WHAT BOOK would classicist and writer MARY BEARD take to a desert island?
- Mary Beard would take Homer’s Odyssey in the original Greek
- READ MORE: WHAT BOOK would author and former police officer Clare Mackintosh take to a desert island?
. . . are you reading now?
I thought that I would celebrate the BBC repeating the old 1970s series of I, Claudius (with Derek Jacobi and Sian Phillips etc) by re-reading Robert Graves’s original novels — I, Claudius and Claudius The God.
This may sound like a terrible confession, but I still prefer the telly version.
Most of those wonderfully memorable lines (‘Is there anyone in Rome who has not slept with my daughter?’) were actually written by the television script writer Jack Pulman, not by Graves himself.
Classicist and writer Mary Beard would take Homer’s Odyssey in the original Greek to a desert island
. . . would you take to a desert island?
That’s a really tricky one. When I did Desert Island Discs more than a decade ago, I chose what was basically a picture book, Treasures Of The British Museum by Marjorie Caygill.
I reckoned that, if I was on the island for a long time, I would probably get more out of looking at art, than reading the same thing for the nth time (especially if I already had the Bible and Shakespeare).
I am not sure now that I was right. Better I think to choose Homer’s Odyssey (which features plenty of desert islands).
It would be great in an English translation, but to make sure it lasted longer, I would choose it in the original Greek (but I would need a Greek dictionary, too).
. . . first gave you the reading bug?
It was one of Beatrix Potter’s less well-known books for children, The Story Of A Fierce Bad Rabbit.
It’s about a wicked young rabbit, who steals a good rabbit’s carrot — and gets his come-uppance when a man with a gun shoots off his whiskers and tail. I guess it was meant to teach kids simple moral values (‘don’t steal’).
But for me, aged four or so, it was not only frightening, it was also the first time I experienced the amazing power of written words to surprise, shock and even terrify.
The Story Of A Fierce Bad Rabbit first gave Mary the reading bug
I’ve liked books that make me feel uncomfortable ever since.
. . . left you cold?
Sticking with my childhood, it was Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series.
I loved her school stories (though my schoolteacher mother rather disapproved of them). I just couldn’t get on with the Five.
But a couple of years ago, I heard the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talk about how, reading those books in Nigeria, she was transported to a fantasy world of cucumber sandwiches and so on — which it was really exciting to explore, even if you could hardly believe it was real.
I wondered if I should think again.
- Emperor Of Rome by Mary Beard is out now (Profile Books, £30).
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