Nathaniel Wedd

Nathaniel Wedd (10 April 1864 – 27 September 1940 ) was a historian, lecturer, tutor, and a noted influence on E. M. Forster. Like Forster, he was a humanist, who attended South Place Ethical Society and admired the freethinking Moncure D. Conway. Wedd was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret society, alongside Roger Fry and J. M. E. McTaggart. Wedd was highly regarded as an inspirational teacher and a devoted scholar, who put his own intellect at the service of others. Forster himself wrote that it was 'to him rather than to Dickinson - indeed to him more than to anyone - that I owe such an awakening as has befallen me.'

Wedd was his classics tutor, and imbued a love for Greece and for the classics, as well as with his own social and political ideals, that stayed with Forster.

In his biography of Forster, Wilfred Stone describes Wedd as 'openly and scandalously anti-God,' this facet of his character providing 'some amusing bits of King's folklore': It described his 'genius for teaching', as well as his being 'something of a firebrand':... indeed throughout his life his wit, his vigorous independence, and his fine audacity of language, always used in the service of his quickening sympathy with youth, made him provocative as well as stimulating, a kindler of live sparks in many stubbles.