On 9th June Mary Beard took home one of the £20,000 Wolfson History Prizes for her widely acclaimed book Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town. The other winner was Margaret McGowan, with Dance in the Renaissance. The judges were Sir Keith Thomas (Chairman), Dame Averil Cameron, Professor Richard Evans and Sir David Cannadine.

Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Newnham College - and “one of the most brilliant communicators on classics around” (Charlotte Higgins). Her books include The Parthenon and, with Keith Hopkins, The Colosseum and The Roman Triumph.

The Wolfson History Prizes, which were established in 1972, are awarded annually to promote and encourage standards of excellence in the writing of history for the general public. “What was especially fun for me”, said Mary Beard, “was the idea that no classical book had won this since 1974, when Moses Finley took the prize with The Ancient Economy. Moses was writing this and getting the prize when I was listening to his undergraduate lectures on fifth-century Athens. If someone had told me that I would win the prize that Moses had just won I wouldn’t have believed them. I still don’t, quite.”

The paperback edition of Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town is published by Profile Books on 16th of July 2009.