1 The discussion has so far been, somewhat unusually, in newspapers: letters in The Times, 27 March, 2 and 17 April 1987, and in articles in The Times Higher Educational Supplement, April 1987 (by Karen Gold); The Guardian, 11 May 1987 (by Judith Herrin); I Kathimerini, May 1987 (by Haris Kaluga); Akropolis, November 1987; and the Financial Times, 5 December 1987. In 1987 the British National Committee of the International Byzantine Association, which is a committee of the British Academy and Executive of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (SPBS), and SCOMGIU (the Standing Committee on Modern Greek in Universities), indicated that they wished their fields to be reviewed separately by the British University Grants Committee, which may prove the author of the FT’s article in practice. But perhaps the first time that the subject has been aired by some of its practitioners was at a discussion of it on 4 February 1988, which was joined by the editorial board of this journal and staff and graduate students of the Centre for Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek in Birmingham. I am grateful to them, but they are not responsible for the partiality of my views. I have also consulted:

For the Oxford Chair: Jackson, W. W., Ingram Bywater. The memoir of an Oxford scholar, 1840-1914 (Oxford 1917)Google Scholar, and am grateful to Peter Mackridge and Cyril Mango (fourth Koraés and fifth Bywater and So the by professor);

For the London Chair: Clogg, R., Politics and the Academy. Arnold Toynbee and the Koraes Chair (London 1986)Google Scholar;

For the Cambridge post: Price, A. Whigham, The Ladies of Castlebrae (Gloucester 1985)Google Scholar (which does not mention it), and am grateful to David Holton (third Lewis-Gibson lecturer); and

For the Birmingham posts: Smith, R.E.F., A Novelty: Russian at Birmingham University 1917-67 (Birmingham 1987)Google Scholar, and am grateful to Ben Benedikz, Catherine Thomson, and Lady Waterhouse. Cf. Gould, C., ‘Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse, 1905-1985’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 72 (1986), 525–35 Google Scholar.

Except for a quotation from it, I do not refer to The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) for its supplement for 1901-60 (Oxford 1975), which I have used throughout.

This article was written before a Symposium convened by Richard Clogg in honour of Donald Nicol at King’s College London in March 1988 on ‘British Perspectives on Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies’, which included, among other important papers, one on Dawkins by Peter Mackridge. Dr Ruth Macrides has since kindly informed me that she is working on A.N. Jannaris (1852-1909), who as Lecturer in Post-Classical and Modern Greek at the University of St Andrews from 1896-1903, may be the Prodromos of the whole subject.

2 By 1988 the academic interest groups, being the SPBS (for Byzantine); the Standing Committee of University Teachers of Turkish (SCOUTT); and SCOMGIU (for Modern Greek) had prepared separate, but related, brochures on British university opportunities in their fields.

3 The subtitle of Tozer’s Researches in the Highlands of Turkey (i.e. modern Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece) (London 1869). Cf. his Turkish Armenia and eastern Asia Minor (London 1881).

4 Jackson, (a former Rector of Exeter College), Bywater, passim Google Scholar.

5 Jackson, , Bywater 149, 164, 173 Google Scholar.

6 Mavrogordato, J. (second Bywater and So the by professor), Digenes Akrites (Oxford 1956)Google Scholar, preface and introduction.

7 DNB, supplement, s.n. Ingram Bywater.

8 Jackson, , Bywater 203–5 Google Scholar.

9 Jackson, , Bywater 202 Google Scholar.

10 Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Marchand, L.A. (London 1973-82) IV, 311-13; V, 19, 205, 229, 238, 252-53; VI, 35 Google Scholar.

11 Tillyrides, A., “Unpublished letters of Simos Menardos,” 43 (1979), 183 Google Scholar. I am most grateful to David Ricks for drawing my attention to Menardos and these references.

