{"id":154250,"date":"2026-04-16T06:40:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/?p=154250"},"modified":"2026-04-16T06:40:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:40:18","slug":"mary-beards-new-book-blends-contemporary-life-with-the-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/mary-beards-new-book-blends-contemporary-life-with-the-classics\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Beard’s new book blends contemporary life with the classics"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Through a collection of stories, both old and new, Mary Beard<\/a> begins Talking Classics<\/em> with her experience of what the ancient Greeks might term thauma<\/em> (a wonder, or wonderment) when visiting a museum in her youth, upon viewing a piece of ancient Egyptian bread.<\/p>\n

Bizarre as it may sound, this experience sets the scene perfectly for the journey Talking Classics<\/em> takes the reader on, seamlessly coalescing the world\u2019s vast history with that of the present day.<\/p>\n

Readers are invited to reflect on their own meditations \u2013 classical pun intended \u2013 of classics as a whole, noting on how the fixated appreciation of the Greeks and Romans can lead to an overall misinterpretation of what that time was really like.<\/p>\n

Overall, Beard\u2019s friendly, colloquial writing style makes for an easy read when sitting down with Talking Classics<\/em>, from depicting rich images of historic life in ancient Pompeii to present day America; evoking images of the past and contrasting them with how modern-day eyes might view it. Although I\u2019m no historicist (or classicist, for that matter), Talking Classics<\/em> is a stimulating, accessible read which I would recommend to anyone with even the faintest of interests in the classics.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through a collection of stories, both old and new, Mary Beard begins Talking Classics with her experience of what the ancient Greeks might term thauma (a wonder, or wonderment) when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":154251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/assets.buzzmag.co.uk\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mary-Beard-credit-Lion-TV.png","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-craft-leisure-news","category-recentpost"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/assets.buzzmag.co.uk\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mary-Beard-credit-Lion-TV.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-10-16 06:40:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154252,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154250\/revisions\/154252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vale50plus.org\/clone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}