Pompeii

Mary Beard looks at daily life in the Roman town of Pompeii. She studies how people lived before Vesuvius buried the town. Its ruins serve as her clues. This history is for general readers keen on ancient Rome. It also looks at the town’s final days.

Beard tests well-known claims against what remains of the town. She suggests the eruption came months later than many accounts say. She argues that the public baths may have teemed with germs. The town may have had just one brothel, not many. Deaths may have reached no more than a tenth of its people. She draws links between Roman lives and our own. The book won the 2008 Wolfson History Prize.

Beard teaches classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. She also edits at the Times Literary Supplement. She is a member of the British Academy. She also belongs to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She writes and presents BBC documentaries too.