Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes | Hay Festival Book of the Month OCTOBER

Broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist launches her new book, Pandora's Jar, putting the women of Greek myth back at the centre of the story with her trademark passion, wit and feminism, in conversation with historian Bettany Hughes.

In traditional retellings of the Greek myths, the focus is invariably on gods and men, but in her extraordinary new collection, Haynes refocuses our gaze on the remarkable women at the centre of these ancient stories. Pandora – the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world – was not a villain to the Greeks, Helen didn’t always start a war, and even Medea and Phaedra have vastly more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate.

After millennia of stories telling of gods and men, be they Zeus, Odysseus or Oedipus, the voices that sing from her pages are those of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.