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Daisy Dunn | |
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| Born | |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Author and classicist |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Ibstock Place School The Lady Eleanor Holles School |
| Alma mater | St Hilda's College, Oxford (BA) Courtauld Institute of Art (MA) University College London (PhD) |
| Thesis | Prometheus, Artist of the Ages: Prometheus' Function in Ekphrastic Contexts in Latin Literature and North Italian Renaissance Stanzini (2013) |
| Website | www |
Daisy Florence Dunn is an English author and classicist.
Daisy Dunn was born in London and attended Ibstock Place School in Southwest London and The Lady Eleanor Holles School in Hampton on an academic scholarship. [1] She graduated in Classics from St Hilda's College, Oxford in 2009, and won a scholarship to study for an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, London, specialising in Titian, Venice and Renaissance Europe. [2] [3] She was awarded a PhD from University College London with a thesis exploring ekphrasis in Greek and Latin poetry and sixteenth-century Italian painting. [4] [5] She was long-listed in 2015 for the international Notting Hill Editions Prize for the essay "An Unlikely Friendship". [6]
In 2016 she published her first two books, a biography of the Latin love poet Catullus and a new translation of his poems. [7] [8] The biography, entitled Catullus' Bedspread, received endorsements from Boris Johnson, Robert Harris and Tom Holland and was described as a "superb portrait" in The Sunday Times. [9] Dunn's translation of one of Catullus' expletives resulted in a series of letters in The Times Literary Supplement and an article in The Times . [10] [11] In a 2016 article in The Guardian Simon Schama included Dunn in his list of leading female historians. [12]
Dunn's 2019 dual biography of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, published as The Shadow of Vesuvius in the US, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Waterstones Best History Book of 2019, and a Book of the Year in several publications. Dunn was interviewed ahead of its release by The Sunday Times. [13]
Also in 2019, Dunn published an anthology of ancient stories in English translation, Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome, for which she was interviewed by Paul Ross on TalkRadio. [14] [15] A month later, she released Homer, part of a new "expert" series of Ladybird books.
Dunn is a regular commentator, critic and columnist, writing for The Spectator , The Daily Telegraph and Literary Review , among other publications. She has contributed to BBC Radio 4, the BBC World Service, TalkRadio, BBC.com (Culture) [16] and BBC 2, for which she participated in the 2016 Christmas University Challenge for notable alumni, with her team winning the series. In 2018 and 2019 she presented two short films on Ancient Wisdom for BBC Ideas. [17]
In 2020, Dunn was awarded the Classical Association Prize, [18] which recognises efforts to bring the classics to public attention. [19]
Dunn's sixth book, Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars, a group biography of the classicists Maurice Bowra, E. R. Dodds and Gilbert Murray, was published in March 2022. In The Times, Laura Freeman wrote of Dunn's "gift for making the arcane accessible and the forbidding more friendly" and the book as being "a love letter to learning". [20] It was described by Leo Robson in the New Statesman as "Lucid, agile, juicy, nuanced". [21] It was listed as a book of the year by Waterstones, [22] The Independent, and The Daily Telegraph.
Dunn is the author of:
Gaius Plinius Secundus, known in English as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.
Mount Vesuvius is a somma–stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of several volcanoes forming the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera, resulting from the collapse of an earlier, much higher structure.
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, better known in English as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.
Lindsey Davis is an English historical novelist, best known as the author of the Falco series of historical crime stories set in ancient Rome and its empire. She is a recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger award.
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of Charles Ryder, especially his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion, Brideshead Castle. Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes: Lord Sebastian and Lady Julia. The novel explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy. A well-received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11-part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981. In 2008, it was adapted as a film.
Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and used to write for the Jewish Chronicle until, along with Hadley Freeman, David Aaronovitch, David Baddiel and others, he resigned dramatically in September 2024.
Dame Winifred Mary Beard is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.
Andrew Frederic Wallace-Hadrill, is a British ancient historian, classical archaeologist, and academic. He is Professor of Roman Studies and Director of Research in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge. He was Director of the British School at Rome between 1995 and 2009, and Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge from August 2009 to July 2013.
Kia Abdullah is a British novelist and travel writer. She is the best-selling author of courtroom dramas Take It Back, Truth Be Told, Next of Kin and Those People Next Door. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times,The Financial Times, The Telegraph and the BBC, among other publications.
In Ancient Roman culture, cena or coena was the main meal of the day. The grammarian, Sextus Pompeius Festus, preserved in his De verborum significatione that in earlier times, cena was held midday but later began to be held in evenings, with prandium replacing the noon meal. Cena would occur after work was completed for the day and was a focal point of social life, along with the public baths, the frequenting of which often preceded the meal. Seating during dinner was in the triclinium, three couches for reclining arranged as three sides of a square, with a small table for food in the middle of all these, although masonry dining areas have been found in Pompeian gardens for out of doors dining during warmer weather. Whether inside or out, the couches would have been cushioned by mattresses and pillows while the diners reclined on their elbows. Ancient Romans believed that having more than one meal per day was unhealthy.
Paula Jayne Byrne, Lady Bate, is a British biographer, novelist, and literary critic.
The ancient Roman city of Pompeii has been frequently featured in literature and popular culture since its modern rediscovery. Pompeii was buried under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Ancient Rome played a pivotal role in the history of wine. The earliest influences on the viticulture of the Italian Peninsula can be traced to ancient Greeks and the Etruscans. The rise of the Roman Empire saw both technological advances in and burgeoning awareness of winemaking, which spread to all parts of the empire. Rome's influence has had a profound effect on the histories of today's major winemaking regions in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Roman Mysteries is a television series based on the series of children's historical novels by Caroline Lawrence. It is reportedly the most expensive British children's TV series to date at £1 million per hour.
Pompeii was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and many surrounding villas, the city was buried under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Herculaneum is an ancient Roman town located in the modern-day comune of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The Epistulae are a series of personal missives by Pliny the Younger directed to his friends and associates. These Latin letters are a unique testimony of Roman administrative history and everyday life in the 1st century. The style is very different from that in the Panegyricus, and some commentators maintain that Pliny initiated a new genre: the letter written for publication. The genre of the letter collection offers a different type of record than the more usual history; one that dispenses with objectivity but is no less valuable for it. Especially noteworthy among the letters are two in which he describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 during which his uncle Pliny the Elder died, and one in which he asks the Emperor for instructions regarding official policy concerning Christians.
Harry Sidebottom is a British author and historian, best known for his two series of historical novels the Warrior of Rome, and Throne of the Caesars. He is Quondam Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at St. Benet's Hall, Oxford, and lecturer at Lincoln College.
The term Notting Hill set refers to an informal group of young figures who were in prominent leadership positions in the Conservative Party, or close advisory positions around the former party leader and Prime Minister, David Cameron. Several of the group studied at Oxford University.
Jane Mulvagh is an Irish-born journalist and social historian, specialising in British history. She is best known for her history of Madresfield Court, the English country house upon which Evelyn Waugh based his novel Brideshead Revisited.
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