List Categories Find a Speaker List all Speakers

The appeal of Bettany’s work is that it’s democratic, charismatic, unexpected and down to earth take on human lives and civilizations, both past and present.

Following a scholarship to Oxford, Bettany has had a sequence of extraordinary life experiences. On the trail of mother-earth figurines she found herself in Romania during the whirlwind and carnage of the revolutions. Bettany wrote about her experiences and as a result has maintained a parallel career as a print journalist and is published regularly in the Times, the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail. She has dived off the coast of Asia Minor to prove how the production of purple dye shaped international politics in the Bronze Age, and just last week, during the recording of a radio documentary for the BBC about the mediaeval queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, she was thrown off a galloping horse while imagining what it must have been like for Eleanor to ride into the crusades dressed as an Amazon.

Bettany has a keen interest in communicating her passion for the past to as broad an audience as possible. As a result she has worked on a number of social inclusion projects in the inner cities as well as presenting her prime-time history programmes on television and radio.

The relevance and popularity of her ideas and programmes have meant that film projects such as The Spartans (C4/PBS) have had a great success internationally. The DVD of The Spartans and the accompanying book are now on the Amazon best-seller list.

In 2005 Bettany had her book, Helen of Troy, published in the UK by Jonathan Cape and Knopf in the States and it was distributed in the US, Germany, Italy and Greece. A major TV series to accompany the book followed.

Her programme - on the Minoan Civilisation, was another success.

Bettany juggles her professional commitments with raising a young family. She has an excellent track-record as a speaker, and has worked very successfully with clients that include Oxford University, the Boards of Multi-Nationals and National Museums.

A rare talent in the world of broadcasting: having a BA MA Hons in Ancient and Modern History from Oxford, Bettany has used her knowledge and passion to make some of television & radio’s most interesting arts and history programmes. She appeared in Channel 4's Island of the Minotaur and Helen of Troy. In 2007 Bettany broadcast a radio programme about Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Bettany Hughes ,
none