Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Classics editor of the TLS. She has world-wide academic acclaim, and is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Her previous books include most recently SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, and the bestselling, Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii, The Roman Triumph, also The Parthenon and Confronting the Classics. Her blog has been collected in the books It's a Don's Life and All in a Don's Day.