1 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,480 Hello I'm Edith Hall and I'm absolutely delighted to be back at my old stomping ground of the 2 00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:16,640 Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama to talk about the book I've written with 3 00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:25,680 Henry Stead: 'A People's History of Classics'. This is a 200 000 word blockbuster which examines 4 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:32,400 all kinds of avenues by which non-elites, poor and working-class people in Britain and Ireland 5 00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:39,680 could access the worlds of the ancient Creeks and Romans between the glorious revolution of 1689 and 6 00:00:39,680 --> 00:00:48,000 1939 a neat 250 years and we look at it from many different angles. We look at it from the point 7 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:54,320 of view of workers reading culture the kind of cheap magazines that they could afford especially 8 00:00:54,320 --> 00:01:00,960 in the 19th century, the poetry that they read and they wrote, their life writing, the visual culture 9 00:01:00,960 --> 00:01:06,480 that they could get access to but one of the most important strands which does keep returning 10 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:12,320 throughout the book many different chapters is performance culture of many different kinds and 11 00:01:12,320 --> 00:01:19,600 that's all the way from really quite elaborate London West End stage theatricals all the way 12 00:01:19,600 --> 00:01:26,640 down to very déclassé working men's clubs and pornography shows 13 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:32,880 and the sort of travelling one-man bands that might go around on the tavern circuit 14 00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:40,560 the first one that we really talk about is the extraordinary phenomenon of the early 18th century 15 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:46,160 fairground spectacle: the most famous of these was by a man called Elkanah Settle 16 00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:52,000 and it was called Siege of Troy and this had a 60 strong cast acting out an extraordinarily 17 00:01:52,000 --> 00:02:00,080 subversive version of Book II of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid 18 00:02:00,080 --> 00:02:05,280 but this was a version of the Troy saga where the Trojans weren't defeated. 19 00:02:05,280 --> 00:02:11,200 Well, the aristocrats were killed but a heroic Trojan cobbler managed to do 20 00:02:11,200 --> 00:02:18,080 a deal with the Greeks and it all ends with a really massive carousal and fantasies of levelling 21 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:27,280 then as we go through the book there is a whole chapter devoted to the phenomenon of the late 22 00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:34,480 Georgian history plays by James Sheridan Knowles who was an Anglo-Irish radical playwright who used 23 00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:42,560 Plutarch really, the stories of the ancient Roman heroes especially the Gracchi brothers to 24 00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:47,760 basically protest against the corruption of the monarchy, the lack of democratic reform, lack of 25 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:54,320 parliamentary reform. He was influenced by French revolutionary theater but his Gaius Gracchus which 26 00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:59,760 premiered in 1815 just as the the worst of the post-Napoleonic wars famines were kicking in 27 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:07,040 and continued to be played in before and after Peterloo in Belfast in Ddinburgh in Glasgow 28 00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:12,720 and in London. It was William McCreedy the great republican 29 00:03:13,360 --> 00:03:20,160 actor who took the role of Gaius Gracchus and it was a really loud polemic against the 30 00:03:20,160 --> 00:03:25,680 monarchy and against the poverty and hunger that the working class was suffering and of course it 31 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:33,360 got radically censored by the Lord Chamberlain and we're able to trace very particularly what 32 00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:38,880 lines (which are all the most political ones) that the Lord Chamberlain put his blue pencil through 33 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:46,080 in later chapters we explore for example a very toxic use of classics and class in in relation 34 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:54,320 to the theater with the weird phenomenon of Caractacus musicals and plays performed by 35 00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:59,760 Welsh school children in the Edwardian era they were all very enthused by Lloyd George and they 36 00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:06,240 identified him with Caradog or Caractacus theancient British chieftain whom the Welsh had 37 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:11,920 adopted as specifically Wels on slightly dubious grounds but this is the heroic equivalent 38 00:04:11,920 --> 00:04:17,360 of Boudicca, he's the one who who leads Britons against against the tyranny of Rome and 39 00:04:17,360 --> 00:04:22,720 gives a defiant speech in the Roman forum but the purpose ideologically of this play 40 00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:27,120 was to introduce history plays into Welsh schools that would make them proud 41 00:04:27,680 --> 00:04:34,560 of their legacy, use Tacitus and very definitely contributed to the success of Lloyd George's 42 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:40,720 recruitment drive in WWI which was extraordinarily successful in Wales 43 00:04:40,720 --> 00:04:49,760 large numbers of unemployed and mining men from Wales died in the trenches. We've got far more fun 44 00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:54,880 with the sort of low-life performance cultures and these range from traveling 45 00:04:54,880 --> 00:05:01,120 showman like Billy Purvis one of my favourite guys he's a Scottish bagpiper 46 00:05:01,680 --> 00:05:06,400 but began to realize that what was needed was some entertainment especially for the wives and 47 00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:11,600 children on the race tracks of northern England 48 00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:17,280 and one of the greatest hits of these and we've got 49 00:05:17,280 --> 00:05:23,520 an extraordinary painting of it which is in an art gallery in Newcastle it's of 50 00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:30,480 his version of Nathaniel Lee's great restoration tragedy The Rival Queens which is basically about 51 00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:38,560 shenanigans in Alexander the Great's camps. That this was a hit of the sort of proletariat going 52 00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:44,000 on to lay their their bets on horses in the north of England is a really wonderful story 53 00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:51,840 and further south we have the phenomena of the sapient pigs and dogs who were named after 54 00:05:52,400 --> 00:05:57,360 ancient Greeks and Romans, one of them was actually said to be reincarnation of Pythagoras 55 00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:02,240 who would do stunts in taverns especially around the Northamptonshire circuit 56 00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:10,000 where they would do things like for example woof or snuffle or bark or do their paws or snouts 57 00:06:10,560 --> 00:06:14,400 pointing at different books so that they could answer questions about Ovid's Metamorphoses 58 00:06:14,400 --> 00:06:21,840 they answered questions about Plutarch's heroes and further south actually in central London 59 00:06:21,840 --> 00:06:28,400 our great hero is Renton Nicholson who ran an extraordinary club out of the Coal Hole tavern on 60 00:06:28,400 --> 00:06:33,760 the Strand which I'm pleased to say is still one of the favourite watering holes 61 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:40,800 of the Classics department at King's College London 62 