132,627
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
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
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=All in a Don's Day
|author=Mary Beard
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-1846685361
|pages=288
|publisher=Profile Books
|date=April 2012
|website=http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/97783.Mary_Beard/blog
|video=8AfPhYxgvPM
|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,
|cover=1846685362
|aznuk=1846685362
|aznus=1846685362
}}
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 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.
''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 The cargoes of gigantic tomes have been replaced by the laptop and the colleges of the Sacred Town have become deeply embroiled in debates about the necessity for multicultural grace before college meals.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.
[[The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars by Annelise Freisenbruch]]
{{amazontext|amazon=1846685362}} {{waterstonestextamazonUStext|waterstonesamazon=88725721846685362}}
{{commenthead}}
