Natalie Haynes

Natalie Louise Haynes (born 1974) is an English writer, broadcaster, classicist, and comedian.

Haynes was born in Birmingham, England, where she attended the private King Edward VI High School for Girls. She grew up in Bournville. She read Classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was a member of Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club.

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

Her stand-up has featured in Front Row and Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4 and Spanking New on BBC 7. She appeared in BBC Radio 4's Pick of the Fringe in 2004 and 2005. She has also appeared on BBC Radio 5 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, Dorothy Parker and Julie Burchill, and the classical male writers Aristophanes, Juvenal and Martial.

She appeared as a critic on Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4. 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.

Since March 2014, BBC Radio 4 has broadcast Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics, in which, aided by experts, Haynes discusses, with both serious and humorous remarks, historical and mythological figures from ancient Greece and Rome. Series one to nine each contained four episodes of around half an hour, but series ten comprised six episodes, followed by a Christmas special. Series eleven comprised seven episodes.

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 BBC Two 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.