00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:48,160 but they were basically strip shows: he had sex workers acting out scenes from Apuleius' Metamorphoses 63 00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:56,800 the Cupid and Psyche story or Andromeda being saved half naked from her rock or various other 64 00:06:56,800 --> 00:07:04,640 winsome ladies of classical myth and history with very few clothes on indeed but these were 65 00:07:04,640 --> 00:07:10,480 a great hit. We also had all sorts of different performers doing things like pretending to 66 00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:15,120 be Hercules and doing strength performances weight lifters, but at that point I'm going to hand over 67 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:20,160 to the real expert on beauty and strength performers in classical costumes who is 68 00:07:20,160 --> 00:07:28,480 my colleague Henry Stead. [Henry] And what a thing to be! Thanks Edith. So chapter 18 of our book is about 69 00:07:28,480 --> 00:07:34,960 social class and the classical body throughout the 19th century and some way into the 20th 70 00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:39,600 strength and beauty performers who are almost all from working class families 71 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:47,040 use reference to the classical world in two key ways: first performers like the Australian beauty 72 00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:54,160 Le Milo, the Welsh strong woman Vulcana, and the Scarborough Hercules Thomas Inch all pictured here 73 00:07:55,040 --> 00:08:01,360 drew on Classical antiquity because it was more or less universally popular in that period 74 00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:06,480 not only was it central to British education but across Europe and the European colonies 75 00:08:07,600 --> 00:08:14,640 classical motifs were used publicly as a kind of shorthand for power longevity and opulence 76 00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:19,600 but as our book also shows classical literature loomed particularly large 77 00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:27,840 in collections of the classical of the classics of world literature insofar as it was widely printed 78 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:34,880 by the early pioneers of mass publishing and this was for the simple reason that it was both quality 79 00:08:34,880 --> 00:08:42,080 assured and free from copyright all of which goes to show that classical antiquity was therefore 80 00:08:42,080 --> 00:08:50,080 a recognizable and readily marketable theme that would appear to audience members around the world 81 00:08:50,080 --> 00:08:58,320 and across the class spectrum, but just as importantly engaging with the classical was 82 00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:04,560 also a way of legitimizing and valorizing art forms that were traditionally associated 83 00:09:04,560 --> 00:09:12,080 with the lowest echelons of the entertainment industry so the freak show the strip show and the 84 00:09:12,080 --> 00:09:20,000 wrestling match. By training one's gaze on on a man for example lying on what could either conceivably 85 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:27,920 be a plinth or perhaps an antique couch wearing Roman sandals and in a pose resembling a Greek or 86 00:09:27,920 --> 00:09:35,040 a Roman statue a viewer could offset the dangerous thrill that they were gazing at a naked body 87 00:09:35,600 --> 00:09:43,520 a naked male body with all their muscles in play and with their modesty only gesturally 88 00:09:44,080 --> 00:09:52,080 saved by a tin leaf both covering and at the same time conjuring an idealized pubic region. 89 00:09:53,440 --> 00:10:00,640 The tradition of imitating classical statues in the flesh can be traced back to the 1780s 90 00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:07,200 when Emma Hamilton a blacksmith's daughter from Cheshire developed her famous attitudes in which 91 00:10:07,200 --> 00:10:14,400 she dazzled elite audiences with her classical poses but probably the best and biggest 92 00:10:14,400 --> 00:10:20,400 influence on the trend of strength and beauty performance as it grew in popularity alongside 93 00:10:20,400 --> 00:10:27,440 the burgeoning demand for mass spectacle was the Prussian immigrant and physical culturalist 94 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:36,160 Eugen Sandow. In Sandow's performance he would lift and sustain extremely heavy objects like men 95 00:10:36,160 --> 00:10:44,080 and horses for example and he would strike elegant poses, tear packs of cards sometimes, and turn 96 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:51,520 nonchalant somersaults to the rhythms of a waltz, but it was his commoditized scientific 97 00:10:51,520 --> 00:10:59,200 and hugely popular system of physical culture which grew around his carefully curated public 98 00:10:59,200 --> 00:11:08,320 persona which chimed with and offered an apparent cure for the crisis of masculinity that followed 99 00:11:09,440 --> 00:11:17,520 WWI across Europe so however you earned your money and however little you earned, one thing 100 00:11:17,520 --> 00:11:25,680 you could control in a period of post-war economic depression was your own body and Sandow developed 101 00:11:25,680 --> 00:11:32,960 a scientific method of becoming a Hercules based on the measurements of classical sculpture. 102 00:11:32,960 --> 00:11:40,720 His class origins are obscure but he was born in Koenigsberg and as an adolescent worked in the 103 00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:50,000 occupations of artists model and as a prize wrestler before he was to rebrand himself 104 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:57,840 as the gentleman Hercules and eventually becoming the first and I think perhaps only 105 00:11:57,840 --> 00:12:05,600 Regius Professor of Physical Culture. His example showed people like Vulcana and Thomas Inch and 106 00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:11,440 living statue performers like Le Milo and the Manchester born German immigrant who performed 107 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:18,480 under the name of Ethelda the Great that a classical veneer could protect their reputation 108 00:12:19,120 --> 00:12:25,680 obscure their working-class origins and appeal to wide audiences across Europe and 109 00:12:25,680 --> 00:12:33,280 the territories of the colonial empires. The act of exploiting one's erotic and physical capital 110 00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:40,160 for commercial gain was in need of careful branding beautiful bodies and strong muscles 111 00:12:40,160 --> 00:12:47,600 had clear associations with sex work and manual labor now the classical brand realized through 112 00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:56,000 bodies clothed thin fleshings, chalked or painted in white enamel and posed as still as marble 113 00:12:56,880 --> 00:13:03,600 this classical brand gentrified both the pose and the gaze 114 00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:11,440 and in doing so reached a fully cross-class audience from the big top to Buckingham Palace 115 00:13:11,440 --> 00:13:18,800 Now from the father of modern bodybuilding to the mother of modern theatre. Edith's and my book 116 00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:26,080 ends with a chapter on the working class communist theatre makers Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl 117 00:13:27,200 --> 00:13:35,280 in 1936 MacColl or Jimmy Miller as he was then known walked into a second-hand bookshop in Leeds 118 00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:42,960 and picked up a copy of Aristophanes comedies - this purchase was to spark a long-term interest 119 00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:49,760 for staging radical versions of ancient Greek drama. MacColl was the son of an irregularly 120 00:13:49,760 --> 00:13:57,760 employed Scottish iron welder and his wife who worked as a charwoman born in 1915 121 00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:07,280 by the mid-30s MacColl was himself an unemployed motor mechanic but he was also a revolutionary 122 00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:13,680 theater maker only two years earlier while he was performing in an agit prop troupe 123 00:14:13,680 --> 00:14:20,400 called