Digging Up History with Bettany Hughes

Join us for a highly anticipated Ramsay event with award-winning UK historian, author and broadcaster Bettany Hughes.

In her lecture, Digging Up History: What the Treasures of the Past Can Teach Us Today, Bettany will draw on her field research, including digs in Europe, North Africa and Central Asia. She will explore how archaeology in particular is a powerful tool that can make us better and wiser travellers in a modern world that is everywhere marked by the traces of the past.

At a time when technology seems to offer the possibility of existing solely in a permanent and therefore impoverished present, Bettany will share why the past has absolute value and relevance, and why it is, in fact, one of our greatest treasures.

Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. Her previous books include The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (a Sunday Times bestseller and longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award 2025); Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess (shortlisted for the Runciman Award), Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Runciman Award), The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and The Search For The Good Life (a New York Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Writers Guild Award) and Helen Of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore which has been translated into ten languages. She has made many documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, National Geographic, SBS, ABC and the Discovery and History channels. Bettany has been a Professor at the New College of Humanities and Research Fellow at King's College London. She has been honoured with numerous awards including the Medlicott Medal for services to history, Europe’s Cultural Heritage Prize and an OBE for services to history.