It's a Don's Life

Mary Beard

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781846682513
• eBook ISBN: 9781847652461

Mary Beard's by now famous blog A Don's Life has been running on the TLS website for nearly three years. In it she has made her name as a wickedly subversive commentator on the world in which we live. Her central themes are the classics, universities and teaching -- and much else besides.

What are academics for?

Who was the first African Roman emperor?

Looting -- ancient and modern.

Are modern exams easier?

Keep lesbos for the lesbians.

Did St Valentine exist?

What made the Romans laugh?

That is just a small taste of this selection (and some of the choicer responses) which will inform, occasionally provoke and cannot fail to entertain.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustration Credits
• Introduction
• Pink or purple?
• Sex in the sculpture garden
• Big Brother at uni
• Tampons for Africa
• Mixed messages?
• Is Latin too hard?
• Does Latin ‘train the brain’?
• Ask a silly question
• What are academics for?
• They make a desert and call it peace
• The knife and fork test?
• Keeping sex out of scholarship
• In the harem
• In the news in Pompeii
• Fiddling while Rome burned
• What makes a good review?
• Freshers’ week
• Veils, turbans and ‘rivers of blood’
• Where is your spleen?
• A captive audience
• What did the Romans wear under their togas?
• The sign of the cross
• The tragedy of George Bush
• Pissing on the pyramids
• Sex on the Beach
• Exams are getting harder – shock
• Racism in Greece and Rome
• Paganism without the blood
• Where’s the loo?
• Do-it-yourself cremation
• David Beckham’s new tattoo – a classicist writes
• Don’t blame Hadrian for Bush’s wall
• Seminar power and willy-waving
• Pompeii in Mexico
• Is David Cameron a Narcissus (... Or, was John Prescott right?)
• ‘La Clemenza di Tito’: Mozart, the Colosseum and Yugoslavia?
• Index linked?
• How to order a coffee in American
• What is Big Brother doing in Durham cathedral?
• Are A levels (still) dumbing down?
• Esperanto, Welsh and the language wars
• Olympia (almost) burns ... but Paris survives
• 10 things you thought you knew about the Romans ... but didn’t
• Greek treasures and global treasures
• Upstairs at the brothel
• How many academics does it take to buy a coffee maker?
• The sex secrets of Kennedy’s Latin Primer
• Orientalism ... or, what’s in a name?
• Tips for new students – from an old don
• How am I doing on Amazon?
• A life in the day of a don
• My five favourite Roman classics ... that we have lost
• Why didn’t the Athenians give the women the vote?
• Want a motto? Do it in Latin.
• Labouring classicists – and New Year resolutions
• The rape of Britannia
• What made the Romans laugh?
• Did St Valentine Exist?
• A day in Guantanamo
• Prince Harry: the Roman solution
• Dead men’s books
• Do physicists need French?
• Let’s Get Rid of the Fascist Olympic Torch
• Feminism now: should boys play harps?
• Keep Lesbos for the Lesbians
• The face of Julius Caesar? Come off it!
• Are exams fair?
• The Amy Winehouse exam
• Why ruins are disappointing
• Why research is fun
• Heard the one about the Roman and the barber?
• A good old-fashioned 2.1 is better than a Higher Education Achievement Record
• It’s bonkers to ban Latin
• Barack Obama – and the first ‘African-Roman’ emperor of Rome
• Oxbridge interviews: real advice from a real don
• What’s in a don’s inbox?
• RAE madness
• Underwater Romans
• It’s a don’s life – the book
• Other eBooks available from Mary Beard
• Afterword
• Acknowledgements