the Red Megaphones he met his long-term collaborator Joan Littlewood. Littlewood, 124 00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:30,000 now widely regarded as the most influential female director, was the daughter of an unmarried 125 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:37,280 showroom assistant of a brush manufacturer in Stockwell. Through scholarships she 126 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:42,640 took up and abandoned a place at RADA before tramping up north with an eye to 127 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:50,560 sailing to the states so the story goes but when she got to Manchester she met MacColl and 128 00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:56,800 her plans changed. The potential for what theater could do was reignited with a furious passion 129 00:14:57,520 --> 00:15:04,160 they set up together Theatre Union as a theatre of the people it was established specifically to 130 00:15:04,160 --> 00:15:10,800 fight fascism by touring the north of England and bringing cutting-edge political drama 131 00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:18,160 to the masses and they saw in the theatre of the Greeks and Romans the origins of proletarian drama 132 00:15:19,360 --> 00:15:26,320 they also performed politically inflammatory plays which meant that from the 1930s onwards 133 00:15:26,320 --> 00:15:32,400 the pair and all the circle around them were under surprisingly intense surveillance from 134 00:15:32,400 --> 00:15:40,640 the MI5. As known communists they were blacklisted from their jobs in the BBC. Theatre Union performed 135 00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:49,600 Lysistrata between 1938 and 1941. This was a lightly edited version of the translation found by 136 00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:58,080 MacColl in that secondhand bookshop in Leeds it was translated anonymously in 1912 and then reprinted 137 00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:07,120 in 1936. This performance of Lysistrata was a part of their repertoire for a 138 00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:15,120 while but it was not until 1947 that MacColl's new and drastically edited version with extra scenes 139 00:16:15,120 --> 00:16:23,200 of soldiers at the front hit the stage under the new title of Operation Olive Branch - this version 140 00:16:23,200 --> 00:16:30,960 of Lysistrata challenged the motives behind WWII presenting it as an extension of the class 141 00:16:30,960 --> 00:16:36,880 war by other means the workers of the world were fighting and dying in their thousands 142 00:16:36,880 --> 00:16:42,080 for the enrichment of arms manufacturers and the power games of the hegemonic classes. 143 00:16:43,520 --> 00:16:48,240 They later grew to regret this line but it was one help by many of 144 00:16:48,240 --> 00:16:55,600 the radical left at the time in terms of career progression which I think is a term that that 145 00:16:55,600 --> 00:17:01,280 Littlewood and MacColl would have despised Operation Olive Branch was a big breakthrough 146 00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:09,920 the company finally got their long London run and as you know the rest is modern theater history 147 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:16,400 it is really interesting to see how the centrality of ancient drama and their deep 148 00:17:16,400 --> 00:17:23,840 commitment to Communism even the strong presence and contribution of MacColl have in recent 149 00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:30,480 years fallen away from our reception of Jane Littlewood as she has settled 150 00:17:30,480 --> 00:17:36,640 into her role as national heroine trailblazer of modern theater theatrical techniques. 151 00:17:38,240 --> 00:17:45,120 So today Edith and I have just shared a few mugshots from our gallery of People's Classics 152 00:17:45,920 --> 00:17:52,960 which we really hope might offer a fresh and democratic ancestral backstory for the discipline 153 00:17:52,960 --> 00:17:59,840 of classics which of course is blighted by its imperial and deeply conservative past 154 00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:16,320 [Fiona] Thank you. First of all welcome Edith and Henry this time live 155 00:18:16,320 --> 00:18:24,320 with us and thank you Henry for for making that fantastic film which i think gave us all 156 00:18:25,440 --> 00:18:31,440 more than a sample of the extraordinary riches on offer in this this book and and I 157 00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:42,240 really do have to begin by congratulating you both on quite an extraordinary achievement 158 00:18:42,240 --> 00:18:48,000 I have looked and seen that it comes in at 159 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:56,640 some 600 pages so I can only congratulate you on the length 160 00:18:57,200 --> 00:19:05,440 We're going to enjoy a number of questions from the significant number 161 00:19:05,440 --> 00:19:13,040 of people who are on on this call watching this live but I know today we've asked you 162 00:19:13,040 --> 00:19:19,440 especially because you're you're giving this talk for the Archive of Performances of Greek and 163 00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:28,720 Roman Drama we've asked you to highlight the performance dimension 164 00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:36,880 in the broader sense I'm pleased to to note of the book but I suppose I 165 00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:44,240 really do need to ask, it comes in at two chapters in a very long book but I 166 00:19:44,240 --> 00:19:52,320 just wondered if you wanted to comment and maybe Henry 167 00:19:52,320 --> 00:20:01,680 you touched on this you talked about how manual labor and sex workers were in many ways 168 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:10,560 not only in the front line of of communicating 169 00:20:10,560 --> 00:20:18,320 with the help of the classics to an extraordinary cross-cultural audience and I wonder 170 00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:23,840 is this one reason why 171 00:20:23,840 --> 00:20:30,560 even if you only have two chapters devoted to theatre as we understand it 172 00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:37,040 the performance dimension of your narrative is actually a very important one. 173 00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:45,280 I don't know whether this speaks maybe immediately because Henry talked very much about Sandow and 174 00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:49,840 I've noticed already that there are a few people in the chat who are very interested in Sandow 175 00:20:49,840 --> 00:20:55,840 but he seems to be a very good example of the way that performances are kind of 176 00:20:55,840 --> 00:21:08,320 crucible and a meeting point for multiple cross-cultural cross-class encounters? 177 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:15,920 Absolutely he is a great example - I guess he timed 178 00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:23,040 it right, he came in when there was this massive mushrooming 179 00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:29,120 the increase of leisure time and then the exploitation of that leisure time 180 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:37,840 by not only people in their time when they weren't working 181 00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:41,440 but also by those who wanted to make money out of that leisure so 182 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:48,720 he's a good example of someone who knew that classics needed to be 183 00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:56,480 commoditized is the word I used and and that is the way that 184 00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:03,360 the classics really got disseminated beyond the elite in some ways you know the end of the 185 00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:10,320 19th century and this is more Edith's 186 00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:18,720 territory really you know the actors also had 187 00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:25,920 operated on that lower social level and you know they were 188 00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:32,080 the first who were communicating the classics 189 00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:38,000 by staging the plays but often they've historically been overlooked by the 190 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:44,240 theater, like the directors and the middle classes who kind of hoover up the praise 191 00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:52,960 Maybe Edith would like to come in here and and talk about the 192 00:22:52,960 --> 00:23:02,160 fairgrounds in the 18th century and how as you say Settle's Siege of Troy ran 193 00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:10,640 for an extraordinary number of decades 194 00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:16,160 Actually I just need to correct we actually have four whole chapters today! 