Thursday 17 February 2022 at 8pm - 9pm

POSTPONED: Community Welfare: Sex & Sexuality Event: Port Talk 'In Search of Cleopatra' with Fellow David Stuttard

Churchill Room

Port Talk: 'In Search of Cleopatra' with Fellow David Stuttard 

Churchill Room 

Even in her lifetime Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, was the object of scandalised male fantasy. In later centuries Boccaccio called her ‘the whore of eastern kings’, Florence Nightingale spoke of ‘that disgusting Cleopatra’, Cecil B. DeMille named her ‘the wickedest woman in history’ and playwrights such as Shakespeare and Shaw wove dramatic plots around her. But what was the reality? Join David Stuttard in search of the true, historical Cleopatra: a brilliantly intelligent and highly complex woman, a Greek queen ruling Egypt, a shrewd politician fighting for the future of her country.

Fellow David Stuttard is a writer, lecturer, theatre director, dramaturg and Fellow of Goodenough College, London. David Stuttard is a classicist well-known for translating and directing Greek plays and his career represents an admirable commitment to popularising classical culture and making it accessible to new non-specialist audiences. He taught Classics for eleven years in Edinburgh, St. Andrews and York. During this time he founded the award-winning theatre company, Actors of Dionysus, for which he directed a wide range of Greek dramas throughout the UK as well as in Eire, Turkey and Albania, shot a video, recorded a Penguin Audiobook, and appeared on Radio 4's 'Today' programme. His translations and adaptations have been regularly performed by theatre companies across the world and last summer Goodenough College had the honour to host his latest show, Lovers, Traitors and Bloody Greeks, with Sian Phillips and Stephen Greif, later performed at Crazy Coqs, Soho in October 2021. David has written many books on the Classical World. Phoenix - about the Persian Wars and rise of Athens - was published in May 2021 by Harvard University Press, and chosen as Book of the Year, 2021, for the Times Literary Supplement by historian, Andrew Roberts.In 2021 Bloomsbury Academic Press published the latest in the Looking at series which David edits - this time on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon - while his A History of Ancient Greece in 50 Lives (T&H) came out in paperback. David is currently working on Hubris: Pericles’ Parthenon Project and the Invention of Athens for Harvard University Press and Looking at Persians and Looking at Greek Drama for Bloomsbury.

David lectures widely throughout the UK (including at literary festivals) as well as on tours and cruises of the Mediterranean.  Earlier in October David lectured for Noble Caledonia on a cruise round Sicily and he will lecture for them again in 2022 and 2023. He also gives regular gallery talks at The British Museum, has taught at The University of Cambridge and teaches for The Transatlantic Forum for Education and Diplomacy, of whose Advisory Board he is a member.