03 October 2025
We are incredibly pleased to announce a new book from Mary Beard, publishing in April 2026. Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old is a bold and incisive account of why the classics matter.
What’s exciting about a piece of bread 4,000 years old? Or some pots of paint abandoned in the eruption at Pompeii? Why should we be bothered with the distant past anyway? What’s the point?
The life, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome have something to offer everyone. They are not the property of wealthy white men only. They make us wonder how to make sense of people who lived long ago (from angry landlords to giggling senators) – and to think harder about our own world, to look at it differently.
In Talking Classics, Mary Beard points to the surprising connections between antiquity and the present. From revolutionaries to dictators, Bob Dylan to Beyoncé, she joins forces with the varied modern characters who have been transfixed by the ancient world. It’s not compulsory, she argues, to be excited by antiquity, but it’s a shame not to be.
After half a century teaching and studying classics, she fills the book with lively stories, curious facts and some good gossip. Talking Classics explains why the deep past does really affect us all.
Profile Books founder Andrew Franklin says, ‘Publishing Mary Beard is a huge personal and professional pleasure. An honour too. No-one has done more to open the closed world of the classics to a wider global audience. In this bold and incisive book, Mary questions why we should bother with the classics and shows why they are not only for posh public school boys but for everyone.’
Pre-order your signed Waterstones edition here.