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BBC Radio 4


Natalie Haynes takes a fresh look at the ancient world, creating stand-up routines about figures from ancient Greece and Rome.


Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

Natalie tells the story of Euripides' Medea, the sorceress who enacted the ultimate revenge on the husband who betrayed her, to a rapt audience at the Hay Festival. 

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Producer Beth O'Dea

Medea

Natalie takes on a truly cold case, the unsolved murder of a woman called Regilla in 2nd century Rome. She's aided by detectives Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five, and Llewelyn Morgan. Regilla's husband, Herodes Atticus, was accused of the crime but acquitted, so after looking into the evidence Hallie and Llewelyn give their verdicts and then the audience makes the final judgement.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the bestselling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Hallie Rubenhold is a historian and a prizewinning, bestselling author. Her book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper focused on the victims’ biographies rather than speculating on their killer.

Llewelyn Morgan is a Professor of Classics at Oxford University, and he is interested in basically anything written in Latin. He has written two Very Short Introductions to Roman poets, one on Ovid and one on Horace.

Producer Beth O'Dea

Roman True Crime

Natalie narrates Jason and the Argonauts' epic quest to find the Golden Fleece. Killer women, bronze giants, talking crows and a skeleton army all feature in the great poem by Apollonius. No wonder the equally epic 1963 film of the story credited him as a screen writer.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Producer Beth O'Dea

The Argonautica

The Greek mathematician and philosopher has vanished from history because she was a woman. Natalie reveals the evidence of her brilliance in 4th century Alexandria and openly envies her philosopher's cloak. Islam Issa and Adam Rutherford join to tell her story.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Islam Issa is Professor of Public Humanities at Birmingham City University. His book Alexandria: The City that Changed the World is the Winner of the Runciman Award and The Times, Sunday Times, TLS, Booklist, Epoch Times and Waterstones Book of the Year.

Dr Adam Rutherford is a scientist, writer and broadcaster. He's a Lecturer in Biology and Society at UCL.

Producer Beth O'Dea

Hypatia

Natalie, with Michael Scott and Alicia Stallings, offers a helpful guide to using the Oracle to get answers to your life's big questions. You'll need cash and a sign from a goat.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Prof Michael Scott is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International affairs and Professor of Classics at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of multiple books on Delphi and other ancient Greek and Roman topics, including his most recent Themistocles: The Rise and Fall of Athens's Naval Mastermind, and has presented over 20 documentaries for BBC, ITV, National Geographic and SBS. He is also an honorary citizen of Delphi. 

A. E. Stallings (Alicia E. Stallings) is the Oxford Professor of Poetry. She studied Classics at University of Georgia and Oxford, and has published four collections of poetry. She has published three verse translations, Lucretius's The Nature of Things, Hesiod's Works and Days, and an illustrated The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice. 

Producer Beth O'Dea.

The Oracle at Delphi

Did the Boy Emperor in fact fiddle while Rome burned? Natalie's joined by star of BBC TV's I, Claudius, Christopher Biggins and Llewelyn Morgan to find out if he was all bad. For a seventeen year old put in charge of an Empire, he was surprisingly popular with the people, to the extent that fake Neros sprang up around the world after his death. 

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Christopher Biggins is an actor and director who played Nero in the BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves' 1934 novel I, Claudius.

Llewelyn Morgan is a Professor of Classics at Oxford University, and he is interested in basically anything written in Latin. He has written two Very Short Introductions to Roman poets, one on Ovid and one on Horace.

Producer Beth O'Dea

Nero

Natalie is joined by Islam Issa and Adam Rutherford to reveal the extraordinary creativity and breadth of the stellar scientific inventions made in the ancient city of Alexandria. 

From early weather forecasting to the first suggestion that the sun is the centre of the universe, the first keyboard instrument to toy birds that could sing, Alexandria had it all.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Islam Issa is Professor of Public Humanities at Birmingham City University. His book Alexandria: The City that Changed the World is the Winner of the Runciman Award and The Times, Sunday Times, TLS, Booklist, Epoch Times and Waterstones Book of the Year.

Dr Adam Rutherford is a scientist, writer and broadcaster. He's a Lecturer in Biology and Society at UCL. 

Producer Beth O'Dea

Alexandria: The Science

In a tour de force solo performance, Natalie takes on Virgil's great poem in 28 minutes.. and wins.

In 12 books of Latin verse we follow the hero, the Trojan Prince Aeneas, as he leads the survivors of Troy to found a new city in Italy. Along the way he battles vengeful Juno, tells of the Trojan Horse and the Fall of Troy, loves and leaves Dido in Carthage, enters Hades, eats some tables and then sees his ships turn into sea nymphs and swim away from attack. Then there is more fighting until our hero emerges triumphant.

The poet Virgil died before finishing it and ordered it to be burned, but luckily his orders were disregarded by Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, for whom The Aeneid was excellent propaganda. 

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.

Producer...Beth O'Dea

The Aeneid

The overlooked Olympian who was the resolutely unmarried goddess of the hearth and home. In fact, Zeus awarded her a glorious gift for remaining unmarried, a tradition Natalie very much feels should be continued. In Hestia's Roman form of Vesta her Vestal Virgins guarded the sacred flame in her temple. 

Edith Hall thinks she's like Nigella, a domestic goddess, which may explain why references to her are hard to find, but that her importance both to men and women at the time cannot be overestimated. 

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.

Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Durham University, specialising in ancient Greek literature. She has written over thirty books and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Producer...Beth O'Dea

Hestia

The brilliant Roman love poet is the poster boy for teen angst. He feels everything intensely, from the stealing of his favourite napkin to the death of his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow. And then he dies young. Of course the Romantics loved him, as do his biographer Dr Daisy Dunn and Professor Llewelyn Morgan. 

Born to an aristocratic family in Verona, Catullus is fearless in abusing in sophisticated verse his father's friend Julius Caesar, his ex-lover Lesbia and the poets unlucky enough to be his contemporaries. Satirical, scurrilous and obscene, his popularity endures.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.

Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist. Her books, Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, were published in 2016 and earned her a place in the Guardian‘s list of leading female historians.

Producer...Beth O'Dea

Catullus

Natalie Haynes tells stories of Eurydice, whose rescue from the Underworld was bungled by her lover Orpheus. How has her story been uncovered from sources that no longer exist? Eurydice is chased by a sex-pest at her wedding, trips on a snake and is killed by its venom. Orpheus charms Persephone with his music into allowing him to attempt a rescue from Hades, but on the journey back he must promise not to look behind him, to check Eurydice is following. Just as they are about to step into the light, he looks back, and his gaze is what kills Eurydice the second time.

With Professor Llewelyn Morgan and music from Sarah Gabriel and Sarah Angliss.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Eurydice

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