Jean Menzies
Jean Menzies is an author, ancient historian and presenter who received her PhD in Classics from Roehampton University in 2022. She has dedicated her career to making these topics accessible to all. Her first book, Greek Myths: Meet the heroes, gods and monsters of ancient Greece (2020), won the BAMB Breakthrough Author award that year. Since then she has written on mythology and history for all ages. Her debut adult novel, The Lady of the Lake, was published in 2025, and her history of women’s sex, desire and pleasure in the Classical world, Aphrodisia, was published in 2026. You can find her online at @jeansthoughts creating content about myth, history, literature, and film.
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Buy All the Violet Tiaras
Ancient Greece was rich with stories of queer love and gender- fluid identity—but what can these ancient stories tell us about our contemporary world?
Tales as old as antiquity – whether the love affair of Achilles and Patroclus, the genderfluid Tiresias, or the infamous Heracles – are still capturing our imaginations thousands of years later. But was antiquity’s relationship with queer folk more complicated than we now imagine? Historian Jean Menzies dives into the world of queer readings and retellings of Greek mythology, inviting readers to discover the power to be found in remaking these narratives.
From explorations of gender and identity across millennia, to celebrating queer love in its many forms, All the Violet Tiaras carves a space for queer stories to be told with all the complexity and tenderness they deserve—and a goddess or two thrown in for good measure.
