Hillary Clinton is sequestered in a hotel room, giving a big television interview, when Mary Beard arrives at Claridge’s. While she waits outside on the sofa, though, it quickly becomes clear that the star of this conversation is the classicist. One by one, members of Clinton’s staff approach in reverent tones to declare her their heroine. Even a passing cameraman stops to pay court and say: “I love you!” Does this happen to Beard all the time? “Yes,” she laughs, “funnily enough, it does.”

Since the Cambridge professor began presenting TV programmes on the Romans nearly a decade ago, she has become world famous, as well as wildly popular for her robust refusal to stand for misogynistic online abuse. Trolls are publicly challenged; one was memorably shamed into taking Beard to lunch to apologise for calling her “a filthy old slut”. Her latest book, Women & Power: A Manifesto, brings an illuminating historical perspective to the contemporary abuse of powerful women. (Our meeting takes place in mid-October, before the #metoo revelations had begun to gather pace.)

Clinton is in London to talk about What Happened, her rivetingly candid if shell-shocked account of her defeat to Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. As soon as she appears, it becomes very hard to believe she lost because voters found her cold. She greets Beard with a whoop of delight, exclaims, “This is fun!” does a very, very funny impersonation of Trump’s voice and, over the course of an hour, laughs a lot.

Once seated, the physical contrast between the two women is arresting. Clinton folds her hands carefully before her and confines her movements to slow nods of the head, while Beard gesticulates energetically as she talks, her whole upper body pitching and swaying. But the chemistry between them crackles, and Clinton conveys the impression of someone keen to see what she can learn from the academic.

Learning about the grief you took over standing up for women’s rights was enlightening to me

The pair met briefly four years ago when both received honorary degrees at the University of St Andrews University in Scotland. Beard had been advocating a more combative strategy towards trolls than Michelle Obama’s famous injunction to “go high... when they go low”. The latter having failed to work for Clinton, she and Beard fall at once to discussing how women in public life can deal with misogyny…

Mary Beard What I remember us talking about when we met was the sense that it was extremely important to say: “Hang on a minute, mate, you are not right.” Or: “Please take this tweet down.”

Hillary Clinton Learning about the ongoing grief you took over standing up for women’s rights and accurate history was quite enlightening to me.

MB It’s gone on, too, actually.

HC Well, as you rightly point out, it has only continued, and in some ways gotten worse. The ability of people in public life or in the media to say the most outrageous falsehoods and not be held accountable has really altered the balance in our public discourse, in a way that I think is endangering democracy.

MB To me, what’s really interesting is that, although they look as if they’re going for what we said, what they’re really going for is the fact that we dared to say anything, almost. It’s not about having an argument about, say, migration. It’s about telling you to shut up.

HC That’s right. I know that very well, and so do you, and we have perhaps thicker skin than a lot of other people. But it is still distressing to be told, either explicitly or implicitly: “Go away. You have nothing to say.”

MB The friendly advice when it happens to you is always: “Don’t pay attention. Don’t give them oxygen and publicity. Block them and just move on, dear.” And you think, sorry, that is what women have been told to do for centuries. If somebody accuses you of having a smelly vagina that stinks of cabbage, you’re supposed to say: “Just block him.” Actually, no. Somehow, even among the people who are trying to support you, it’s basically saying: “Shut up.”

HC It’s interesting you say that, because, in my book, I try to talk about the dilemma that a woman faces between “be calm and carry on”…

MB You’re quite good at that!

HC Yes, I’ve had a lot of practice. You know, when Trump was stalking me [in the 2016 televised presidential debates] and leering and, oh, just generally trying to dominate me on this little stage, my mind was like: OK, I practised being calm and composed, you know, because that’s what a president should be. But, boy, would I love to turn around and say: “Back off, you creep.” But I didn’t, because I thought then his side will say: “See, she can’t take it. If she can’t take Donald standing there like the alpha male that he is, then how’s she going to stand up to Putin?” A ridiculous argument, but nevertheless one that might get traction. And, as you say, even your friends are like: “Oh, come on, don’t take the bait. Don’t take the bait.”

Photograph: David Levene

MB Being an academic gives you a bit of freedom to play around with things, because in the end what people think about me doesn’t matter all that much. But I remember when I first did telly, a clever, nasty but well-respected TV critic here said, basically: “You look like the back end of a bus. How dare you come into our living room with those teeth? If you’re going to inflict yourself on us, please will you smarten up.” After the first shock, I thought, look, sunshine, if you line up a load of women between 55 and 65, they’ll mostly look like me. So, I wrote a piece pointing out that he was not abusing me only, he was abusing every woman who looked a bit like me.

