A Don’s Life

The best of Europe

I have to say that is not without some relief that I have left the country and come to Brussels for a grading meeting for the European Research Council. I know that I have banged on before about how great the ERC is, but this year -- after having just received a good deal of hate mail about the "uselessness" (that's putting it the most politely) of closer links with Europe -- it seemed all the more loaded. The fact is that the ERC is putting vast amounts of money into European research (almost €2 billion in the scheme I am working with at the monent). When you take into account all the other well funded schemes they operate, this makes Europe one of the big players in world research funding, certainly rivalling any governmental strands in the USA. More parochially, the UK gets at least its fair share of that cash -- all sorts of our research, from particle physics to Classics, are heavily dependent on euro-money.

But I am more interested here in the personal side -- because these meetings in Brussels always remind me how much academic life has change for me and most of my university colleagues since we became a bigger part of Europe. 

READERS PLEASE NOTE

This is just to say that, in the course of removing very nasty pic from my previous post, the order of posts got mixed up. So my most recent -- and rest assured -- final post on the QT stuff (returning more to the heart of the matter) actually appears AFTER "internet fury". 

Internet fury: or having your anatomy dissected online

When I posted my last blog, with a few grumps about people making feeble jokes about my name etc, I didn't quite know what was about to hit me. Things have moved on a bit since then. A few (very few) of the people who emailed me in outrage have got back to me ... those often apologising for insult, and carrying on the conversation. (I am now emailing the others to ask v politely if they got my carefully considered email in reply). And quite a few of the nastiest tweeters have made friends; as I said, I quite understand tweeting crap on the spur of the moment...have done it myself; just feel one should be able to say 'whoops' after. 

Then there was the question of whether I had ever been to Boston... resisted this provocation for a bit, but I cracked today. The damn mac I was wearing to go to QT had been bought in Pen St, Boston just over a year ago! 

Meanwhile the Mail ran a piece about Rachel Bull, which was pretty light on me (and I am very ok with Ms Bull...QT is supposed to be about argument isnt it?). And the Sunday Times (which surely should know better) claimed that I had said that the influx of E Europeans "would improve the diversity of Lincolnshire to the delight of local people". I haven't gone back to the recording, but I am sure I did NOT say that (I was talking about the capacity of social services to cope with migrants, not a touchy feely view of cultural diversity... for heaven's sake).

But why, you might say, am I so fussed by this. One tv programme of no moment, a bit of flak, and some great waves of support on twitter (thank you all...Tony Law even, bizarrely, got Sulla martialed in the fight last night...). Why not just "move on"?

One reason, it has introduced me to a side on internet trolling that I haven't experienced before, and is worth thinking about. My appearance on Question Time prompted a web post that has in the last few days discussed my pubic hair (do I brush the floor with it), whether I need rogering (that comment was taken down, as was the speculation about the capaciousness of my vagina, and the plan to plant a d*** in my mouth). 

It is headed with the picture above (that's me....or in the words of one contributor:" A vile, spiteful excuse for a woman, who eats too much cabbage and has cheese straws for teeth.")

There's worse to come.

So how SHOULD we talk about immigration?

It has been a damn long week. And it seems as if the particularly offending site has really closed down, and so I am now removing its vile picture from my previous blog,its job done. (If it really was the swamping of the site in Latin poetry that was the final straw, that's a good joke to celebrate). The realist in me knows that this is not a total victory. Websites are chameleons, and it will reappear in another guise, and no doubt targetting me... but that's for another day. And for the time being, I thank the hosts of that site for removing it; we'll see what happens next.

I have had an enormous number of messages in my inbox and tweets etc. I have tried to reply to every email (if I have failed, it is because of inefficiency not neglect, please contact again) but i haven't been able to get back individually to many tweets. I have tried, though, to give lots of good wishes to some of the young daughters who were mentioned on Twitter, re the need for feisty role models .. if 'the Roman lady" (as I am delighted to be known in one household) can in any tiny way -- and lets be honest, it is only tiny -- help the next generation of women (and men) to have a better time, well that is to the good.

