‘Did you find it a good read?’ asked Harrriett Gilbert.
An incredibly long drawn-out sigh from Mr Paxman.
‘I think it’s really unsatisfactory,’ he at last replied.
‘But Jeremy,’ retorted Professor Beard, ‘I don’t think you’ve read it carefully enough.’
The eminent classicist from Cambridge is not afraid of conflict. She must eat her students for breakfast, loving an argument, which she of course will always win. Mary Beard didn’t just disagree with Paxman but insisted that her way of seeing, her interpretation, was the right one.
She and Paxman were Gilbert’s guests on the first of a new series of A Good Read (Radio 4), in which the guests are expected to choose their favourite book and to persuade us to read it too. On Tuesday they were talking about Beard’s choice, The Return of Martin Guerre, by the historian Natalie Zemon Davis, a medieval mystery about mistaken identity based on a true story (also made into a film).
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