My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer, broadcaster and academic Mary Beard. In her new book, Emperor of Rome, she explores what we can and can’t know about the men who ruled the Roman Empire, and what the lurid stories about so many of them tell us about the anxieties and fantasies of Rome’s ordinary citizens and the remarkable resilience of the regime. We also discuss, among other things: decapitated ostriches, fatal rose petals, and Mary’s robust reappraisal of Marcus Aurelius’s 'sub-Stoic' maundering.