195 00:23:19,120 --> 00:23:26,720 There's history plays, there's the Welsh school ,theatricals there's Red Megaphones which which 196 00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:32,320 we round off the book; there's also a very great deal of the section on underworlds that whole 197 00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:38,000 section those six chapters are absolutely packed with showmen of different kinds so I think it's 198 00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:44,240 actually more like a fifth of the book. Having said that I didn't want 199 00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:49,840 to repeat stuff that you and I had explored in our several chapters on Burlesque in the 200 00:23:50,800 --> 00:23:56,560 classical ballets from the very end of the Georgian period 201 00:23:57,360 --> 00:24:01,920 it really kicks off around the accession of Queen Victoria and lasts all the way through to 202 00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,840 Gilbert and Sullivan who I didn't want to talk much about because that's 203 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:15,120 my former PhD student: Peter Swallow's got a big book coming out on that soon. 204 00:24:15,120 --> 00:24:21,680 What happens and we try to make this very clear in the first of the four sections is that with 205 00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:28,640 the invention of classics as a discipline and it is invented under that name in almost exactly 206 00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:37,200 1700 just after the publication of a translation of the Aeneid and actually before Pope's 207 00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:43,760 start coming up is that you have an almighty cross-cultural cross-class tussle over whose 208 00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:50,960 classics - who it belongs to, which in many ways and we try to make this clear in our epilogue 209 00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:59,280 adumbrates exactly what's happening today with on the one hand the non-availability of the Latin 210 00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:04,720 and Greek languages except to seven percent of our secondary school kids in private schools 211 00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:12,240 but the biggest popularity of classical culture in terms of documentaries 212 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:18,800 and computer games and movies and TV miniseries that we've seen for a very long time and we 213 00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:24,800 actually trace a direct argument between people advocating reading this 214 00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:30,960 stuff as much as you can in the classics in the first three decades of the 18th century 215 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:36,880 and people already with money setting up, this is when you get this explosion of small private 216 00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:41,200 schools all across the land to prepare people: anybody with money wanted to buy their 217 00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:47,520 son an education in Latin and Greek and you have very clear battle lines drawn and I 218 00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:56,240 think Settle is a very insouciant individual who sees exactly how you can monetize book two 219 00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:03,440 of the Aeneid with a big Trojan horse contraption at Bartholomew Southwark Fair 220 00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:07,680 and you could get actors unbelievably cheap in the summer months during the fairs because they 221 00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:12,160 found it extremely difficult to get there to work. I'm quite sure this summer if we set up fairground 222 00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:16,080 theater with the fact that actors have been unemployed they'd have been queueing 223 00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:22,560 up to be the 24th Trojan spear bearer! But I think it was the very insouciance 224 00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:28,320 it's saying "we have classics too". You also have a very very 225 00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:34,000 very wobbly margin between the internal audience of Trojans and actually the London proletariat 226 00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:38,400 who knew that they were vaguely supposed to be descended from Brutus and from Troy themselves 227 00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:48,000 and they together cheer on the serial murders and suicides of these aristocrats at a 228 00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:54,320 time when after the 17th century and the incredible changes in constitution and class 229 00:26:54,320 --> 00:27:01,440 struggle you've got a huge cynicism about politics and in all its forms so you've 230 00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:07,840 got a insouciance of form and medium and of content 231 00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:14,400 and you could see it really annually from about 1697 232 00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:20,400 in conjunction with with the publication of Dryden and the last puppet version 233 00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:29,200 that we've got is is nearly 1750. So you're talking one of the most famous performance events 234 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:34,880 that continues. Even Cameron Macintosh dreams of 40-year runs for musicals 235 00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:44,480 As you say is is quite an extraordinary run and and just so interesting 236 00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:53,440 you end up with with the longevity perhaps above all in popular forms like 237 00:27:53,440 --> 00:28:00,400 the puppet theatre and and we do know that they move of course internationally and 238 00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:09,280 as much in South America as they did um elsewhere and are reborn 239 00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:14,800 the writers of the late Georgian and Victorian burlesques knew all about these 240 00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:19,920 the siege of Troy was much republished so when you when you have the Brough brothers or 241 00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:28,880 ernard were coming along in the mid 19th century with Homeric burlesques you know they they had 242 00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:33,680 Settle's incredible commercial successes. I would just like to say before we 243 00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,200 move off from from Troy, what I love is this is actually run by 244 00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:43,840 a mother-daughter theatrical group Mrs Minn and her daughter you can actually see one of them 245 00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:48,160 in that famous Hogarth engraving literally drumming up the custom 246 00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:54,640 so you've got you've got not only go working class performers 247 00:28:55,760 --> 00:29:02,960 entrepreneurs but you've got female working class entrepreneurs when I first discovered 248 00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:07,040 the Siege of Troy simply couldn't believe it as far as I'm aware nobody has written about 249 00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:12,400 it before except a few dismissive footnotes in books written in 1920 saying this stuff 250 00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:18,720 is beneath contempt, "we don't want to put it in our books about Georgian theatre" completely neglected 251 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:24,720 as usual because of the class angle and the very last thing I'll say on that is it's lovely to be 252 00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:28,240 talking to you guys because i'm sure none of the people in this audience would agree with 253 00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:33,760 the now consistent trope of the reviews of our book which is that it's "unbalanced" because we 254 00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:39,840 don't bring in the upper class viewpoint. And I want to say to them, when Richard 255 00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:45,120 Jenkins published The Victorians in Ancient Greece, where is the working-class viewpoint? 