Photo: Caterina Turroni / Lion TV
As a television and radio presenter, prolific and best selling author, classicist Dame Mary Beard has acquired celebrity status.
The author of more than 20 books including Pompeii, SPQR and Women & Power recently retired from her post as Professor of Classics at Cambridge University.
For her latest book Emperor of Rome, Beard leads us through the lives of thirty emperors over nearly three centuries.
From Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus, she probes the emperors' powers and just how debauched Roman palaces really were.
