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" Wherever possible, I try to see things from the other side of the dividing line and to read civilisation 'against the grain.' "

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" It would have been nice if the people who were criticising 'Civilizations' had actually watched it. But the popular response has been tremendous, and in the end, that's what really matters. "

" English country towns are often seen as a cultural wasteland, but the more cut off you are, the more the need to create things, to make your own culture. "

" I'm very interested in how people in the 19th century travelled to Greece. "

" Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like. "

" We are sold the idea of a refugee as a tiny child sitting crying, as a way of raising money, but elderly ladies and kids largely can't move. The demographic is mostly young men. "

" In real life, Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities, like many others in the country. They are full of highly intelligent, hard-working, and quite ordinary students and teachers. "

" At 16, I got into local-education archaeology classes - you got to go to summer digs. It allowed me to be both intellectual and a bad girl with a wicked social life every evening! "

" There is no way, absolutely no way, that I would want people to stop reading the 'Odyssey.' But I want them to read it with their eyes open. To notice it and then to think what it says about us. "

" No women in ancient Rome ever had the vote. "

" History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say. "

" For whatever reason, some sorts of women's silence were broken by MeToo. This is the optimistic bit. And that will lead to a much more careful attention to women's voices. "

" I was not much good as a waitress. "

" I've chosen to be this way because that's how I feel comfortable with myself. That's how I am. It's about joining up the dots between how you look and how you feel inside, and I think that's what I've done, and I think people do it differently. "

" Grey is my hair colour. I really can't see why I should change it. "

" My day job is working on Roman history and ancient Roman history. "

" I receive something we might euphemistically call an 'inappropriately hostile' response - that is to say, more than fair criticism or even fair anger - every time I speak on radio or television. "

" When I am making a TV show, I am looking for engagement, not admiration. "

" You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure. "

" My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated. "

" Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men. "

" I have lots of heroes and heroines, mostly unsung and including my husband. "

" The reason why the British theatrical tradition is world-leading in Greek drama is because there is a flourishing tradition of people rethinking Greek tragedy. "

" One of the great things about history is that it sort of isn't a done deal - ever. The historical texts and the historical evidence that you use is always somehow giving you different answers because you're asking it different questions. "

" I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you take some cattle, probably a bit of cash too, and then you say goodbye and go home and you probably do the same thing next year - or try to, or they do it to you. "

" The thing about being a university teacher is that you're fairly tolerant about young people saying things they shouldn't have said. "

" You have to do what you feel comfortable with. "

" I have always thought the women's movement traded too much on outrage and not enough on ridicule. "

" The gloomiest way of describing the ancient world is it is misogyny from A to Z, really. "

" It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker. "

" I'm actually in a tradition of classicists with a big public face who like sounding off. "