David West

David Alexander West (22 November 1926 – 13 May 2013) was a British classical scholar who served as Professor and then emeritus Professor of Latin at Newcastle University from 1969 until his death. Described as "one of the world's leading scholars and teachers of Latin and the Classics", West's outreach and curriculum reforms as Chair corresponded to Newcastle's becoming a "powerhouse of classical learning". He encouraged close reading in class and produced accessible translations of the Aeneid and Horace's Odes. He was also interested in English literature and published a commentary on Shakespeare's sonnets.

Life and career West was born in Aberdeen, Scotland on 22 November 1926 to a carpenter father. His father had wanted West to join him in the shipbuilding trade, but whereas West could not cut timber straight, he successively won bursaries to Aberdeen Grammar School and Cambridge University. After completing National Service in the Royal Air Force toward the end of the Second World War, he matriculated at Sidney Sussex College.

West achieved a first in the Classical Tripos and in 1951 began research on the manuscript history of The Frogs of Aristophanes, which took him to Italy. Though this ultimately came to nothing, West met at the British School at Rome the wealthy Home Counties woman Pamela Murray, whom he married in 1953; together they had three sons and two daughters and remained together till her death in 1995.

In 1952, West took up a lectureship at Sheffield University, and in 1956 one at Edinburgh University. In this time, his focus shifted to Latin literature, especially poetry, and he published the seminal Reading Horace in 1967. Against expectations, and West's sole book published to date, he was named as Fletcher's replacement. He also enjoyed poking fun at Newcastle's English department by hosting lunchtime seminars with faculty and picking their theories apart. West was commemorated by a Festschrift entitled Author and Audience in Latin Literature (1992). He delivered an exaugural speech to the University on the English poet George Herbert's Greek-inspired "Easter Wings". and a memorial essay collection, Word and Context in Latin Poetry (2017), whose contributors focussed "attention on individual Latin texts by a close examination of the words used and, where appropriate, by a detailed investigation of the literary, social and historical contexts in which the texts were produced."