What is relatively new is the way in which female mythological characters are now being placed at the centre of narratives in which they’ve traditionally been peripheral. Taking her lead from the likes of Pat Barker and Madeline Miller, Higgins’s Greek Myths: A New Retelling is narrated by female characters. Or rather, it’s woven by female characters, because to give voice to this very 21st-century impulse, she uses a classical literary convention known as ekphrasis, or the telling of tales through descriptions of striking works of art – in this case, tapestries.

I though this was brilliant. Unique. It was so nice to encounter a retelling of Greek mythology where the female characters/goddesses were the ones who were "spinning the yarn" and "pulling all the strings" in oratory for once. Talk about a dazzling, tender, sophisticated reimagining--wow! Just wow! We never get a deeper look into their minds and motivations. It felt like I was watching a play through a dirty window in a soundproof room. There is no shortage these days of lively, well-written retellings of ancient Greek and Roman myths, but Charlotte Higgins has embraced a central metaphor – weaving – that leads us through the labyrinth of interconnected stories in a startlingly fresh way. It throws radiant new light on their meanings. Although her chief model is Ovid’s phantasmagoric mythological compendium in his Metamorphoses, her voice is quite different – more tender and pensive – and she uses her considerable scholarly skills to mine many other ancient sources, rescuing some little-known stories from obscurity. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is such a box of treasures, one that I turned to often as I was structuring my novel. And the language! One of my favorite non-writing tasks while working on the book was comparing the different translations to find the one that spoke to me the most. It’s fun to think of some future translator, not yet born, doing a future version for readers not yet born. And it’s also very satisfying to think of your book, Charlotte, sitting beside Ovid and adding more context to the lives of the women and men, the goddesses and gods within.Running through Greek and Roman thought is a persistent connection between the written word and the woven thread, between text and textile. The Latin verb texere, from which the English words text and textile derive, means to weave, or compose, or to fit a complex structure together. Textum means fabric, or framework, or even, in certain branches of materialist philosophy, atomic structure. The universe itself is sometimes described as a kind of fabric: Lucretius, in his first-century BC scientific poem On the Nature of the Universe, describes the earth, sea and sky as three dissimilar elements that are texta, woven together. Texere is related to the Greek verb tikto, which means to engender, to bring about, to produce, to give birth to. In turn the Latin and Greek words are related to the Sanskrit takman, child, and taksh, to make or to weave. Greek and Roman literature is full of metaphors that compare its own creation to spinning and weaving. Ovid describes Metamorphoses, for example, as deduct um carmen, a fine-spun song. When relating how he outwitted the Cyclops, Homer’s Odysseus says: “I wove all kinds of wiles and cunning schemes” – which you could read as a description of the shrewd design of the Odyssey itself. My favourite is the story of Arachne’s weaving contest with Athene when the misguided mortal tells Athena, “Explain it to me: the gods make laws for humans, and then refuse to follow those same laws themselves. And we’re supposed to call that justice?… When humans are cruel or violent, they’re only following the gods’ example’.”

This course has now passed, but you can be the first to know about the next one - and other workshops like this - by signing up to our newsletter here. I especially loved the portrayal of Medea (my favourite, guys she has dragons AND magic) and Helen, who is given a far more sympathetic treatment than most other versions. as a pacifist (okay, and a hippie) I find the Trojan War really exasperating (that woman has a lover! let's go kill a ton of people over it, even though she's happy now!), and Helen's perspective was quite touching. her story is told partially through Andromache's tapestry and partly through her own. Andromache is Hector's wife, and no, I didn't know who she was either. I’m also curious, though, about what relationship you had with the story-world of classical myth before writing Olympus, Texas. For my part, there were two factors. One was a wonderful teacher at school, who taught me Latin and Greek (in the down-at-heel, rapidly de-industrializing area of the Midlands of England known as the Potteries, in the 1980s); and a particular book. The book was a retelling of Greek myths for young readers, called The Children of the Gods, by Kenneth McLeish, with beautiful illustrations by the sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink. It fired my imagination, and, together with my teacher, set me on the path of studying classics at university. But how about you? Were classical myths part of your childhood? Was classical literature in any way part of your education? If you want a rundown of the general Greek myths without a lot of commentary, LAWD ALMIGHTY THIS IS NOT THE BOOK. You should try Robert Graves’ Greek mythology. Go look in your grandparents’ basement they probably have a copy. It’s exhaustive and v. straightforward. If you want to read an actual female academic’s translation of Greek text (spoiler: THIS IS NOT THAT BOOK) please go read Emily Wilson and exalt her work on high.

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Higgins’s own volume is illustrated by the Turner prize-winning Chris Ofili, whose drawings are charming and airy, suggestive in spirit of Matisse’s pencil sketches. While they undoubtedly beautify an already alluring object, the deeper Higgins leads the reader into her forest of tales, the less necessary they feel. Full of rage and self-loathing, Medusa grows ravenous for connection, ‘a girl on the edge’