About Daisy Dunn
Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist and author of seven books. Her latest, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World through the Women Who Shaped It, was published in 2024 in a number of languages around the world. It was a New Yorker, Smithsonian, BBC History and Daily Express book of the year, and longlisted for the Runciman Award.
Daisy’s previous book, Not Far from Brideshead: Oxford between the Wars, a classicist’s portrait of the university city, was a Waterstones, Daily Telegraph and Independent book of the year, selected for Radio 4’s Open Book, and also longlisted for the Runciman Award.
Previously, in 2019, Daisy wrote a dual biography of the two Plinys entitled In The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice; Of Gods and Men: 100 Stories from Ancient Greece & Rome; and the Ladybird Expert book on Homer. The same year she was interviewed by the Sunday Times.
Daisy’s debut books, Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, were published by HarperCollins on both sides of the Atlantic in 2016 and earned her a place in the Guardian‘s list of leading female historians.
Daisy also writes widely for the press as a critic and cultural commentator. She is a columnist for The Spectator and contributing editor of Spear’s, for which she writes the Classical Education column, and has regular bylines in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Engelsberg Ideas and Literary Review. She has also written for The Times, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, History Today, The London Magazine, New Statesman, Newsweek, The Oldie, The TLS, Catholic Herald, New York Times, LA Review of Books, New Criterion and Lit Hub. She is Editor of ARGO: A Hellenic Review, an international journal of Greek culture published by the Hellenic Society.
Daisy has consulted, presented and participated in interviews on documentaries for the BBC, Channel 5, Sky History, PBS, Netflix, Discovery, ZDF (Germany), Arte (France), Axess TV (Sweden), Al Arabiya, Glyndebourne Opera and other American television networks. In 2016 she played for the winning team on BBC 2’s University Challenge Christmas Special. She has written and presented two short films on the classical world for BBC Ideas, and on radio she has contributed to BBC Radio 4, the World Service, Times Radio, TalkRadio, LBC, Monocle and RTÉ’s Arena.
Daisy also works with the British and Italian embassies to support cultural relations after being elected in 2024 to the inaugural YLP, a programme sponsored by the Italian and British governments.
Born in London, Daisy grew up in a family of artists in Wimbledon before reading Classics at the University of Oxford and winning a scholarship to study for a Master’s in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, specialising in Titian, Venice and Renaissance Europe. In 2013, after just 2 and a half years’ part-time study, she was awarded a PhD in Classics at University College London, where she was recipient of the AHRC doctoral award, the Gay Clifford Award for Outstanding Women Scholars, and an Italian Cultural Society scholarship. Her expertise lies in the history and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. She has fluent proficiency in both Latin and Greek and can read French, German and Italian.
In 2015 her essay ‘An Unlikely Friendship: Oscar Wilde and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’ was longlisted for the international Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize. In 2020 she was awarded the Classical Association Prize in recognition of her work to bring Classics into the public eye. She has spoken at Hay, Cheltenham, Bath and many other literary festivals. She tweets at @Daisyfdunn, is on Instagram @Daisydunnauthor and YouTube.
Photography: Upper Right (© Neil Spence); Lower Right (© Alice Dunn); Home Page (portrait: © Nick Gregan; landscape: © Timothy Foster)
