A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit.
I would summarise my politics very simply as the maverick left and proud.
I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that I would want people to stop reading the 'Odyssey.' But I want them to read it with their eyes open. To notice it and then to think what it says about us.
One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.
You don't overturn x-thousand years of patriarchy in a generation.
What is the role of an academic - no matter what they're teaching - within political debate? It has to be that they make issues more complicated. The role of the academic is to make everything less simple.
It's a bit naff, but there is something exciting about pulling a bit of pottery out of the ground that's 2,000 years old.
Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men.
The web is democratising and also the voice of people who don't think they have another outlet. And that voice can be punitive.
When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.
What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don't speak the truth as they see it. Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don't get the rhetoric right. I think that's a fair trade-off.
What interests me is the idea that classics is actually quite democratic. It isn't only the toff, upper-class subject it's often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it.
You always regret upsetting people needlessly.
I was not much good as a waitress.