Professor Mary Beard will be presented with the Bodley Medal – the Bodleian Libraries’ highest honour – during the Oxford Literary Festival.
The Bodleian Libraries will present this year’s Bodley Medal to the Newnham Fellow and alumna on April 5 when she will deliver the Bodley Lecture at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival.
The Bodley Medal is awarded by the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds in which the Bodleian is active including literature, culture, science and communication.
Past winners include physicist Stephen Hawking, film director Nicholas Hytner, novelist Hilary Mantel, writer and actor Alan Bennett and inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library with more than 12 million printed items.
Libraries in the Bodleian Libraries group include major research libraries, libraries attached to faculties, departments and other institutions of the University of Oxford and, of course, the principal University library – the Bodleian Library – which has been a library of legal deposit for 400 years.
Beard, who has been selected to receive the prestigious honour, holds a chair of classics at the University of Cambridge and is classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
She is the author of numerous highly-regarded works on the classical period including the Wolfson Award-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town and her latest book SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.
Her television work includes a BBC Two documentary on Pompeii and a BBC mini-series titled Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, and she is a regular media commentator on both the modern and the ancient world.
Professor Beard, pictured, will give the Bodley Lecture in the University’s Sheldonian Theatre at 6pm on Tuesday, April 5. She will appear in conversation with Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, and will discuss her life and work. Following the event, Ovenden will present her with the Bodley Medal.
The Bodleian Libraries is a cultural partner of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival, which takes place from April 2-10 2016. Events will take place at the Bodleian’s Weston Library and Divinity School as well as at venues across the city. For more information, visit the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival website.