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Mary Beard on Ancient Rome: Britain´s favourite classicist lifts the lid on the Roman Empire. A major new BBC TV series presented by the author starts in May 2016.

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Sunday Times Top 10 BestsellerShortlisted for a British Book Industry Book of the Year Award 2016

The new series Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit is on BBC2 now

Ancient Rome matters.

Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today.

SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world´s foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1,000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome.

SPQR is the Romans´ own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, ´the Senate and People of Rome´.

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"Fast-moving, exciting, psychologically acute, warmly sceptical" Bryan Appleyard Sunday Times

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Beard, Mary
Mary Beard is one of the most original and best-known classicists working today. She is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Classics editor of the TLS. She is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her books include the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2008) and the best-selling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015). Her popular TLS blog has been collected in the books It´s a Don´s Life and All in a Don´s Day. Her latest book is Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017).

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