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Revision as of 12:28, 15 April 2012
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|summary=A second collection of the blog postings of classical scholar, Prof Mary Beard for the TLS about teaching at Cambridge and her enthusiastic musings on Archaeology and the Ancients,
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Mary Beard's latest collection, ''All in a Don's Day'', of her assembled blog pieces from 2009 until the end of 2011, covers similar concerns to her previous selection, [[It's a A Don's Life by Mary Beard|It's a Don's Life]]. Professor Beard is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and became Classics Professor at there in 2004. She is also an expert in Roman laughter, an interest which she fully indulges in the pages of her TLS blog. In her latest collection she bemoans the parlous current state of both Education and the Academy, and makes witty observations on matters as various as television chefs, what and how to visit in Rome and the art and worth of completing references in an age when only positive things may be said about postgraduate job-seekers.
Her latest collection is good at imparting the arguments for and against, for instance, the current system of A-levels. She writes with verbal dexterity and wit and then pounces upon weak arguments voraciously. She certainly calls a spade a spade and has little time for niceties or euphemisms. You often feel that she has the rustic honesty of an intelligent Campanian peasant who has quaffed excessively of the Falernian wine. One of her most engaging traits however, is her ability to also laugh at herself as well as the ridiculous in general.