256 00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:49,200 Who said his book was unbalanced?We're trying to correct the balance! 257 00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:56,880 in terms of balance as you say if you're writing about performance you're 258 00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:02,160 very often finding the most entrepreneurial as well as the most successful of the performers are 259 00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:10,160 in fact the women and I've enjoyed that very very much in your book. I'm going to 260 00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:16,560 probably rather ineptly try and keep my eyes on or my ear on what how you respond but my eye 261 00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:22,880 on some of the questions and this is a question from Claire Barnes which will raise a few smiles 262 00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:31,920 because she is in the room but she has written it in the chat 263 00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:40,640 she begins by saying when the war poets from elite backgrounds engage with 264 00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:45,920 classical themes there is an implication that they're seeking refuge in the classicism of 265 00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:51,360 their education, what do you understand to be happening when these themes 266 00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:58,400 are invoked by performers from politically or socially divergent educational backgrounds? 267 00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:06,640 so how different is what happens when very different 268 00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:14,640 kinds of performers run with the same themes 269 00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:20,480 Thanks for the question, basically I think 270 00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:27,920 you see something very different from the working class poets you see 271 00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:36,480 one of the themes that keeps coming up is not so much an escapism 272 00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:45,360 or a kind of refuge in their past and educational backgrounds but more of a looking 273 00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:54,400 to the classics and finding in it examples that kind of valorize their struggle and also 274 00:31:54,400 --> 00:32:04,560 to valorize and glamorize in a way 275 00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:11,280 their own experience that they see in the same material but they pull out different 276 00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:17,360 messages on the whole so an example would be 277 00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:24,800 you often see the trades being celebrated they're really nicely creative 278 00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:31,520 ways of establishing the tradition of one's trade um not only in biblical but also classical 279 00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:37,680 culture particularly mythology but it's got a slightly 280 00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:42,240 commercial twinge and that's another thing that keeps coming up is that 281 00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:48,720 it's written not as a reflection so much as a projection forward and it's trying to change 282 00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:55,840 the contemporary world by recourse to the classics 283 00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:03,760 specifically. On the war poets the really important chapter in our book is chapter 24 284 00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:12,240 on Jones's 'In Parenthesis' which is this extraordinarily long and savage modernist epic 285 00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:18,880 by somebody who had fought not as officer class - every single one of the famous war poets 286 00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:26,400 was officer class - and in 'Stand in the Trench, Achilles' Elizabeth Vandiver 287 00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:32,480 simply doesn't mention Jones's 'In Parenthesis' which is the only one from the perspective 288 00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:39,360 of somebody who fought as a non-officer in the trenches and it is savagely anti-war - I mean 289 00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:45,040 savagely not in terms of any taking up any political position but it's an exposure of 290 00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:51,840 the utter degradation of the barbed wire and the mud, and it's modernist in form 291 00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:58,640 it's baffling how it's been neglected. His name is inscribed on the list of war poets 292 00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:06,480 in Westminster Abbey but when that list was revealed in a major ceremony 293 00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:12,640 overseen by Ted Hughes when he was poet laureate, all except two of the war poets were were read out 294 00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:19,840 guess who was missing? he working class non-officer. So I decided we just had to 295 00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:27,600 make reparations to that and although it's not performance if you want the class 296 00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:33,840 element and in war poetry then you really can't afford to leave out 'In Parenthesis' 297 00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:43,520 I'm looking in the chat and I notice from Judith Hallett 298 00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:55,680 there's a question or a real interest in Sandow and other Eastern European emigré Jews and she's 299 00:34:55,680 --> 00:35:01,120 asking have you explored the reception of classics in this particular demographic? 300 00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:11,040 And to ask the obvious follow-on question, in any 301 00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:17,840 other minority groups in the period that you discuss? 