A manicured lawn, a gently warming sun, undergraduates fizzing and fretting, a picnic with an eminent academic. It could hardly be a more typical spring scene in Cambridge. Except this is no typical spring. England may just have relaxed its lockdown rules, allowing outdoor dining, but every restaurant that my guest suggested was already booked. A picnic is our lunch of last resort.
Lunch with Mary Beard, arguably the world’s best-known classics professor, was never going to be a run-of-the-mill affair. The ancient historian is not just an acclaimed broadcaster and author, but also a fearless social-media warrior known for firing back at the abuse that has tracked her rise from expert on ancient Rome to global media star.
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