Headlining at 100 – Classicist Joyce Reynolds with Tessa Dunlop, author of The Century Girls. Introduction by Mary Beard.

Born in 1918 Joyce has charted the most extraordinary course through a century of unprecedented change and is today recognised as one of Britain’s most impressive and adventurous Classicists of her day. Together with author Tessa Dunlop they will discuss the last hundred years of British history through the prism of those women who have lived it. Politics, empire, work, war, social revolution, academic life and extreme old age – Joyce (who according to former pupil and friend Mary Beard remains ‘a stern and helpful critic’) will deliver her verdict on the past and her hopes for the future.

Introduction by Mary Beard: As Joyce’s former pupil, Mary will be introducing the event and joining us in the audience. She'll be asking questions to the very same tutor who conducted her Cambridge interview over forty years ago and who still reads and corrects her work today. It's a glimpse into a structure of teaching (and of friendship) in the university that is in some ways much the same as we know now, in others way, almost completely lost. Mary Beard is a Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Newnham College. Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Mary regularly contributes to radio and television and has been described as “Britain’s best-known classicist".