Hello and welcome to the Rest is History where today we are going off with a bang because

we are talking about Pompeii, Herculaneum, Vesuvius, the works, I'm Tom Holland and with

me is my co-conspirator Dominic Sambrut and Dominic thank you very very much for allowing

me to do Pompeii, it's really kind of you. You don't dare to face me on your own do you Tom?

That's true. That's true and I'm very very happy to announce that we have a very special

guest with us today. Sophie Hay who is an archaeologist who's worked at Pompeii and the

joining areas for 25 years runs the Pompeii social media accounts, is just about to start

a book on women archaeologists who worked at Pompeii so that it couldn't be anyone better

to talk about the site. Sophie welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Hello. Well thanks for

having me. So pleasure Sophie. So obviously I'm terribly excited to be doing one on Pompeii.

Me too Tom. Me too. I think it would only be fair to hand over to Dominic to ask the

first question because otherwise I'm just going to kind of explode with excitement.

Okay. Thank you Tom. Sophie I went to Pompeii on honeymoon in 2007. Along with a billion

other people. It's a kind of weird place isn't it because it's both an archaeological site

where you dig for historical artifacts and for insights into history but it's also basically

the Roman Disney World. There's a tension there isn't there. It's a strange, must be

weird thing for you for whom it's work and most people just go on a day trip and they're

interested in the gift shop and then you know sunshades and coke and all this sort of

stuff. So is that seem kind of weird to you to be working amidst all that? It's interesting.

I mean when I was working there I was mainly in a part where the tourists couldn't be so

I was kind of you know shielded from all of that but I did work in the forum at one point

and that it was like being a sort of museum exhibit yourself. Tourists coming up saying

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