Mary Beard's Roman Empire

Gardening Australia's Hannah Moloney on the heartwarming and heartbreaking reasons humans continue to lovingly tend to their gardens — for healing, beauty and joy.For thousands of years, tending to a garden or a small farm meant human survival. But now, with massive commercial fa ... Show More

Award-winning Australian author, poet and essayist David Malouf died last week at the age of 92, he spoke with Richard in 2014.The first son of a Lebanese family, David spent his early years in South Brisbane, his vivid memories of life as it was then are captured in his classics ... Show More

Zenith Virago was a married mother of two, when she left her family to begin again as a lesbian. Then she found a new path as a death walker, helping people navigate their life's end. Zenith grew up in England, and she was still at school when she fell in love with another studen ... Show More

What happens at a Roman emperor's dinner party? Why would you be lucky to get out alive? And how are emperors even chosen?Joining Kate today is the one, the only Mary Beard, to take us back to Ancient Rome and help separate the facts from the myths.Mary's latest book, Emperor of ... Show More

This week David asks Mary Beard what the Roman Empire can tell us about the nature of unaccountable power, then and now. How did Roman emperors rule when they had so little knowledge of the lives of their subjects? Can absolute personal power ever escape the limits of biology, fr ... Show More

This week, we drop in on a conversation between Mary Beard and two former TLS editors; and Anne Enright joins us to talk about turning poet in her new novel.'Emperor of Rome: Ruling the ancient Roman world', by Mary Beard'Big Caesars and little Caesars: How they rise and how they ... Show More

<p>What did it take to become a Roman emperor? Pliny the Elder wrote that a ruler should be generous, victorious in battle and a father to his people. But how many emperors were able to live up to these expectations? And were these really traits that the typical Roman cared about ... Show More

What did Roman emperors actually do all day? Were they really as bloodthirsty as legend would suggest? And why was food so important? Speaking to Matt Elton, popular historian, author and broadcaster Mary Beard tackles some of the big questions about life as a Roman emperor, prof ... Show More

This week, Mary Beard is fascinated by an ancient graffito, and novelist Michael Hughes on the murder case that almost brought down the Irish government.A Don's Life: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/virgil-on-pots-and-walls-blog-post-mary-beard/'A Thread of Violence: A Story o ... Show More

The world’s most famous classicist, Professor Mary Beard, joins Tom and Dominic to discuss how the legacy of classical Greece and Rome has been interpreted and re-interpreted over the past millennium and a half. They range from Dante’s Satan snacking on Julius Caesar’s assassins ... Show More

Shushma Malik discusses some of the most admired and reviled Roman emperors, and considers whether the legends surrounding them stand up to scrutiny   In the latest in our series tackling the big questions on major historical topics, historian Shushma Malik responds to your quest ... Show More