12 The value of Byzantine and Modern Greek in Hellenic Studies. An inaugural lecture delivered before the University. Thursday, October 29, 1908 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1909)Google Scholar. I have not seen this work, a copy of which exists in the Taylor Institution. Translated in a Limassol newspaper in 1909, it is reprinted as in Menardos’s (Nicosia 1969), 196-210. Ricks notes that the obituary by Sykoutris (1956), 329-45) reveals that Menardos’s Athens teaching involved the history of Greek literature “from Homer to Roidis and Palamas”; he considered himself to be performing the function for literature that had been performed in other areas by Papparrigopoulos, Chatzidakis and N.G. Politis.

13 Tillyrides, “Menardos,” 189. Not all the oddities of spelling in the transcription of these letters appear to be attributable to Menardos himself, and some dates are dubious. In particular, if Menardos gave his first lecture on 29 October 1908, he cannot have written thanking Bywater for attending it on 23 October 1908 (p.185), or told Bywater that he was about to deliver his third lecture on 29 January 1907 (p.183).

14 I am grateful to Peter Mackridge for the information that Oxford’s Hebdomadal Council stipulated examinations in:

• I. The Language as spoken and written at the present day.

• II. Prescribed Authors, which were:

  

• III. History of the Language;

• IV. History of the Literature (for which the answers to one of the two general papers were to be written in Greek);

• V. Special Subject, from:

  • 1. The elements of Comparative Philology, with special reference to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.

  • 2. The phonology and morphology of the ancient Doric dialects in their historical development.

  • 3. Greek Christian Hymnography up to the ninth century.

  • 4. Greek Historiography in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

  • 5. Greek Romantic Literature under the Franks (A.D. 1200-1600). Oxford University, Examination Statutes (Oxford 1913), 137-43.

15 Toynbee, A., Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his world (Oxford 1973)Google Scholar, preface; successive editions of the Balliol College Register, s.n.; Constantine Porphyrogenitus De Administrando Imperio, ed. Gy. Moravcsik, tr. R.J.H. Jenkins (Budapest 1949).

16 Clogg, Toynbee 10.

17 Newman, J.H., The Idea of a Liberal Education, ed. H. Tristram (London 1952) 13 Google Scholar: “The town of his adoption never really regarded him with any cordiality. He found no welcome there, and no notice was taken of him publicly, even when he returned from Rome, in 1879, as a newly created Cardinal. To this coldness he responded with equal coldness…: ‘I have done nothing for Birmingham. I have paid my rates as an honest man, but have no claim on the place for any sort of service done for it of any kind’.” Cf. Cheesewright, M., Mirror to a Mermaid (Birmingham 1975)Google Scholar. On a Birmingham Unitarian family which early supported both the University and the Hellenic Travellers’ Club, and intermarried with Martineaus and Chamberlains (but not Cadburys), see Church, R.A., Kenricks in Hardware. A Family Business: 1791-1966 (Newton Abbot 1969)Google Scholar, and successive editions of the Balliol College Register, s.n.

18 Smith, Novelty 2-3.

19 Clogg, Toynbee 13.

20 Information from the Cambridge Reporter, from David Holton.

21 Price, Castlebrae 68, 70.

22 Smith, Agnes, Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery (London 1884)Google Scholar; Kastromenos, P.G., The Monuments of Athens, tr. Agnes Smith (London 1884)Google Scholar.

23 (Mrs) Bensly, R.L., Our Visit to Sinai (London 1896)Google Scholar; Bentley, J., Secrets of Mount Sinai (London 1985) 151–56 Google Scholar.

