Natalie Haynes specialised early, taking triple Classics at A-level. She graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1996. She is an award-winning comedian, journalist, and broadcaster. She is a regular panellist on BBC2’s Newsnight Review, Radio 4’s Saturday Review, and the long-running arts show, Front Row. She wrote and presented Classical Comedy, a programme about how modern comedians steal all of their techniques, and some of their jokes, from the Greeks and Romans, which was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2007. She has recently become the arts and literature expert (their word, not hers) for the BBC2 quiz show, Knowitalls.

She also wrote a Radio documentary on Greek Tragedy and soap opera, wonderfully called Oedipusenders. In a similar vein she believes many of our modern trials, tribulations, obsessions and interests can be found first in the land of the ancients, hence the book.

Natalie will be speaking at Salon on the 1st March 2012.