Exposed

Reviews / Votes

Full of arresting, sometimes startling ideas and facts that topple the Greeks and Romans from their lofty, pristine, snow-white pedestals * Guardian * The illustrations are superb throughout ... packed with fascinating facts and original insights * The Sunday Times * Caroline Vout, in this fascinating book, takes us far beyond the white marble 'perfection' of the sculptures that line modern museum walls ... It's an eye-opener -- Mary Beard * i Paper * Spectacular ... highly stimulating ... it takes a book of ambitious scope like this to challenge preconceptions of what art actually is * Literary Review * Written with such depth and enthusiasm, Exposed has expanded my mind on the body in the Ancient World -- Katy Hessel A triumph ... an extraordinary book that stopped me in my tracks again and again -- Peter Frankopan, author * The Earth Transformed * From Ovid to the Olympics, Sophocles to spiritual Viagra, Caroline Vout is a wonderful guide, wearing her erudition lightly and with a great sense of fun. -- Gavin Francis, bestselling author of Recovery and Adventures in Human Being Fascinating and compelling ... Brilliantly written and lavishly illustrated, Exposed is also the nearest thing to a classical page-turner you will read this year ... a pleasure to read * Journal of Classics Teaching * Vout sustains a fast-moving conversation with her readers. She uses an admirably wide range of texts, art and objects and shows that bodies came in many shapes, sizes and roles in antiquity too. Exposed helps us widen our minds when we turn to envisaging the ancient world -- Robin Lane Fox Caroline Vout takes the Greek and Roman body apart with impressive scholarship and a sublime sense of humour. In Exposed she goes well beyond our cliche view of the classical human form and reveals in unflinching detail what it was really like for the Greeks and Romans to inhabit their mortal coils and by extension the world about them. Of course in doing so she unavoidably directs us to contemplate the same. So if you have a body you should definitely read this. Oh and did I mention it made me laugh out loud too?" -- Jimmy Mulville