In Our Time - Cleopatra

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Cleopatra. The last pharaoh to rule Egypt, Cleopatra was a woman of intelligence and charisma, later celebrated as a great beauty. During an eventful life she was ousted from her throne and later restored to it with the help of her lover Julius Caesar. A later relationship with another Roman statesman, Mark Antony - and Cleopatra's subsequent death at her own hands - provided Shakespeare with the raw material for one of his greatest plays. Today Cleopatra is still an object of fascination, her story revealing as much about the Roman world as it does about the end of the age of the Pharaohs. With: Catharine Edwards Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London Maria Wyke Professor of Latin at University College London Susan Walker Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford Producer: Thomas Morris.