From the Archive: Andrew Wallace-Hadrill on Herculaneum

This live interview was first broadcast in 2012 on my former radio show, Prof Talk, live on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, one of the world’s leading scholars of Pompeii and Herculaneum, was then directing the Herculaneum Conservation Project and serving as Master of Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge. His scholarship has also reached a wide public through numerous radio and television appearances, including the BBC documentary The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum. I returned to this conversation after meeting Sylvia L’Écuyer at Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the Chan Centre last night. Sylvia, a musicologist and longtime Radio-Canada host, told me that she would soon be visiting Pompeii and perhaps Herculaneum. Hearing about her plans reminded me of this interview and made me want to bring it out of the archive—for Sylvia, and for anyone else drawn to this extraordinary ancient Roman…