Showing results by narrator "Natalie Haynes" in All Categories

Natalie Haynes returns to the world of Greek myth and this time she examines the role of the goddesses. We meet Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s head: goddess of war and wisdom, guardian of Athens. We run with Artemis, goddess of hunting and protector of young girls (apart from those she decides she wants as a sacrifice). Here is Aphrodite, goddess of sex and desire – there is no deity more determined and able to make you miserable if you annoy her. And then there’s the queen of all the Olympian gods: Hera, Zeus’s long-suffering wife.

Medusa is the only mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her sisters, she quickly realises that she is the only one who gets older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know. When, in Athene’s temple, desire pushes Poseidon to commit the unforgivable, Medusa’s mortal life is changed forever. Athene, furious at the sacrilege committed, directs her revenge on Medusa. The punishment is that she is turned into a Gorgon: sharp teeth, snakes for hair and a gaze that will turn any living creature to stone.

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective, for fans of Madeline Miller and Pat Barker. This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all.... In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.

The Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks, and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories. Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost 3,000 years ago.