In Memoriam: Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones

A memorial event was held at Christ Church on Saturday 13 February for Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Regius Professor of Greek and Student of Christ Church from 1960 to 1989, a greatly respected expert in Greek and a dominant figure in classical scholarship, who died in Massachusetts on 5 October, 2009.

Addresses were given by Baron Quinton of Holywell, Professor Peter Parsons, Professor Jasper Griffin, Professor Robert Parker, and by Sir Hugh's son Ralph Lloyd-Jones; finally his widow Professor Mary Lefkowitz read poems by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. The talks touched on his time as an undergraduate at Christ Church, where his tutors were 'impressed and a little alarmed'; one wrote in the Tutors' book that he was 'a whale of a sponge', absorbing everything he had read. Sir Hugh's massive scholarly achievement was also covered, in particular his famous Sather lectures on The Justice of Zeus (1971), the encyclopaedic knowledge of classical scholarship especially clear in Blood for the Ghosts (1982), and the precise scholarship of his various editions of classical texts and in the Supplementum Hellenisticum which he co-edited with Peter Parsons (1982). Vignettes of family life included the surprise of his young son when he managed to bring home the correct pots of paint for an Airfix kit: 'how did you manage to remember?' The reply: 'the parents are proud to announce the marriage of Miss Olive Green to Mr Matt Black'. Click here to read The Times obituary. Photo: Hugh Lloyd-Jones, a formidable polemicist, alongside a bust of himself in 1982. ©Times