And also there's been a hell of a lot of press coverage. In fact I had a good deal of sympathy with a fed up tweeter who said that the worst thing about this whole business was the number of articles by or about M Beard (in truth, none by M Beard on this -- apart from the blog -- but I get the point). Let me say that when this kind of controversy blows up, the first symptom is that you are on the receiving end of a swarm of requests for interviews etc, by email, phone, twitter. Now, I guess it would in theory be possible to ignore some; but once you have picked up the phone, you're actually into an interview even if you dont want to be. And anyway, once you have decided to out you head above the parapet, then ... you might as well try to get as much discussion as possible. (I mean, most people dont read more thsan one or two papers, so they wont actualy notice the ubiquity.)

I actually can't bring myself to read most of the pieces...but at second hand I gather what they say, and count myself very lucky indeed. Even the Mail (thank you, inter alias, Jane Fryer for beng nice and taking trouble) had a positive piece on the trolling... though if I am allowed a tiny moment of carp, I would say that the fact (as reported in the DM and no doubt true) that my hair and clothes seemed a bit dirty on the day of our interview might just have had something to do with the circumstances. Since this stuff broke, truth is that I've averaged about 4 hours sleep a night. And the day I gave the interview to the Mail at Kings Cross station, I'd been up by 6.00 preparing Plato's Crito, teaching the Crito for two hours from 9.00, getting to the station through snowbound Cambridge (and a taxi failing to show), to make it (splattered by snow and salt) to a meeting in London at 1.00 lasting till 4.00, then turning up at Kings Cross to chat to Mail, before getting back home to correct proofs of next book. Not exactly much time to primp! (To put it another way, the more papers want interviews, the less time you'll have to wash your hair!)

But the more important issue has probably got lost here: namely what (partly) prompted the row -- migration.

Is my name a real laugh? Question Time feedback.

I was on BBC's Question Time yesterday. Let me say first of all that it IS quite fun, but a huge amount of work. I've done this three times in three years or so, and found that the only way to proceed was to devote a good 15+ hours or so to mugging up (like exam revision). I dont mean just reading the papers, but going behind the papers to the "real documents", which are always a revelation (never believe the summary you see in the press!) This time it was in Lincoln, and the day before I had read inter alia the Boston "Task and Finish" report (on immigration to Boston) and the full European Court of Human Rights judgement on Christian symbols etc. 

The Christian symbols' issue was the subject of the warm up question before recording.. so at least I shared my basic conclusion on this one. Thanks to the exceedingly careful Euro ruling, it's clear enough that, principle or not, each one of these cases also represents a breakdown in workplace relations. There must be thousands of instances where issues of principle clash (religion versus sexuality, for example) and they are resolved in a common-sensical way. It only reaches any sort of court -- let alone ECHR -- when something terrible has gone wrong.

But the big issue on Thursday.. partly because of the panel (inc Nigel Farage) was the EU and immigration. In retrospect I am not sure how well the issues was served by the adversarial format; it doesnt help the kind of nuanced negotiation that is most needed in this debate. But, cripes, I've learned something about socal media.

Let me say straight away that I think that social media have revolutionised this kind of chat show, and in fact having a sense of the reaction of people watching (even if that is "Beard is rubbish" or a hell of a lot worse) makes the experience much more worthwhile. And I try to get back to as many people who contact me by tweet or email as I can (I reckon that on QT I'm there as the academic who argues.. and if people bother to contact me, I owe them a reply, whether we agree or not).

It's what some people choose to say that gobsmacks me.

Peter Carson -- farewell

Peter Carson, my editor, publisher and one of my very best friends, died on Wednesday. It was, as the phrase goes, "after a long illness". But that gives rather the wrong impression, I think, as if somehow the last months of his life were taken up with nothing more than failing health. In fact, he had just finished his latest Russian translation (of which more below), we had enjoyed a drink just before Xmas (over which he was full of good advice about how I should put my literary estate in order; it is needless to say a mess) and he has been acutely editing my next book, Confronting the Classics, over the last several months.