HC I think you touched a chord when you said: “OK, this is what a woman looks like.” When you run for office, however, what a president looks like is not any kind of woman. So therefore how you feel about this particular woman is influenced by how you feel about women in really powerful positions. It’s that tightrope, that balance that we keep trying to figure out how to strike.

If I started to wear makeup now, I would get so abused. I’m as trapped as you are, Hillary!

MB When I looked back to the ancient world about this, Romans in particular were always saying that women, in some way, are fake. The problem about a woman is that she’s always made up, she’s never what she seems. Reading your book, what was so interesting was that women in public life – and I’m happily removed from that – you’ve got to look the part and you’ve got to be authentic. And that’s impossible.

HC Well, that is the core dilemma. Like, today, I have makeup on. You don’t. But that is just part of the uniform that one wears in public life and politics, at least in my experience.

MB If I started to wear makeup now, I would get so abused on Twitter. I’m actually as trapped as you are, Hillary! [Laughter.]

HC Men can get a haircut; it doesn’t change their authenticity. They can grow a beard; they are still who they are. Whereas we are constantly held to that good old double standard, which is so complex and deep and charged with historical and mythological and cultural totems.

MB Your book has turned me yet more against presidential debates. I mean, what did I learn from the debates? I learned absolutely nothing that I didn’t think I knew already. I knew that Trump was ghastly. I knew I’d vote for Hillary if I had a vote. So to say: “I don’t think we’ll have a debate this year,” seems antidemocratic. But democracy has to think a bit harder about the dissemination of knowledge.

HC Yes, I agree with that.

MB You have to say, what’s the effort:reward ratio with these debates?

HC You know what’s interesting? I’ve watched presidential debates my entire adult life and I think it’s gotten more so, that you don’t learn much. Part of the reason I prepared [for them], and part of the reason I had such an extensive, substantive policy portfolio, is that there have been, in the past, moments of reckoning, where a smart moderator will really pin you down: “OK, you say you want to do this on taxes – what will be the impact on economic growth?” I mean, something that’s a little more sophisticated and really does require you to be on your toes. But that didn’t happen this time at all.

MB It sure didn’t. I think we have started to equate democracy with some symbols of it that don’t really get to the issues, whether that’s in the referendum vote on Brexit or whatever. And the Greeks would have seen this. Democracy requires information. Plato knew that informed decision-making requires knowledge.

HC That’s exactly right. When you think about the necessity for information – not just any information, but information that has at least some passing relationship to facts and evidence – I saw this up close throughout the campaign. There is a deliberate, very well‑organised, sophisticated assault on facts and reason and evidence. In our country, it’s driven originally by a cabal of billionaires and religious fundamentalists, and their view is that it doesn’t matter what they say. If they say it often enough and they put enough money behind it, they’ll convince a significant number of people.

MB It is not dissimilar here, when you can get politicians saying: “You don’t want to believe experts.” And you want to turn around and say: “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve got the evidence.”

But you’re in a double bind, as a historian or a politician or any job where expertise is required. You don’t want to say: “Only politicians are allowed to talk about foreign policy.” You want to share and debate with people who’ve got different opinions, of course you do – but actually you sometimes need to have read something about it.

HC That’s right. An informed opinion.

MB Ranting is not debating – and yet, when you start to say that, you don’t half look like a prissy academic.

HC Yes, or are accused of being “establishment”.

Photograph: David Levene

MB We’ve confused ensuring a level playing field for different sorts of arguments with respect for the facts.

HC You face it in the classroom. I faced it in a national election.

MB On the BBC, you know, people now joke that, if we were in the 1930s, when the BBC ever interviewed somebody who was antifascist, they would have been forced to have a little comment from Goebbels to make sure everything was balanced. But if ignorance is one side of the balance, then we are not helped. I think that, in some ways, the job of a classicist is to be optimistic, because I think that, overall, people are becoming more aware. But the thing about Twitter and other forms of social media is not that people are saying what they didn’t used to say. I’m sure they used to say it all the time. But now you can actually see it.

HC I think technology has unleashed thoughts and feelings that have always been there. They’ve been, thankfully, somewhat behind the scenes, under the radar. In our case, in this election, you had white supremacist, neo-Nazi websites that might have gotten 100 followers, but then, when someone running for president, in this case Donald Trump, retweets something from this outlier site, it goes mainstream.

