Allowing students to avoid learning about traumatic episodes of history and literature is “fundamentally dishonest”, Mary Beard, the Cambridge don and television presenter, has said.

Taking aim at “trigger warnings”, a practice in which university students are given advance notice that the material they about to encounter contains upsetting themes, Beard said that young people should be forced to face up to “awkward and difficult” content.

She told the Sunday Times: “It would be dishonest, fundamentally dishonest, to teach only Roman history and to miss out not just the rape of the Sabines but all their rapes. We have to encourage students to be able to face that, even when they find they're awkward and difficult for all kinds of good reasons."