Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the Cambridge Professor of Classics Mary Beard,

hilarious and brilliant according to Vogue magazine. She's passionate about the relevance of classics today

from translating David Beckham's Latin tattoo to drawing parallels between

President Obama and a Roman Emperor. Although her research is steeped in the ancient world, her

commentary is all about the here and now. She writes about power, people and

politics and is used to causing something of a storm.

I do have form on being outspoken, she admits.

So intellectual life Mary Beard is about having a bit of a ding-dong, is it?

Having a good old argument.

It's about having an argument and it's about cutting through the count I think that an

awful lot of public debate is buried in it's actually about saying look that doesn't add up you know and I'm going to

tell you why. And there is I'm imagining a sort of joy in flexing your intellectual

muscle when you go public on things that you disagree with?

A joy and fear, you know?

Is there? Well, you think, you know, I want to say this, but do I, do I really dare?

Now I've got form on it. I think I feel more anxious. I think when I was younger and I used to say things and

I didn't quite realize how many people read what you put on the web. I was pretty fearless and I didn't I didn't

predict when people got cross about things. I thought oh that's a bit surprising. Now I

kind of think oh help but I'll make myself do it. For me the point of doing it is to speak to people in the

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