Sphinx

Mary Beard has been a supporter of Classics & Ancient History in Bristol for years (she’s a Vice-President of the Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition), and so we were delighted to grab the opportunity – before everyone else starts doing it – of honouring her work as a scholar and public intellectual through the award of an honourary DLitt yesterday. You can read her own account of the experience here; the two things I’d add are that, as the Vice Chancellor himself noted, no graduand of any kind has ever tried to kiss the VC before (I think we can expect that anecdote to appear in future iterations of his traditional Graduation speech), and that I’ve never seen an honourary graduand look so positively joyful (normally they’re much too busy being solemn).