302 00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:30,320 Thank you Judy. The example 303 00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:36,880 of Ethelda the Great's quite a good one because she was part of a very poor 304 00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:45,760 German immigrant family and they kind of got together and were all living 305 00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:52,400 in Manchester and there was a huge community of really really poor immigrants there and 306 00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:58,880 basically yes she actually came out of that but apart 307 00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:04,960 from mentioning her a bit we haven't done any sustained research into that particular area 308 00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:12,400 I was very pleased when we did 309 00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:22,320 the index of the number of British Jews most of of course from eastern European origins 310 00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:27,360 who came up in different things, partly because the early Communist party and Socialist 311 00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:34,000 party and Labour party in Britain were packed out with east end Jews and they 312 00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:38,880 were very important part of the working-class intellectual movement but also theatre people 313 00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:45,200 I'm trying to remember his name now but one of the most popular musical comedies 314 00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:52,080 in the Edwardian period was called 'The Greek Slave' which was a very insouciant version 315 00:36:52,720 --> 00:36:57,040 inspired a bit by Terence and things but the important point is that it's actually 316 00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:02,080 a slave who gets to marry the master's daughter, it's got very strong class politics 317 00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:07,280 we have several pages on that and that's by a guy called Hall and I can't remember 318 00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:13,520 his first name, I only remember he's called Hall because it's my name but 319 00:37:14,240 --> 00:37:19,600 from what we all know he's an American who comes and works 320 00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:25,840 in Britain, writes songs for musical theatre... The Jews have played 321 00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:31,120 an important part in that historically in America 322 00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:36,640 We talk about the that all starts with the very first synagogue in Britain is 323 00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:43,600 built under Cromwell. He actually invited a large community of 324 00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:49,840 Sephardic Jews into London when they were getting persecuted on the continent 325 00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:56,960 there's a couple of others that we talk about amongst our autodidacts, 326 00:37:56,960 --> 00:38:01,760 quite a lot of clever Jewish boys from the east end who get into grammar schools 327 00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:08,400 one way or another so if you look at the intakes you'll find that although we 328 00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:12,720 didn't devote a chapter to minorities of any kind - we were much more interested 329 00:38:12,720 --> 00:38:21,840 in regional identity and Christian non-conformism because that 330 00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:27,280 historically played such a massive role in in the working-class movement in Britain 331 00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:31,840 but the Jews come in very strongly in the late 19th century with the trade union movement 332 00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:39,200 and thanks to Lorna Hardwick for adding that Isaac Rosenberg was not officer 333 00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:46,000 class either. To change tack there's a question from Arabella Currie 334 00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:52,880 she says she'd love to know more about how you 335 00:38:52,880 --> 00:39:00,560 excavated these stories - what sort of research did you need to do to find this democratic history 336 00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:05,040 and much of this history do you think 337 00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:11,840 may in fact have to remain undiscoverable. [Edith] Tell them about how I took you to 338 00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:18,800 Travelodges in every rainy city in England to take you to really grotty archives 339 00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:26,400 they were all hosted and run by fantastic 340 00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:33,360 archivists and we were really spoiled you know this is archival research 341 00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:40,000 from the from the olden days it felt like 342 00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:45,120 We were presented with these massive boxes and that was how you could meet 343 00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:50,880 an archivist who were very protective of their material but we were quite lucky 344 00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:58,240 on the whole, being presented with with with boxloads of material to go through 345 00:39:58,240 --> 00:40:05,920 we were on location in these places and in regional 346 00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:12,640 archives and digging through boxes - a smash and grab approach where 347 00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:19,520 you just get boxes lined up and then filtered through and we were 348 00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:24,880 led by the material, that's the thing. As well as what you know about balance 349 00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:31,200 we were dealing with with material from the time and following it 350 00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:37,520 we were following our noses and the way that people spoke about about classics and class 351 00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:43,840 was their own experience and we often got good 352 00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:48,960 tips from elderly people who remembered what their grandparents had done 353 00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:57,920 there was quite a lot of actual oral stuff in it but I would have to say two 354 00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:02,000 other things: one is that Henry and I just complimented each other brilliantly, 355 00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:09,840 he knows an awful lot about Latin poetry as in his first book, 356 00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:14,800 'Cockney Catullus' - he'd already worked out quite a lot of ways of finding 357 00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:23,120 demotic dimensions to the reception of Latin poetry and mine is Greek and more philosophical 358 00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:30,240 and historical so that worked extremely well - I chose him 359 00:41:30,240 --> 00:41:34,960 the other thing is that, and this really needs to be told to people 360 00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:42,800 is that I started collecting this stuff in 1980, OK so 361 00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:50,800 I had piles and piles and pile, having been very active in in in the Labour movement in in the 1980s 362 00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:57,200 I met a lot of people I went and interviewed personally before they died, people 363 00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:02,960 like Jeffries and de Ste. Croix and George Thompson - in the 80s these were the old Communist 364 00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:10,640 guard. You can't write a book like this in three years; it cannot be done 365 00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:15,760 Henry often ran with something I said "we've got to do something about Joan Littlewood" 366 00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:20,160 and he's just amazing - I might say "we have to do something about Joan Littlewood" 367 00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:26,560 because I've always known that 'Oh what a lovely war' came out of her experience with Lysistrata 368 00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:33,920 at a fundamental level but his capacity 369 00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,480 he's just a natural - it's a bit like when I was working with you 370 00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:45,040 You know I'm good at the big picture but your nose for this telling phrase in some letter 371 00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:51,440 that just clinches the argument so it's to me just a great ode to 372 00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:57,840 to collaboration and