Mary Beard's Blog, page 78

Better off in Brussels

I am in Brussels for most of this week, interviewing for the European Research Council Starting Grant programme (and what you see is the view from our interview room in EuroTower; the less scenic aspect below). Which is probably just as well, as it means I escape the rumpus caused by my last post on the sigma on the new Faculty doors (or rather the absence of the sigma).

This little squib has now been picked up by the Cambridge News, The Mail, The Telegraph, Corriere della
Sera, and...

Door rage (and wedding bells)

We have a sparkling new extension to our Faculty building in Cambridge, which wonderful in every way -- except for its FRONT DOORS. They look OK (although the photograph here doesn't quite bring out the best in them). The problem is opening the damn things. Because they are both (that is the exterior ones and those  that then lead into the lobby) fitted with Health and Safety approved disabled operation.

This means that, in order to open them, you have to press an electronic 'open door...

The ancient Athenian sex-strike

If you've ever done live radio, you'll know how terrifying it can be. It's the drying up over a simple question that is the scariest prospect. Some friendly interviewer asks you when Caesar murdered, you really know perfectly well that it was the Ides of March 44 BC -- but suddenly, in front of a couple of million people, your mind goes blank and in desperation you make a stab at 43 (knowing perfectly well, in some part of your consciousness, it wasn't). And you get back to the office to...

Newnham Classics goes to Paris

I think that my very first blog on this site wondered about how best to help students when they were coming up to final exams. They are already clever, they already know a load of stuff, and they are worried. Most "revision sessions" simply serve to bolster morale (OK folks -- morale boosting didn't work today; quite the reverse, sorry).

So I have started to plot 'away-days' for our finalists in the run-up to exams -- a day out to somewhere intellectually bristling, slightly exotic and...

Politicians look like their parties (like dogs and owners)

I'm writing this while the great British newly re-energised democracy is waiting to see what government its elected representatives will cook up between them.

The husband, I should say, is relatively content. He saw the way the wind was blowing by 12.30 on Thursday night/Friday morning and went to bed. He is now hoping for the Tories to get in long enough to abolish ID cards, before the colour of their politics is revealed and, after a new election, a Brown-less reformed Labour party is...

The Cambridge vote

No I don't mean the vote that has just closed. I'm writing this in front of the television before the first result from that one has come in....and already I am fed up with the Labour crew mouthing the phrase "strong and stable government" (which is their euphemism for trying to do a deal with Clegg and waltz back into Downing St), and with the Tories crowing about "a decisive rejection of the Labour party" (when the exit polls suggest that it hasn't been half as decisive as they hoped)...

In Woodstock -- and scammed!

I don't often get scammed.

I was once nearly taken in by one of those hand-written letters that arrive from Africa, asking you for 200 quid for some poor woman to complete her midwifery/teaching course. In fact, I was on the brink of sending off a cheque, when I got suspicious of the sob-story of financial decline  (it was the phrase "and then we had to sell the goat" that, for some reason, got alarm bells ringing -- it was just TOO much of a cliché). And then -- being a semi-trained...

Roman election gaffes

In the wake of Bigot-gate, you will be expecting me to come out with some old Roman versions of politicians putting their feet in it.

My favourite, I mentioned a few months ago (re the Nicholas Winterton gaffe). It's the one about Scipio Nasica who was standing for the Aedileship in the very late third or early second century BC, and canvassing eagerly and shaking the hands of potential voters. He shook the hand of a peasant farmer, which was very horny. "What" said the toff, "do you...

10 dotty (well meaning?) ideas from the party election manifestos

After a serious study of the main party manifestos, let me reveal some of the dottier ideas that have got by the party committees and into their official promises. How on earth, one wonders, do these things get the nod....? Have you noticed them?

1. Establish a new prize for engineering. This is a Tory idea (to "make Britain the leading hi-tech exporter in Europe")... may not be so bad an idea, but IN THE MANIFESTO? (No prize for Classics. I note!)

2. Create a specialist Mandarin...