Mary Beard News

The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation has announced its Spring 2026 Author Events Series, featuring a lineup of acclaimed writers, thinkers, and creators shaping today's most vital conversations.

Wigmore Hall has revealed its 125th Anniversary Season (2025/26). With nearly 600 concerts and events from 9 September 2025 to 31 July 2026, it is the largest and most diverse classical music programme in the UK.

Comedian Richard Herring will return to stand-up after six years with his new show Can I Have My Ball Back?, coming to Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre on 23 May.

For the 39th Adelaide Writers' Week, spanning six days from Saturday 2 March to Thursday 7 March, the world's leading writers will come together in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden to reflect on the lessons of history, make sense of the present moment and imagine the future.

The 39th Adelaide Festival presents a reimagining of the direction festivals are taking in the 21st Century. Find out more about the program curated by Ruth Mackenzie and Kath M Mainland.

All3Media International launches three FAST channels for popular British lifestyle shows on Amazon Freevee. Gardening with Monty Don, Great British Menu, and Fifth Gear now added to Amazon's free live TV streaming service.

Following the incredible 23 shows announced as part of the Pleasance Futures season, the third and largest official on-sale brings a host of incredible acts to the Pleasance this summer.  With returning Edinburgh Comedy award-winners, international companies, exciting new companies and debut comics, music, cabaret, live podcasts and children's work. 

Bozar brings a number of exceptional voices from the 21st century to its Writers & Thinkers stage. A richly filled series of talks and debates that take you into in-depth discussions on the cutting edge of art and society. The most important writers and thinkers of tomorrow elaborate on the big themes of today. From democracy to diversity to beauty and consolation.

In May 2022 the British Museum will open the first major exhibition to explore female spiritual beings in world belief and mythological traditions around the globe. Tickets go on sale today, International Women's Day, for The Citi exhibition Feminine power: the divine to the demonic.

'The Human Swan' - an inspiring conservationist, adventurer and motivational speaker Sacha Dench visited Edinburgh today to film her talk for the upcoming Edinburgh Science Festival.

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL), the charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, has today in celebration of its 200th birthday announced RSL 200, a five-year festival launched with a series of major new initiatives and 60 new appointments championing the great diversity of writing and writers in the UK.

The British Museum reopened today with help from Mary Beard and Bonnie Greer. Beard, who is a trustee of the Museum, joined the front of house team for the morning to welcome back the first visitors.

Recovering Misogynist is confessional and internal, and in that way it suits the digital format of the audience streaming it on a laptop

Cambridge Junction today announces the experimental digital production Recovering Misogynist written and read by Rachel Mariner will be available to watch from 12 August at 7pm.

Curran and Book Passage announced today that they will present two new special events as part of Curran's SHOW & TELL series. On Sunday, October 20, 2019, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton will celebrate the women who have inspired them as they discuss a?oeThe Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resiliencea?? at Temple Emanu-El (2 Lake Street, San Francisco). On Monday, October 21, 2019, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow will discuss his new book, a?oeCatch and Kill,a?? sharing his experience of exposing serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at the Calvary Presbyterian Church (2515 Fillmore Street, San Francisco). Tickets for each event are available online at SFCURRAN.com. In partnership with Book Passage, tickets for both events come with the book.

Centaur Theatre presents the Quebec premiere of Kate Hennig's historical drama, THE LAST WIFE, from February 12 to March 3, 2019. This imagined contemporized examination of Henry VIII's last wife, Katherine Parr, chronicles Kate as she negotiates the halls of power through the bedroom and the dinner table. The Last Wife was a hit when it opened at the Stratford Festival in 2015, and subsequently led Hennig to write The Virgin Trial and Mother's Daughter, thereby creating the Queenmaker Trilogy. This production is directed by Centaur Theatre's Artistic and Executive Director, Eda Holmes, with native Montrealer, Diana Donnelly, reuniting with her former Shaw Festival collaborator to play Katherine.

There are only 5 weeks remaining to see IMPERIUM (I: Conspirator and II: Dictator) which must end its strictly limited run at the West End's Gielgud Theatre on 8 September 2018. Presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Playful Productions, this historical two-part thriller opened in the West End to major critical acclaim last month with Richard McCabe's tour de force performance as Cicero drawing particular attention.

Today at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, PBS announced that acclaimed film, theater and television actor Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan, Spotlight, The Manchurian Candidate) will narrate its series, which tells the story of art from the dawn of human history to the present day - for the first time on a global scale.

The questions of when, where, why, for whom, and by whom these splendid luxury objects were made will be addressed in the exhibition The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, opening December 12 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The questions of when, where, why, for whom, and by whom these splendid luxury objects were made will be addressed in the exhibition The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, opening December 12 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.