See also: (1876-1958).

Winifred Mary Beard (born 1 January 1955) is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and is a fellow of Newnham College. She is the Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog A Dons Life, which appears on The Times as a regular column. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as Britains best-known classicist.

Mary Beard, an only child, was born on 1 January 1955 in Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Her father, Roy Whitbread Beard, worked as an architect in Shrewsbury. She recalled him as a raffish public-schoolboy type and a complete wastrel, but very engaging. Her mother Joyce Emily Beard was a headmistress and an enthusiastic reader.

Mary Beard attended an all-female direct grant school. During the summer she participated in archaeological excavations; this was initially to earn money for recreational spending, but she began to find the study of antiquity unexpectedly interesting. But it was not all that interested the young Beard. She had friends in many age groups, and a number of trangressions: Playing around with other peoples husbands when you were 17 was bad news. Yes, I was a very naughty girl.

At the age of 18 she was interviewed for a place at Newnham College, Cambridge and sat the then compulsory entrance exam. She had thought of going to Kings, but rejected it when she discovered the college did not offer scholarships to women. Although studying at a single-sex college, she found in her first year that some men in the University held dismissive attitudes towards womens academic potential, and this strengthened her determination to succeed. She also developed feminist views that remained hugely important in her later life, although she later described modern orthodox feminism as partly cant. Beard received an MA at Newnham and remained in Cambridge for her PhD.

From 1979 to 1983 she lectured in