the combined skills being greater than the sum of 373 00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:08,160 their parts. But there were other projects 374 00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:13,680 that were coming at the same time: Writing Lives is a brilliant project 375 00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:20,720 by a scholar in Liverpool whose name I have momentarily forgotten but it's really great and 376 00:43:20,720 --> 00:43:25,440 you know people are sifting through the same it all started with the 377 00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:32,880 with the autobiographies didn't it so we split up the letters and of the alphabet 378 00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:40,080 and that was my job really for a year at least: reading nearly 700 working-class 379 00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:45,680 autobiographies that no classicist has ever read and I would order them up 380 00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:50,480 at the British Library. They actually gave me a special compensation to have 381 00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:56,800 more books because I'd get through them in the day and I was just scanning through 382 00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:01,520 and turning them around - I was that weird guy with the trolley 383 00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:08,480 We have to thank Mr Anthony of the rare books room 384 00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:16,000 who is named in our thank yous but without him 385 00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:23,120 I could not have finished the footnotes last year 386 00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:30,240 Coming from your responses there Gideon Nisbet wants to know how much 387 00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:36,880 of your archival research didn't end up in the book and in some ways that's 388 00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:41,760 a difficult question, is there going to be a sequel I mean? 389 00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:50,720 I don't know about a sequel but with my students I'm looking at Scottish working-class 390 00:44:50,720 --> 00:44:58,400 receptions at the moment and there's so much more but like Edith said 391 00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:03,760 each chapter can be mined further and there's a lot more material out there 392 00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:07,760 whether will it remain undiscovered it doesn't necessarily have to be like that 393 00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:14,480 it's just obviously there's been some loss because 394 00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:20,960 very often a working-class man who didn't achieve some kind of status 395 00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:27,280 you know in order to reflect on his life and therefore publish his memoirs like 396 00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:33,600 that material obviously doesn't exist if if s/he didn't write it and that's important as 397 00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:40,320 as well because very often women didn't write those reflections and if they did 398 00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:46,720 they wrote them under their married name and therefore it's quite hard to find so there are 399 00:45:46,720 --> 00:45:53,120 lots of holes but we have tried to flag up in the footnotes when we think 400 00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:58,480 that you know for example certain popular journals we simply didn't have time to read through every 401 00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:03,680 edition and they're not digitized so we very often said this would make a great subject 402 00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:11,600 for a dissertation. We hope that people will will take it up and run with it 403 00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:15,280 I don't think I'm going to write much more about this, I'm absolutely longing to get 404 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:20,560 stuck into a real ancient Greek text and be a very old-fashioned philologist 405 00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:29,040 But we are going to apply for the AHRC follow on funding that 406 00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:34,400 you did and you got the ebooks... we're eligible for that and 407 00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:40,240 the people we know that we've neglected and there are some like George Smith who translated 408 00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:46,800 the epic of Gilgamesh - that's not quite 409 00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:55,360 Latin and Greek but we're going to make a film 410 00:46:55,360 --> 00:47:03,200 and we're going to apply for money to go on a on a road trip to where a lot 411 00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:08,400 of these people live to get a sense of the real physical landscapes and the garrets and the slums 412 00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:14,640 all over the nation but for various reasons we haven't 413 00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:19,360 done the application but we are going to and a film to stick up on our website 414 00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:29,040 with the most egregiously neglected figures would be more fun for me in my advancing years. 415 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:36,640 Lots more questions to get through and this is very much 416 00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:43,280 a follow-on to to what you've just said about what's got left out unintentionally 417 00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:49,280 and will soon soon be captured on film: it's a question from Nicolette d'Angelo 418 00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:56,960 with the emergence of of work like yours she says 419 00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:03,200 what implications do you think this has for more contemporary material, social media 420 00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:08,320 and television for example maybe that's a question for Henry 421 00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:20,640 Well I suppose what it could conceivably do is it 422 00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:28,080 gives a methodological background to it I'm just trying to think 423 00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:36,480 mainly of social media, TV, maybe video games...I'm not sure if I understand... 424 00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:42,480 I guess the message is don't neglect it because it's important 425 00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:50,560 Maybe I shouldn't say but it was Comrade Stalin who said that 426 00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:59,520 that quantity is equality and if you get a lot of material that doesn't 427 00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:08,240 necessarily appear to be important according to our biased generally speaking elitist 428 00:49:08,240 --> 00:49:14,640 approach to history then just by sheer quantities of material clubbing together 429 00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:24,080 is it shows that there's a much more important line and it kind of highlights the broader 430 00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:31,360 cultural dynamics which are very difficult to talk about but are probably more important than these 431 00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:38,640 kind of siloed great history figures that we tend to follow and we're very used to 432 00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:45,360 following so that would be my brief response there 433 00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:51,200 I think that social media has huge problems - I've been the victim of hate campaigns myself 434 00:49:51,840 --> 00:50:02,080 but the opportunities for very very very inexpensive and fun dissemination of material 435 00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:07,920 that is