Renowned Roman and Greek classicist Mary Beard and I trade small talk in her cute kitchen – her cabinets are the azure blue of a Cretan sky. She makes the coffee while I try desperately to mask a burgeoning crisis of intellectual confidence. “Milk?” she says with a smile, proffering not a carton but a glass bottle – how very ancient. Meanwhile, I am beginning to fret that this celebrity Cambridge don, one of Britain’s foremost public thinkers, may soon realise that her inquisitor is really an idiot. This crisis of confidence has arisen because I am no expert on...