24 See Heywood, C., BMGS 12 (1988) 315–345 Google Scholar.

25 Cf. Waterhouse, Helen, The British School at Athens. The first hundred years (London 1986) 18–25 Google Scholar. Rolfe, F.W., ‘Baron Corvo’ (1860-1913), repaid Dawkins’s great generosity by placing ‘Richard Macpawkins’ in The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole: a Romance of modern Venice (written 1909, published London 1934)Google Scholar: “He was of that repugnant, flabby, carroty, freckled, mugnosed, bristly-species, toothed of Senegaglia cheese-colour, which has no chest whatsoever.” But Byzantinists are no more appreciated by literary persons than So the by was by Byron. In 1908 Marcel Proust campaigned against the candidature to the Académie Française of Gustave Schlumberger, the eminent Byzantine sigillographer, correspondent of Penelope Delta, and “this prehistoric buffalo.” At the crunch, Proust noted that “the buffalo smiled like a ninny every time I walked past, thinking I was going to bow, and his enormous boots made fossil imprints on the carpet.” Painter, G.D., Marcel Proust. A Biography II(London 1965) 108–9 Google Scholar; Lettres de Deux Amis. Une correspondance entre Pénélope S. Delta et Gustave Schlumberger, ed. X. Lefcoparidi, prefaced by Mirambel, A. (Athens 1926)Google Scholar. Nevertheless, Schlumberger found his way into Le Coté de Guermantes I (1920).

26 Cf. Alexiou, Margaret, ‘Folklore: an Obituary?’ BMGS 9 (1984-85) 1–28 Google Scholar.

27 Smith, Novelty 13-14.

28 Mango, C., ‘Romilly James Heald Jenkins’, DOP 23–24 (1969-70) 7–8 Google Scholar.

29 FO 800/207. Fisher to Balfour, 2 August 1917, Foreign Office Papers, Public Record Office, London. I am grateful to Erik Goldstein for this reference and discussion.

30 Koundouros, R., On Greece: theses index in Britain (1874-1950) (London 1980)Google Scholar. The first Byzantine research thesis was by R.E.M. (Sir Mortimer) Wheeler, on The origins of Byzantine Art (London M.A., 1912), followed by Edith Hale (Birmingham M.A., 1913) and H. Holloway (Belfast M.A., 1918). Most early Modern Greek topics were diplomatic; the first doctoral thesis was by A. Hadjiantoniou on Cyril Loukaris (Edinburgh Ph.D., 1949), who acknowledges no supervisor in his partisan Protestant Patriarch (London 1961). The first (and only) research thesis on the Tourkokratia before 1950 was (Sir) Luke’s, Harry Cyprus under the Turks (Oxford B.Litt., 1919)Google Scholar, which, as he implies in his book of the same title (Oxford 1921, reprinted with introduction, London 1969), was submitted without supervision, probably from Tbilisi.

31 Buckler, Georgina, Anna Comnena (Oxford 1929)Google Scholar, names Dawkins as her supervisor and also thanks Ramsay. It was Dawkins’s refusal to supervise Philip Whitting which in 1930 spurred him to pursue Byzantine Studies through other channels.

32 Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies 1 (1975) — 12 (1986). The majority has been awarded by Oxford (36, mostly theological and textual); Birmingham (27, mostly historical); and London (17, mostly historical and art historical). There is no equivalent analysis of Modern Greek research degrees.

33 Proceedings of the Hellenic Travellers’ Club (London 1910) 120-45.

34 Clogg, Toynbee 114.

35 An Address presented to Norman Hepburn Baynes (Oxford, privately printed, 1942).

36 Waring, M.H.J. represented London and Oxford, M.V. Ispir: Marinescu, C., Compte-rendu du Premier Congrès International des Etudes Byzantines, Bucarest, 1924 (Bucarest 1925) 92 Google Scholar.

37 Jenkins, R.J.H., Byzantium and Byzantinism, Lectures in memory of Louise Taft Semple (Cincinnati 1963); Mango, C.A., ‘Byzantinism and Romantic Hellenism’ (Inaugural lecture in the Koraës Chair, 1964)Google Scholar, Journal of the Warburg and Cour-tauld Institutes 28 (1965) 29-43; Browning, R., Greece — Ancient and Medieval. An inaugural lecture delivered at Birkbeck College, University of London, 15 June 1966 (London 1966)Google Scholar; Nicol, D.M., Byzantium and Greece. Inaugural lecture in the Koraës Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at University of London King’s College, 26 October 1971 (London 1971)Google Scholar. Cf. Sp. Vryonis Jr., ‘Recent scholarship on continuity and discontinuity of culture: classical Greeks, Byzantines, Modern Greeks,’ in The ‘Past’ in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture, ed. Sp. Vryonis Jr. (Malibu 1978) 237-56. In the background were also the views of Vacalopoulos, A.E., The origins of the Greek Nation. The Byzantine Period, 1204-1461 (New Brunswick, N.J. 1970)Google Scholar, reviewed by Bryer, A., BS 33 (1972) 244–46 Google Scholar, which brought down a ton of bricks in the form of Vacalopoulos, A.E., ‘Views on the origins of Neo-Hellenism and related problems. (In response to Anthony Bryer),’ Balkan Studies 14 (1973) 201–7 Google Scholar.

