The Odyssey, along with its sister text, The Iliad, is often considered the bedrock of western literature. In it are the seeds of the road movie, the family drama, fantasy fiction, the Western, and many more. Odysseus, King of Ithaca, on his journey home after the Greek war against Troy, encounters the unimaginable: beasts and sirens, desire and pain. But there is so much more to the story than a series of adventures. It is a tale of homecoming that also captures the story at home: in Odysseus' absence, his wife Penelope must fight off a horde of ghastly “suitors” and his young son Telemachus must become a man. Join Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins as they deep dive into this greatest of all stories, sharing their lifetime’s enjoyment of it while putting it in context, and unpicking the trickiest bits.
Professor of Classics, Cambridge
Dame Professor Mary Beard is a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and was a Professor of Classics at Cambridge, where she taught for more than 30 years. She is the Chair of judges for the Booker Prize 2026 and has written numerous books on the Ancient World, including the 2008 Wolfson Prize-winner, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome and the recent Emperor of Rome. These books – along with the bestselling Women & Power – have been published to critical and popular acclaim and translated all over the world. Mary is a broadcaster and commentator, appearing regularly on radio and television, including on programmes such as BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time. She has written and presented radio and television documentaries for the BBC on Ancient Rome – from Pompeii to Caligula to ‘forbidden art’. She co-hosts a weekly podcast, Instant Classics, with Guardian journalist Charlotte Higgins and is Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement. In 2013 she published Confronting the Classics, a collection of essays and reviews written over the last 20 years for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. Mary, who is currently a Trustee of the British Museum, was made a Dame in 2018.
Chief Culture Writer, The Guardian
Charlotte Higgins is the chief culture writer of the Guardian. Since 2022, she has been reporting regularly from Ukraine, using culture as a lens. She is also working on a book on artists as documentors of the war. As an author, most of her books touch on the classics, which she studied at Oxford University. Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, about Britain’s 400-year period under Roman rule, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) prize, among other awards, and has been adapted into a play by David Greig. Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths won the Arnold Bennett prize and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. She also co-hosts a weekly podcast, Instant Classics, with Mary Beard. Her book Greek Myths, with illustrations by Chris Ofili, was shortlisted for the Waterstones book of the year 2021. Charlotte is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a past winner of the Classical Association prize and a trustee of the British School at Rome.
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