TV historian Alice Roberts: 'I wanted to be a horse when I grew up'

Alice Roberts is an academic, author and broadcaster. She first appeared on TV screens back in 2001 as a regular presenter on Time Team and her programmes since include Coast, The Incredible Human Journey, Origins of Us, Prehistoric Autopsy and Digging for Britain. She has also written popular science books, including The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being and Tamed: Ten Species that Changed Our World. 

Answering our Big Questions, she looks back on her love of late 80s indie, a formative experience with a mummy and female role models.

What music was the biggest for you growing up?

Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”. I love everything about it, from the contrast between Black Francis and Kim Deal’s vocals to the guitar riffs and extraordinary lyrics. It got me into indie music.

What was the defining event of your youth? 

When I was eight years old, I watched the unwrapping of a mummy at Bristol Museum – on a video link to a lab in the university. That sparked a fascination with the ancient past for me – and I think, the potential of science to add to history.

What do you think were the big influences in you entering academia? 

I began my career as a medical doctor in the late 90’s – but I did what I expected to be a six-month-long job teaching anatomy at Bristol University. I loved both the anatomy and the teaching and had the opportunity to extend that job. In the end, I stayed for 11 years, and did a PhD, studying disease in ancient bones, along the way.

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Big book?

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection. A brilliant popular science book that made people sit up and realise he’d made a breakthrough in working out how evolution happened. He’d published a scientific paper the year before, in 1858, with Alfred Russell Wallace – but his book had a far greater impact. It shows how important it is for scientists to engage with wider, public audiences.

What was the moment where it felt you’d hit the big time

When I was asked to play a cameo role as myself in the Detectorists Christmas special! 

Biggest dream? Have you achieved it? If not, how do you plan to do so? 

Well, when I was five, I said I wanted to be a horse when I grew up. It’s a grand ambition, I think.

What TV show was the biggest one in your household growing up? 

At my grandparents’ house after school we always watched Countdown together. I loved the fact that the cleverest person on the show was a woman!

A big film that stayed with you?  

Gladiator – I love a historical drama, and this one plunges you into ancient history in such a visceral way. 

What TV show was the biggest one in your household growing up? 

I used to walk to my grandparents’ house every day after school, and we always watched Countdown together. I loved the fact that the cleverest person on the show was a woman!

Who have been the biggest influences on your career?

Some people I have never met but whose work I have greatly admired, such as the palaeontologist and writer Steven Jay Gould; an anthropologist who became my mentor at Bristol University, Jonathan Musgrave – who turned out to be one of those people who’d unwrapped the Bristol mummy in 1981; lots of wonderful women who have supported me in all sorts of ways, including Kathy Sykes, who was Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Bristol University in the 2000s and hugely supportive of my attempts to share science with a wider audience at a time when it seemed quite frowned upon for academics to do just that.

What was the big political issue you remember from your youth? 

I remember hearing about an IRA bomb that exploded near a department store in central Bristol, injuring people. I was only five at the time, but I can remember very clearly being frightened. I didn’t understand the political context at the time, of course. And it would take two more decades before a peaceful resolution was achieved in Northern Ireland, with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

Your current big issue?

Climate change. I believe that we have the capacity to mitigate and adapt – but this has to be a challenge that countries around the world work on together. That’s an external challenge that we need to face up to, but there are plenty of internal challenges for societies too.

What is your big idea to save the world? 

Can I have a few? Equality – sharing resources more equally between countries and within them. Universal basic income – plenty of studies have now demonstrated how well this works: it would give people more autonomy, better health and doesn’t have a negative impact on the economy. Combine that with universal health care and social care and the world would be a much better place.

Is there a person or organisation creating positive change you want to give a big shout out to? 

Humanists UK. This organisation gives voice to non-religious people, which make up more than half the population of the UK today. Humanists UK opposes the entanglement of organised religion and state – that’s always been a feature of autocracies. Humanists UK also does lots of important work on human rights issues, bringing a rational, non-religious perspective to bear on debates such as assisted dying and women’s sexual and reproductive rights – including supporting buffer zones around abortion clinics.

What Big Issue means to me…

I frequently buy the Big Issue. It’s a brilliant project, of course, and contains excellent journalism.

Wolf Mountain by Alice Roberts is out now (Simon & Schuster, £14.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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