GRADUATION 2014

Presentation speech for Professor Mary Beard for the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters of the University honoris causa

Chancellor , Mrs Disraeli famously remarked that she was never sure who came first: ‘Was it the Greeks or was it the Romans?’ I am sure our Honorand would have put her right. Significantly, The Sunday Times Magazine includes Professor Mary Beard in its list of Makers of the 21 st Century, the 100 British people who have made – or will make – the most impact on our lives. It describes her as ‘Britain’s most popular classicist’ and continues:

Beard shakes the dust off ancient history and presents it in a highly engaging and exciting way. The fearless scourge of internet trolls and anyone who dares suggest that there is no place for older women on TV, the cycling Cambridge don has brought places such as Alexandria and Pompeii and figures such as Caligula and Cleopatra vividly to life.

Many of us will recall that wonderful series Meet the Romans in which she appears as the viewer’s excitable and well-read guide to ancient Rome. She bikes round the city, perches atop ruins, pulls Roman artefacts out of storerooms and explains that a strange looking monument was built to recall a Roman bakery, a description that makes both bakeries and monuments seem fascinating. This was certainly a

1 revelation for someone whose mental picture of Ancient Rome was formed by a combination of the prints of Giovanni Piranese and the somewhat lapidiary prose of Edward Gibbon. I must say I greatly look forward to reading Mary Beard’s latest book, which has the wonderful title of Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling and Cracking up.’

Above all Mary Beard is the most popular champion of the Classics and – Chancellor – we should always remember that, if it were not for her, that role would be taken by Boris Johnson. According to Charlotte Higgins, she has a sense of responsibility to the classics that goes far beyond attending to her own academic reputation – exemplified in her teaching Latin in Jamie Oliver’s Dream School. But she is no mere tele- don. ‘She’s pulled off that rare trick of becoming a don with a high media profile who hasn’t sold out, who is absolutely respected by the academy for her scholarship.’ Her many scholarly works include Rome in the Late Republic, The Roman Triumph and Classical Art from Greece to Rome. Her standing in Academe is indicated by her election as a Fellow of the British Academy

Of course, Mary Beard is well known for many other things. She is a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4 series ‘A point of view’ and has spoken on topics ranging from Miss World to the Oxbridge interview. Her views are frequently controversial – not least her comments on 9/11 and her positive remarks about immigrant workers in Lincolnshire. Over the years, she has received a good deal of abuse but has always reasserted her right to express unpopular opinions and to present herself in public in an authentic way. A self confessed member of the awkward squad, she is not interested in the party line. Chancellor, I suspect that not all of our Honorand’s views, expressed in her typically earthy, essentially anti- authoritarian manner’ coincide with those normally associated with the

2

University of Buckingham. But that is not the point – we stand for independence and that means independence all round. As Voltaire is supposed to have said ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’

But the key to it all are is the Classics. When newspapers talk of Mary Beard, they tend to use phrases like ‘wickedly subversive’ but she says she would prefer to be called ‘classicist.’ In some ways, though, the two go hand in hand. She insists that ‘classics is actually quite democratic.. It isn’t only the toff, upper class subject it’s often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it.’ She contributes hugely to that enjoyment. Yet there is more to the Classics than enjoyment or even the Ancient World in the narrow sense, rather ‘It’s about our conversation. It’s about how we talk to antiquity.’

To me at least, Chancellor, that conversation remains vitally important. Of course, in some ways the Ancient world was different from our own – in other ways it was astonishingly similar. Part of it is part of us and without it we should be hugely diminished. But that is not going to happen and, in the words of Virgil:

Dux femina facti (The leader of the enterprise is a woman)

Chancellor, I call upon you to confer upon Mary Beard, Professor of Classics in the University of Cambridge, the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa .

Professor John Clarke, MA, DPhil

21 March 2014

3