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We lived in the schoolhouse of the village school in Church Preen, in deepest Shropshire, and my mum was the schoolmistress. She taught the juniors, and one other teacher taught the infants. I went there from the age of three, no doubt as a form of childcare.
Mary Beard -
The web is democratising and also the voice of people who don't think they have another outlet. And that voice can be punitive.
Mary Beard
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Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly.
Mary Beard -
I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you take some cattle, probably a bit of cash too, and then you say goodbye and go home and you probably do the same thing next year - or try to, or they do it to you.
Mary Beard -
I was nearly struck by lightning on an excavation in Turkey.
Mary Beard -
Grey is my hair colour. I really can't see why I should change it.
Mary Beard -
When you look at me on the telly and say, 'She should be on 'The Undateables,'' you are looking at a 59-year-old woman. That is what 59-year-old women who have not had work done look like. Get it?
Mary Beard -
If you say to a group of women professors, 'Close your eyes and think of a professor,' what they will see is a guy. I will. And I'll stop myself and think, 'Hey, hang on, what am I doing here?'
Mary Beard
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I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne.
Mary Beard -
If talking about arts means being pretentious, a bit like being a wine critic, then I don't feel comfy with that. You can get a lot from paintings without getting mystical about brush strokes.
Mary Beard -
You always regret upsetting people needlessly.
Mary Beard -
I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously.
Mary Beard -
It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker.
Mary Beard -
We have never escaped a certain male cultural desire for women's silence.
Mary Beard
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What interests me is the idea 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.
Mary Beard -
Nobody but an idiot would pretend that they had an error-proof way of choosing the 'best' out of hundreds of perfectly qualified applicants - not for university or for anything.
Mary Beard -
You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure.
Mary Beard -
English country towns are often seen as a cultural wasteland, but the more cut off you are, the more the need to create things, to make your own culture.
Mary Beard -
If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?
Mary Beard -
I don't want to see a world in which women can communicate on Twitter, but their actual voices are not heard.
Mary Beard
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I think that what will help women get into positions of power - well, day nurseries, equal pay, family-friendly working hours. And I think all that's important. I used to think it was the solution. I now think it's enabling, and it's important, but still we have got head work to do about this.
Mary Beard -
One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.
Mary Beard -
You don't overturn x-thousand years of patriarchy in a generation.
Mary Beard -
It's a bit naff, but there is something exciting about pulling a bit of pottery out of the ground that's 2,000 years old.
Mary Beard