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Jump to navigationJump to searchAll in a Don's Day by Mary Beard (view source)
Revision as of 16:26, 29 August 2020
, 16:26, 29 August 2020no edit summary
''Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;''
The gown is still there and Beard claims her best thinking is done on the freewheeling glide to the lecture hall or the library. The cargoes of gigantic tomes have been replaced by the laptop and the colleges of the Sacred Town have become deeply embroiled in debates about the necessity for multicultural grace before college meals. She evokes our sympathy as she relates the paucity of common sense exhibited during the last general election. Party manifestos are amusingly examined and some dismissed as shear twaddle with her reasons given. There is a trace of middle age angst which is detectable in her trawl through the cemetery for great thinkers some 100 yards up the road from where she resides, The Ascension Burial Ground. Yet, there is wistfulness in these blog-postings which offer a subversive view, cast askance at all such folly. She is indeed engagingly open about her thoughts on agingageing.
There are two areas where Mary Beard's postings are particularly thought-provoking. Firstly, when finding unusual parallels between the ancients and contemporary figures. There is a chapter on spin in the Roman World and the treatment of detainees. She provides informative comments on Trajan's column with its portrayal of the slaughter of civilians; women and children. She returns to her customary radical themes by proceeding to question the effect of the military complex on the innocent population in Afghanistan, holds the politicians directly to account and concludes that, after all, the Roman had a more honest perception of the barbaric effects of warfare.
