The Essay

Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Bettany Hughes introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Helen of Troy; a character written about in fiction for millennia - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.Bettany is an historian, author and broadcaster, with her speciality in classical history. She has written a number of books including 'Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore' and has presented for BBC Radio 3 for the Sunday Feature strand, for 'The Romans in Britain' in 2011 and for BBC Radio 4 in for a 3-part series 'Amongst the Medici' in 2006.In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the