Mary Beard: Classics professor talks Leeds, women in power and retirement from University of Cambridge ahead of Alice Bacon Lecture

There is a section in which Penelope, who is married to the absent Odysseus, hears a bard playing the lyre and singing a sad song about the tribulations of the Trojan heroes, who are yet to return.

“And she says, perfectly reasonably: ‘Please could you sing something more cheerful, this is terribly gloomy’,” explains the Professor of Classics, who retired from the University of Cambridge at the end of September after 38 years. “Telemachus, this kind of wet behind the ears teenager, comes up and says: ‘Mother, shut up. Speech is man’s business. Go back to your room’. And she does. And actually, most readers of the Odyssey now know that Telemachus is a bit ignorant, a bit naive, but he still is learning how to be a man - and learning how to be a man is telling your mum to shut up. It’s taking control. And I think to some extent we’ve never lost that. We’ve never lost that idea that shutting up women is what men do.”

Prof Beard is discussing this idea - one she believes can still be seen in the abuse suffered by female politicians - because ‘women in power’ is the theme of a public talk she is giving at the University of Leeds on Thursday. Prof Beard - who has presented television shows such as Meet the Romans and Inside Culture - will deliver the Alice Bacon Lecture, which honours the achievements of the first woman MP to represent Yorkshire, who was voted into Parliament in the post-war Labour landslide.

Normanton-born Bacon was elected to represent Leeds North East in 1945 and served that constituency, and Leeds South East, continuously until her retirement a quarter of a century later, when she took up a seat in the House of Lords as a Baroness.

The city did not return another woman to the House of Commons until 2010, with the election of Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves - who has since become Shadow Chancellor and also Baroness Bacon’s biographer, with her book Alice in Westminster.

“I’m finding out more about Alice Bacon and she has gone from being a name to me, now to being someone who I can understand as an important political figure,” Prof Beard tells The Yorkshire Post.

She adds: “It’s a moving story and, blimey, she did a lot of the work behind some of the reforms we now take for granted.”

Bacon, for example, was a minister in the Home Office when reforms such as legalising abortion, homosexuality and ending the death penalty went through Parliament.

In 1945, there were only 24 women MPs, a figure has now risen to 225 (of 650 representatives), an all-time high.

However, Prof Beard says: “It takes a lot more than numbers to change the way people think about women in power and I think it is very interesting if you look at the kind of jobs women get in politics, by and large. OK, put Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss all to one side. Where women have traditionally been in that power hierarchy is in education, health - the kind of caring bits of government. I’m very pleased to have a female element in the caring bits of government, I think it’s all for the best, but we still haven’t had a female Chancellor of the Exchequer - now maybe Rachel will become that if Labour get into power at the next election. That would be a great accolade. Only recently have we had a female Minister of defence, so there is still kind of a sense that there are still men’s jobs there.”

Women politicians face sexist abuse, meanwhile, and also take on the added work of trying to create a better environment for female colleagues.

“It’s harder,” says Prof Beard. “There’s a lot more expected of women in power. Women in power are supposed to - rightly, I think - help other women climb up the tree. (But) you never see an obituary of a male politician saying: ‘He really helped other young men wanting to get on’. Somehow, men have fewer jobs to do in politics, in terms of making it better, and they don’t get the rubbish. And I do understand it when women say: ‘Why would I put myself forward? If that’s what you’re going to get. You speak your mind, that’s what you’re going to get - why bother? I’ve got to think about myself and my family and that is just going to possibly destroy our lives’.”

Prof Beard wrote about such topics in her book Women & Power: A Manifesto, published in 2017. But she is widely known for her work on matters of ancient history and was given a Damehood in the 2018 Birthday honours for services to the study of classical civilisations.

She is enamoured with the architecture of Leeds, which is “one of my favourite places,” she says. “I’ve visited, partly because of television and partly because of my own interest, some of the amazing things Leeds has to offer. I think that Leeds Town Hall is one of the great buildings of the world and I am really, really, absolutely enchanted by (Grade I listed former flax mill) Temple Works. We filmed in it for a programme I was doing but it’s truly, again, one of the great buildings not just in the country, but of the world and I’m really hopeful that this British Library project (to restore it) is going to properly go ahead because it deserves to be better known and used and loved.”

Can it be assumed we will still be seeing her on the television, post-retirement? “I’ve got lots of other things to do,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like retirement, I’m really busy - just not grading papers.”

The lecture is fully booked but people can join a waiting list for returns by searching for ‘Professor Mary Beard’ on www.eventbrite.co.uk