice -- which, for a fee, is supposed to give "ordinary" applicants the same kind of inside information that has traditionally been available to privileged independent school applicants only.

DON'T BELIEVE IT!

So far as I can see, all the information quoted in the article is already in the public domain, and freely available on the University website, or from Admissions' Tutors at individual colleges...

Kings Cross to Cambridge: how nasty can a journey get?

I am afraid that this post will have most to say to those who travel by train between Kings Cross and Cambridge; but I suspect that my story will resonate with most other people who use London commuter  lines.

OK, first off Kings Cross -- and, I guess, a minor quibble. The underground station there serves both Kings Cross and St Pancras (now the Eurostar terminal). Until a few months ago, if you came into Kings Cross on the mainline train you went straight down to the tube -- and, within...

Should May Balls be banned?

Every year the local Cambridge paper runs a story about local residents complaining about May Balls --  the conspicuous consumption, the binge drinking and, most of all, the noise. May Balls were presumably (like most other things in Cambridge) a nineteenth-century invention, though they now come in various more or less politically correct forms.... those where you can buy a single ticket, for example, or those that call themselves a  "June Event" not a "May Ball".

But the basic...

Should universities teach better?

In the 1980s, my clever friends who had gone into the Civil Service used to complain about the press they got. There they were, young people working 15 hours a day, trying to improve the conditions in prisons (or whatever); and there was Thatcher saying they were a load of expensive lay-abouts, and that they were a waste of space. My friends always said that, however much they had good arguments against that, the Thatcher rhetoric still got you down. It made you want to change your job.

...

Summer bash at the Royal Academy

I am currently in the middle of examining and not covering myself with glory. I might have got a First when I was taking the damn things, but when it comes to exam administration I fear that I am in the running for a rather undistinguished 2.2. The less said about which the better.

So it felt as a bit of an undeserved reward last night to go to the Royal Academy's Annual Dinner, which happens just before the Summer Exhibition opens. It's one of those parties that you cross your fingers...

Toga party (and figs) at the British Museum

I know that I am a Classicist rather than a real news hound, because I am too SLOW. Peter Stothard has already blogged, more than 24 hours ago, about the event I am about to share with the planet (or, rather, with such bits of the planet that choose to click on this site). Because yesterday was the hundredth birthday of the Roman Society - and we Classicists celebrated it by getting dressed up as Roman characters and parading in front of the British Museum.

I have spent all my adult...

Pliny -- the elder and the younger

It has been a good and bad week for the family Pliny. The "elder" was that unsufferable polymath who wrote the multi-volume Natural History
and was killed in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 (a combination of
curiosity about the eruption and a rescue mission for some stranded
friends). The "younger" was his nephew, the eye-witness of the
eruption. It is his letters to Tacitus about the event that give us our
best account of it  -- even though, they were written almost 30 years
later...

The Much Wenlock Olympics

I have only just caught up on the 2012 London Olympic mascot called "Wenlock" (on the left). Truly ghastly it is (what designer could really have been proud of this, and what insult to children who are, presumably, the intended audience/market?) But it still strikes a bit of a chord with me, as this horrible creature is named after Much Wenlock in Shropshire, where the first modern Olympics were held (and where, as it happens, I was born -- in the Lady Forester Cottage Hospital, pictured...