Peter Mackridge (12 March 1946 - 16 June 2022) was a British

Hellenist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient ...

and historian who served as Professor of Modern Greek at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

Life

He was born in

Harpenden Harpenden () is a town and civil parish in the City and District of St Albans in the county of Hertfordshire, England. The population of the built-up area was 30,240 in the 2011 census, whilst the population of the civil parish was 29,448. Har ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

and studied French and Modern Greek in Oxford. He spent a lot of time in Greece for the purpose of completing his PhD about the Greek novel of the 1930s. In 1973 he was appointed a lecturer of Modern Greek Language and Literature at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

and in 1981 he moved to Oxford University initially as lecturer and then, in 1996, as professor of Modern Greek and Literature until his retirement in 2003. In March 2022 he was declared an honorary citizen of the Hellenic Republic. He specialized in the period since 1750 and he had published many works, including translations, and papers about Greek language and literature, particularly regarding

Dionysios Solomos Dionysios Solomos (; el, Διονύσιος Σολωμός ; 8 April 1798 – 9 February 1857) was a Greek poet from Zakynthos, who is considered to be Greece's national poet. He is best known for writing the ''Hymn to Liberty'' ( el, Ὕμ� ...

and

Constantine P. Cavafy Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis ( el, Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης ; April 29 (April 17, OS), 1863 – April 29, 1933), known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy (), was a Gree ...

. He is well known for his book "The Modern Greek Language".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackridge, Peter 1946 births 2022 deaths Hellenists 20th-century British historians 21st-century British historians People from Harpenden