And in fact it was only a few months ago that we (husband and I) spent a tremendous and over indulgent weekend with Peter and his wife Eleo Gordon (plus Andrew Franklin and Caroline Elton) at their house in Hampshire. So never mind the paraphernalia of oxygen etc, please don't imagine that "after a long illness" necessarily means half dead for months. This was one of the best weekends I've ever had -- and Peter enjoyed it too. Or I shall be posthumously disappointed in him if he didnt! (He seems to be having fun in the photo on the right, with Andrew looking -- dare I say it -- slightly knackered...? )

Anyway, I shall be getting my chance later to reflect more formally on what Peter achieved,  and how in that self-confidently self-effacing way he was probably more influential in the literary landscape of this country in the second half of the twentieth century than anyone else (he brought us Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt, Robin Lane Fox... and that's just a start). Here I want to reflect, outreageously personally, on why for me he was such a great editor, indeed how he taught me what a great publisher and editor was.

The Library and the Tower: not the dirty books

I guess I have realised after some 40 years of library use that I am both the library user from hell, and every librarian's favourite customer. Never mind the social life that I once had in the library (my only social life for a while, let me confess... and don't lets go down what happened in North Front 4) . . . 

I am now the much more cerebral person who rejoices every time she comes across a book in the University Library which hasn't had its pages cut. Yippee, I think,this book has never been opened in 50 years..  I am the first person in Cambridge ever to have read this.(The strength of a great research library, let me stress, can be measured by the number of books in it that have never been read, not by the number of books that are always borrowed.)

So give me a paper knife and the Westfalien archaeological reports for 1928.. and I am happy.

Just say no?

I often can't quite work out whether I am being hopelessly naive or very sensible indeed.

Right now, I am puzzled at the mess that the government has got into with Child Benefit. I thought that we had always been told that making Child Benefit anything other than "universal" was going to lead to trouble -- and indeed was going to cost, in administration etc, more than it saved. And this is exactly what is now happening -- with all the unfairnesses that are bound to creep in when you establish, more or less, arbitrary boundaries.

It seems, for example, absolutely clear that on earnings between £50k and 60k you will have to go through all kinds of calculations about paying money into pension funds etc, to maximise your take-home income. A field day for any "financial adviser" -- which is just the sort of field day of financial ingenuity that I thought we were trying to put a stop to!

But dont let's forget that you do actually have to apply for Child Benefit. It doesn't just magically arrive in your bank account as soon as the baby is born.

An alternative "Thought for the Day".

One of the most fun things I did this Christmas was an "Alternative Thought for the Day" on the Today programme this morning -- New Year's Day. The programme was being guest edited by Al Murray, who wanted something different, and a wee bit pagan, on the religious front. It couldn't actually oust Thought for the Day (done this morning by Lucy Winkett), which took the usual 7.40 slot. My alternative version was broadcast at 6.50 am

As a colleague realistically pointed out, the number of people who were actually listening to the Today Programme at 6.50 am on New Year's Day must be lower than on any other time/day of the year. BUT the good news is that there was a video version on the BBC website, acted out by self as Vestal Virgin (yes, I know that I am committed never to dressing up as a Roman, but this WAS New Year's Day - so what the hell). You can watch the video version here.

OBE?

Let me say straightaway that I am damn delighted to have been given an OBE, for "services to classical scholarship". You'd have to be a pretty curmudgeonly old soul not to be very tickled.

You'd also have to be oddly unreflective not to wonder for a day or two whether to accept, for all the obvious reasons. Do I really think that an Order of the British EMPIRE is quite what I should be putting my name to? And isnt the whole honours business a bit silly anyway?

Well, yes, it is a bit silly in a way .. but here are the reasons for me accepting and being damn chuffed.