Mary Beard: ‘Virgil was a radical rap artist of the first century BC’
The classics professor and author on being inspired by Mary Douglas and terrified by Beatrix Potter
My earliest reading memory
When I was about four, my mother read me Beatrix Potter’s The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit. It was so scary (with the hunter’s gun coming for the bad rabbit) I could hardly bear for my mother to go on, yet didn’t want her to stop, either. It was a great lesson in the pleasure of the terror of reading.
My favourite book growing up
It depends what you mean by growing up … I still am. But if you are taking me back to school, I would say Jane Eyre. I am not sure that I’m entirely proud of the way I engaged with it. I empathised with “Reader, I married him” a bit too strongly. But it made its mark. When I was about 10 I was determined to learn it off by heart, but sadly only made it to page three.
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZWv3W3
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