Beard is calm in the face of online abuse

Sorry to hear that Londoner’s Diary pin-up Mary Beard has been having a tough time online. The Cambridge classics don and role model for blue stockings has brought to light the abuse she received on a website after an appearance on Question Time.

And it wasn’t for the substance of her arguments but her appearance. One of the least offensive comments on the Don’t Start Me Off site was that Beard was “a vile, spiteful excuse for a woman, who eats too much cabbage and has cheese straws for teeth.”

The other remarks are unprintable here but Beard has repeated them on her own Times Literary Supplement blog to show the extent of the abuse, which put AA Gill’s Sunday Times insults to shame.

“So how to stop it?” asks Beard, in a late-night post yesterday. “I am sure there is some clever way if we put our heads together. Could we flood the site with comments, or Latin poetry?

“I’m outing this because I have a thick skin and, in the end, speculation on the size of my vagina doesn’t move me half as much as worrying about the next chapter of my book I’m supposed to write. But then I’m lucky.”