Event 46

Lucy Hughes-Hallett - Cleopatra - Histories, Dreams and Distortions

For two thousand years, Cleopatra has been continually reinvented: medieval emblem of wifely devotion, Renaissance beauty, Romantic femme fatale and Hollywood temptress. Yet these archetypes tell us less about Egypt’s last pharaoh than about the preoccupations, racial politics and erotic fantasies of the cultures that constructed them. Samuel Johnson Prize-winning biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett examines the historical monarch alongside her legion of imaginary counterparts. From hostile Roman propaganda to modern pop culture, Hughes-Hallett disentangles the astute political strategist from centuries of myth-making. “Brilliant and discursive”, Antonia Fraser.