38 A sample: Weiss, G., ‘Antike und Byzanz. Die Kontinuitàt der Gesellschafts-struktur,’ Historische Zeitschrift 244 (1977) 529–60 Google Scholar; Mango, C., ‘Discontinuity with the classical past in Byzantium,’ in Byzantium and the Classical Tradition, edd. Margaret Mullett and Scott, R. (Birmingham 1981) 48–57 Google Scholar. Cf. Kazhdan, A. in collaboration with Franklin, S., Studies on Byzantine literature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Cambridge 1984) 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Cf. Thomson, G., ‘The continuity of Hellenism,’ Greece and Rome 18 (1971) 18–29 Google Scholar. George Thomson’s intellectual life awaits its student. Stephen Halliwell, Steven Whiston, Dimitris Tziovas and I made notes and tape recordings of interviews with him in December 1986. The most recent account of his Irish connection is in a stunning book by Conghail, Muiris Mac: The Blaskets. A Kerry Island Library (Dublin 1987) 148–55 Google Scholar.

40 Bachtin, N., Lectures and Essays, ed. Duncan-Jones, A.E. (Birmingham 1963)Google Scholar. A close common friend of Bachtin and the Thomsons was Ludwig Wittgenstein: cf. Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R.H. Rees (Oxford 1984), 14, 48.

41 His only book, it was apparently never on public sale. Much approving of Lawson on cultural matters, it presents a forceful (if incredible) argument for the purity of Modern Greek too (p.68): “Slav and Albanian have left no traces except in place-names, and Turkish is represented now-a-days only by three common words: (Turkish-delight), which are not peculiar to Greek, but sum up the Turkish contribution to the common treasury of civilization.”

42 The first Colloquial Assistant in Modern Greek came in 1948, and the first Lecturer in Byzantine and Modern Greek in 1964. By 1966 came the wondrous sight of Thomson teaching classes of NATO officers seconded by the Ministry of Defence, who were joined by Chinese students sporting Mao badges. Their common language was Modern Greek.

43 From the inside cover of The Link 1 (June 1938). Originally intended to appear three times a year, the manifesto was replaced in The Link 2 (June 1939) by a sad Editor’s Note: “Some explanation is due to subscribers for the delay in the appearance of this number. The reason is a material one. It has been thought advisable to spread out the publication of the first three numbers over a period longer than a year, in the hope that meantime some factors will emerge which will enable the editor to carry on the review. Failing this, the third number will be the last.” There was no third number. Those who saw BMGS through a similar crisis will empathise.

44 The Centre inherited some of David Talbot Rice’s papers, including his recommendation of December 1969 to the UGC Arts Sub-Committee: “Byzantine Studies. I am sympathetic to the Byzantine project. 1). There is not, but should be, a Byzantine Institute (or Centre) in G.B. 2). There seem to be 3 possibilities — London, Oxford, Birmingham. London seems to have no desire. Oxford is inert. I would like to see a recommendation that Birmingham should go ahead in the next quinquennium. D.T.R.” (I hasten to note that at the time both the London and Oxford Chairs were vacant).

45 See the bibliographies in a four-volume Festschrift, Mélanges Henri Grégoire (1881-1964) = Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 9-12 (1949-52); and in Byzantion 35 (1965).

46 See Editorial Comment, BMGS 9 (1984-85) — 12 (1988).