generally regarded as difficult and inaccessible are just wonderful 436 00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:15,680 I love vlogging, I love putting my brain to how do I make 437 00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:21,840 quite a difficult idea digestible and colourful...there are dozens of wonderful Twitterers out there 438 00:50:22,720 --> 00:50:28,880 Classics Twitter is a thing of of joy and beauty so I'm absolutely all for it - I think simply 439 00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:34,480 the lesson from the past if you look in 1720 all the ways that somebody walking 440 00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:38,400 the streets of london could access the Greeks and Romans it was equally sort of fragmentary 441 00:50:39,120 --> 00:50:46,720 very little of it required expert knowledge of languages if any at all so I think 442 00:50:46,720 --> 00:50:51,760 to get back to what Henry said we are really trying very hard to give a back story 443 00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:55,920 to a classics where you're not constantly terrified you're going to make a mistake 444 00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:59,280 and someone's going to say you're an idiot because that is the Classics I really hate 445 00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:11,840 One last question and it's from Lily Beckett 446 00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:17,920 do you think there's a greater more imaginative, value in working-class receptions of classics 447 00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:23,520 the value of a fragmentary understanding perhaps versus an institutional education? 448 00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,680 449 00:51:32,160 --> 00:51:40,320 I've certainly found that people get hold of 450 00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:48,400 one idea or one image on a beautiful ancient vase or something and it may often be 451 00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:52,320 because it's the only one the one that immediately comes to mind is a trade unionist actually 452 00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:58,320 called Edith Hall in 1910 who wrote about how 453 00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:03,840 she had only come to life the first time she ever came back was actually when she read Thomas Hardy 454 00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:08,720 and she read Tess of the d'Ubervilles 455 00:52:08,720 --> 00:52:14,640 she found out about Aeschylus's Clytemnestra killing her husband and the blood... 456 00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:21,120 and that for the first time when she read Tess she had felt here was a very 457 00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:27,280 famous writer Thomas Hardy writing about her: she could relate to this heroine so although she 458 00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:33,840 never did any more classics after that, that one encounter has really stayed with me 459 00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:38,000 so your answer to your question from my point of view would certainly be yes. I can't think of any 460 00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:42,480 brilliant examples either I think you could in your Latin poetry though couldn't you Henry? 461 00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:45,680 Where people like obsess on Mycenas and how do they deal with Mycenas? 462 00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:53,120 Yeah definitely. I'm a bit careful about 463 00:52:53,120 --> 00:53:00,240 assuming that the understanding of the classics would necessarily be fragmentary 464 00:53:00,240 --> 00:53:06,960 because of class origin but I understand the thrust of the 465 00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:14,960 question now and the key value for me would be that it's just different 466 00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:23,280 you see people drawing differently on the same material, often in in ways that that 467 00:53:24,240 --> 00:53:30,960 are extremely enriching and capture a diversity of experience that is otherwise not there 468 00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:40,800 469 00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:47,520 As a classical receptionist it shines a really important light on the modern world and 470 00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:53,440 illuminates the reception context because for example with Mycenas people 471 00:53:53,440 --> 00:54:02,880 are drawing on Horace's odes and through reading those connections you understand 472 00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:10,960 the importance of the patron from the 1730s on 473 00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:21,440 and the importance of the people who were having to lift 474 00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:30,240 others up because that was really the only rule 475 00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:39,280 to be able to quit your your job as a labourer in order to 476 00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:48,480 to spend more time writing so that's the working class poets group 477 00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:56,880 and the value in it just extraordinarily creative. 478 00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:04,320 Every member of every class has an equally fragmentary relationship with the 479 00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:13,920 classics you know 480 00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:19,840 we all have a very partial relationship with the ancient world. 481 00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:29,520 Thank you both very much. I began by thanking you and congratulating you 482 00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:37,120 before we say goodbye to you properly I think we need to thank those members of 483 00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:42,000 the audience who've given us some really really good questions 484 00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:49,520 So I began by thanking you for 485 00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:56,160 coming, and congratulating you on on quite a remarkable achievement but I think what's 486 00:55:56,160 --> 00:56:01,600 become more apparent than ever today is that we all need to thank you very much for uncovering 487 00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:09,440 a really important new research area and one that yes Edith you've thought about since 1980 488 00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:16,320 but not enough of us have thought about until now and I think it's very 489 00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:23,280 very good news that we've got so many younger people here who are asking really 490 00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:30,000 important questions and wanting to take this research in new directions um and so you 491 00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:36,640 again congratulations for having having done that and thank you all for for being with us 492 00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:45,120 If anybody wants and can't afford to buy a book, email me personally 493 00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:54,240 through my website and I will get them a copy 494 00:56:54,240 --> 00:57:01,280 I'd just like to thank you Fiona and the APGRD 495 00:57:01,920 --> 00:57:07,360 you always have the best events! Well that's extremely nice 496 00:57:08,240 --> 00:57:14,400 and Claire Barnes who's been the one behind the scenes. And also on behalf of Claire Barnes and 497 00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:22,000 Claire Kenward and and of course this is very much my request maybe when those massive 498 00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:29,280 boxes that are now under your bed just get too much to live with the APGRD might 499 00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:35,600 be able to find a home for them! We definitely would very much value your archival material. 500 00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:44,880 All the best to both of you and to everyone. Bye everyone, thanks.