The other part about social media, which we are finding out now, is that it can be gamed. So, what the Russians did in our election – and it’s something we’re all going to have to pay more attention to – was to flood social media with thousands of robotic accounts that were programmed to troll, pretending to be Americans.

MB I mean, what would you do about that? I suppose I have a slightly optimistic, gradualist perspective that, actually, people will get savvy, you know? In the end, with a [fake news story such as]: “Hilary Clinton running a child prostitution ring from the basement of a pizzeria”, they’re just going to think, come on, sunshine: no.

HC I think it goes back to your point about the false balance, you know. There is a level of responsibility that the media has to assume. They can’t just report these things and leave it at that. There has to be more to it. And I think there’s no magic answer.

But I wanted to ask you about that memorable debate you had with Boris Johnson over Greece versus Rome. He is a reality TV kind of character from my observation, don’t you think?

MB Yes!

HC And he knows it and he knows how to play it. It’s very deliberate. The same with Trump. I mean, it’s a persona that they have assumed, which really works for them, even the same kind of hair. The hair is part of the whole deal.

MB And it is so contrived, and it is contrived to look so spontaneous, it makes you sick.

I was made fun of for preparing for the presidential debates. How did you win against Boris Johnson?

HC It’s interesting, because men’s roles in public life are somewhat evolving. It used to be: you go for the sober character on the right or the left, who you think represents your views and whose platform you support. They could come in different sizes and shapes, but there was an assumption they were serious people, even if they had a good sense of humour, right?

Now, because of what I think is the pressure of performance, which is more important than substance by a long shot, it is the performance that matters most. We’re going to see more of this type. And I think then it’s particularly hard to pin down and make the argument about position and facts versus performance and rhetoric.

MB When I debated with Boris about Greece versus Rome, it was a fun charity gig, but it revealed precisely that. Boris is very funny. He can work an audience. I admire it. I knew the only way I was going to have a chance of winning was by being fantastically prepared.

HC That sounds very familiar. [Laughter.]

MB I sat and I looked at any video I could find of Boris. I noted the mistakes and I thought, he’s so busy, he’s going to use the same examples – and I know they’re wrong. I must have put about a week of studying Boris videos and reading everything Boris had written wrongly about the ancient world. That is fine for a one-off gig, but you can’t write a long-term debate like that.

HC Or a campaign, in my experience. That’s right. So, I was made fun of for preparing and, at one point in one of the debates, Trump actually said: “Oh, well, she’s prepared.” I said: “Yes, you know what else I prepared for? To be president.” Then he gets elected and he goes: “It’s so much harder than I thought.”

Boris Johnson and Trump have branded themselves around gaffes. One extra gaffe doesn’t matter

MB It’s back to the old version that was prevalent at university when I was an undergraduate – you know, that it was the women who were in on the Saturday nights doing the work, and they were very diligent, but they didn’t really have that…

HC They didn’t have the creative…

MB The flair. So, they were awfully reliable – and by awfully reliable, you mean very boring. Whereas, somehow, what both Boris and Trump have done is they’ve branded themselves around gaffes, so that it no longer makes a difference. One extra gaffe doesn’t matter, because that’s the brand.

HC Women are going to have to learn how to pull off that trick. I think it’s difficult, but it has to be possible, because there’s no alternative.

MB It’s relatively easy for me. It’s great fun being an academic, because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker. But I couldn’t do this style in any form of politics. What do you think Chelsea’s going to do when she comes one day and says: “I think I’m going to run for Congress”?

HC Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But part of what I’m trying to do now is not let my loss discourage young women from taking public positions, even running for office themselves. So I’m supporting organisations that are out recruiting women, training women, helping women run. And part of the lessons are how you grow a thick skin without losing your sense of humour, without becoming too grim and too serious.

MB I think, when I was 25, nobody in the world knew who I was. But if I’d got the sort of tweets then that I get now…

HC You would have been crushed. You would have gone to bed.

MB I would have gone to bed. I wouldn’t have even gone out.

HC That’s the problem, but you have set a good example of how you overcome it. I am really envious of the kind of freedom that you have. But you’ve taken that freedom and your expertise, and used it to enhance the public debate. Mary, what do you think the moment was when you won the debate with Johnson?

MB It was when I said: “Boris has been claiming that Roman literature really wasn’t worth reading. But a leading politician said of Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, on the death of his lover Dido, that it was: ‘The best book of the best poem of the best poet.’ Who do you think that was?” And Boris had to say: “I think that might have been me.” [Laughter.]

HC Preparation!

MB It paid off.

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