Natalie Haynes

A graduate of Christ’s College, Cambridge where she studied Classics, Haynes has forged a career making the ancient world accessible to lay-people, through her books, radio broadcasts and stand-up comedy.

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Biography

Her first publication was The Ancient Guide to Modern Life (2010) which wittily blended history with self-help manual as it elucidated how wisdom from the classical world could impact positively in contemporary society. Haynes’ debut novel The Amber Fury (2014) mined the violence of Greek myth to tell a skilfully constructed mystery set in a Pupil Referral Unit, whereas 2017’s The Children of Jocasta was a retelling of Oedipus and Antigone focusing on the female characters of the story and set in ancient Greece. Her breakthrough novel was 2019’s A Thousand Ships, which retold the saga of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her subsequent works include Pandora’s Jar (2020) – a collection of essays about women in Greek myths – and 2022’s Stone Blind, a retelling of the myth of Medusa.