Classical Equalities Lecture 2025

Classics and the British Radical Left, 1917–56

by Henry Stead, University of St. Andrews

In 2020 Mary Beard asked how a balanced case could be made for Classics that also took in the discipline’s contribution to radical and progressive causes (TLS: A don’s life: ‘Is Classics Toxic?’). The seventh of her seven suggestions read simply: “And don’t forget the subject of Karl Marx’s doctoral thesis (the Greek philosophy of Epicurus).” This drew explicit attention to the (for some unlikely) encounter between the grandee of the global left and classical antiquity. Marx’s classicism has frequently been invoked as a symbol for a whole universe of leftist classicism. The trouble is, that universe has long been veiled by the cloud cover of the Cold War and its aftermath. One way of improving the left’s relationship with Greco-Roman antiquity is to learn from radical precedent, to see what the “classics” have looked like when viewed through a "red" lens. This paper will share some examples of British communist receptions of classics before 1956 from a wider project of gazing towards a “Brave New Classics” (bravenewclassics.info).