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Live RHLSTP tonight with Bettany Hughes was an absolute delight. We were in a play together at University in 1987, but I have only seen her a handful of times since then, but she’s enjoyed incredible success as an historian and received an OBE. But has she created a podcast with an 128 year old ventriloquist dummy? No. She has not.
So I had another fun day listening to her book about Venus/Aphrodite and watching her on her channel 5 show in which she follows the journey taken by the made up character Odysseus. It’s still there on My5 if you want to watch it and the last episode is out on Friday. It looks like a nice job, sailing round Greek islands and drinking booze and eating nice food and getting smeared in honey in the sunshine, but these things are always much harder work than they look and Bettany had to sail through storms and endure earthquakes.
I don’t know much about Ancient Greece and was a bit sceptical of the value of writing about gods and heroes who didn’t actually exist, but of course our stories and our deities tell us much about ourselves and Bettany’s book about Venus not only tells us much about the shifting dynamics between men and women but also of shifts in notions of sexuality and our understanding of gender.
Also she has some smart stuff to say about ancient peoples’ attitudes to gods. All fascinating stuff and she was a really good podcast guest, even if her webcam made her look like she was visiting from the past in spectral form.
Positive virtual meeting about my own book. We’re going to do all the announcements about it on Friday, but there was a high level of enthusiasm from the team at the publishers. Higher than normal I’d say. It’s their job to be enthusiastic of course and enthusiasm can go down as well as up, but the editor is clearly pleased as we’re going straight to the line edit, rather than working on a second draft (which I suppose could mean she thinks it’s beyond help). I have been doing all this stuff long enough not to get excited by the potential of new things, but I have to say I am very pleased with the way this book has turned out. I found it surprising and interesting to write so hopefully you will find it surprising and interesting to read. And the big selling point is that it’s short. Not as short as it could have been, but they’re letting me keep the extra 5000 words I did for free.
RHLSTP with the incomparable Richard Osman is now up
on audio
