Dr Alex McAuley joins our media adviser Julianne Evans to talk about the ancient queens and royal women of the Hellenistic period, including the seven Cleopatras. He examines the ways these women used power to intervene in politics and support their family, and often with dramatic effects.

He also shares his upcoming project, which looks at how pop culture, film and television have shifted in their depiction of antiquity since the war on terror, and how ancient history is really about how we understand the world around us.