Standing up for the Classics

Lindsay Fulcher talks to the writer, broadcaster and lapsed comedian Natalie Haynes, who makes the ancient world not only accessible to a modern audience but relevant, funny and fascinating.

- Lindsay Fulcher

In the second four-part series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year, Natalie focused on Aristophanes, Ovid, Plato and Agrippina. She is a regular contributor to Radio 4: reviewing for Front Row and Saturday Review, appearing as a team captain on Wordaholics and, as she says, ‘banging on about Juvenal’ whenever she gets the chance. She has also appeared on Woman’s Hour, You and Yours, A Good Read and What’s the Point Of…? Natalie also wrote and presented Laughing Matters, a documentary about comic writers (from Jessica Mitford and Dorothy Parker to Fran Lebowitz and Cynthia Heimel), which was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2005. Her second documentary, Classical Comedy, about how modern comedians stole all their jokes from Aristophanes, Juvenal and Martial, was broadcast the following year.

Secret Knowledge: The Body Beautiful, Natalie’s television documentary on the Defining Beauty exhibition at the British Museum, was shown last year on BBC4.

Her first novel, The Amber Fury (The Furies in the US), which was published to great acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in 2014, has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Chinese.

Her book on Classics and the modern world, The Ancient Guide To Modern Life, was published in the UK by Profile Books in 2010 and her award-winning children’s book, The Great Escape, in 2007.

She writes for The Guardian and The Independent, was a guest contributor for The Times from 2006 to 2010; she has also written for The Observer, New Statesman, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and the Evening Standard.