Graham Speake

Graham Speake (born 9 June 1946, London) is a British classical philologist and Byzantinist.

Education After attending St Paul's School in London, Speake studied Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won various prizes for, among other things, poetry in ancient Greek. He continued his studies at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate for an unpublished dissertation on the Byzantine transmission of ancient Greek literature.

Career Speake was subsequently an academic publisher for forty years. His publications include the Penguin Dictionary of Ancient History (1995) and the two-volume Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition (2000). In 1996, he was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Among other positions, he also worked for twelve years as a guest lecturer on Swan Hellenic Cruises. In 1988 he visited Mount Athos for the first time, to which he subsequently made frequent pilgrimages.

In 1999, he was received into the Greek Orthodox Church at Vatopedi Monastery. For his book Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2002) he received the 2002 Criticos Prize, awarded by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.

Selected works