Natalie Haynes

Haynes was born in Birmingham, where she attended King Edward VI High School for Girls.[1] She read Classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was also a member of Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club.

Haynes has been a panellist on Wordaholics, We've Been Here Before, Banter, Quote... Unquote, Personality Test, and Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive on BBC Radio 4 and she has been an announcer on BBC Radio Four Extra. She has contributed to BBC 7 comedy review show Serious About Comedy and reviews films for Front Row.

Her stand-up has been featured in Front Row and Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4 and Spanking New on BBC 7. She appeared in the BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Fringe in 2004 and 2005. She has also appeared on Radio Five Live's Anita Anand Show, and MacAulay and Co. on BBC Scotland.

In 2005 and 2006, Haynes wrote and presented documentaries on comic writers, for BBC Radio 4. Her subjects included the modern female writers Jessica Mitford and Dorothy Parker, and the classical male writers Aristophanes, Juvenal and Martial.

She appears as a critic on Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4.[2]

On 4 February 2013, she was the star of the BBC Radio 4 programme With Great Pleasure. Her guests included the novelist Julian Barnes, who read from one of his own books.[3]

BBC Radio 4 has broadcast six series of Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics, in which, aided by experts, she makes serious and amusing remarks about historical people and texts from ancient Greece and Rome, from Petronius to Sappho.[4] A fifth series was recorded in October-November 2019[5] and was broadcast on Radio 4 from 23 December 2019.[5] Series five included programmes on Aristotle, Claudia Severa, Suetonius, and Homer's Iliad. Haynes' guests included Edith Hall and Anita Anand.[6] Series six was broadcast from 17 May 2020.[7] Episodes included "Helen of Troy" and "Penthesilea, Amazon Warrior Queen", recorded with Edith Hall.

Haynes was a regular panellist on BBC's The Review Show and was the most-booked guest on More4's The Last Word. She appeared as a panellist on BBC 4's The Book Quiz, and on its Poetry Special alongside Andrew Motion and George Szirtes. She also appeared on Backlash, a BBC2 documentary on voluntary childlessness, wrote and performed in the STV/Assembly Television Best of the Fest in August 2005. Haynes has been a panellist on BBC Four's quiz show Mindgames, appeared on Must Try Harder on BBC Two in 2006 and was the art and literature expert on the BBC Two quiz show Knowitalls.

In August 2007, she appeared on BBC Four's The Book Quiz hosted by David Baddiel.[8] On the programme she admitted researching a book on Wikipedia in order to bluff having read it.[9]

In April 2008, Haynes was a member of the stand-up comedians' team on University Challenge: The Professionals.[10] Her team lost to the Ministry of Justice, 100 points to 215. In November 2009, she appeared on BBC One's Question Time.[11]

Haynes has been a guest contributor for The Times since October 2006, and a regular contributor to New Humanist. She has also written for The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, The Big Issue, Loaded and The Independent.

Haynes has toured (including Dublin, Berlin to Manhattan) and has performed five Edinburgh Fringe sell-out runs and national tours. She was nominated for the Best Newcomer Award at the 2002 Perrier Comedy Awards,[12] the first woman to receive this nomination.[13]

• 2002 Six Degrees of Desolation (nominated for Perrier Award Best Newcomer)
• 2003 Troubled Enough
• 2004 Still Not Sorry
• 2005 Run Or Die
• 2006 Watching the Detectives

Haynes is the only comedian to have appeared at every[14] Newbury Comedy Festival.

Haynes contributed an essay to Serenity Found, a book about Joss Whedon's television show Firefly, edited by Jane Espenson, which was published in 2007 by BenBella Books. Her entries on subjects from Agatha Christie to E.F. Benson can be found in Cassell's Little Black Book of Books, published in 2007.

Her first children's novel, The Great Escape, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2007. It won a PETA Proggy award, for best animal-friendly children's book, in 2008.

Haynes has written a non-fiction book, The Ancient Guide To Modern Life, on the subject of how living well in the present requires some recourse to the ancient world. It was published by Profile Books in November 2010.

Haynes' first novel, Amber Fury (titled The Furies in the U.S.), was published in 2014. It was shortlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year award.[15] Her second novel, Children of Jocasta, a retelling of Antigone and Oedipus Rex, was published in 2017.[16]

Haynes' third novel, A Thousand Ships, was published by Pan Macmillan on 4 May 2019.[17] She discussed it on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour that month.[18] A Thousand Ships was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020.[19]

Haynes was awarded the Classical Association Prize in 2015.[20]

• The Great Escape (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
• The Ancient Guide to Modern Life (Profile Books, 2010)
• Amber Fury (Corvus, 2014)
• The Children of Jocasta (Pan Macmillan, 2017)
• A Thousand Ships (2019)
• 'Helen of Troy: the Greek epics are not just about war – they’re about women', The Observer, 16 November 2019[21]

• Official site
• Haynes' page RCW literary agents