Department of Classics, King's College London

Echoes of Hellas title page (1887)

King's College was established in 1829 under the patronage of George IV.[4] Its royal charter outlined its mission as "the general education of youth in which the various branches of Literature and Science are intended to be taught, and also the doctrines and duties of Christianity [...] inculcated by the United Church of England and Ireland."[5] The College counted among its founders and benefactors the Duke of Wellington, who was Prime Minister at the time, and a number of other eminent politicians and theologians of the British Establishment.[6][7][8]

The College included a Chair of Classical Literature as part of its foundational setup. Classical subjects, along with Law, Literature and Theology, were therefore taught at King's from the day it first formally opened its doors in 1831. The inaugural Professor of Classical Literature was the English scholar Joseph Anstice, whose introductory lecture on the enduring significance of classical education marked the beginning of what is today the Classics Department.[9][10]

The Tale of Troy is the title given to a series of famous performances in London between 1883 and 1887.

George Charles Winter Warr, Professor of Classical Literature from 1879 to 1901, developed an adaptation of the Iliad and the Odyssey entitled The Tale of Troy. Four performances were scheduled in late May and early June 1883, two in English and two in the original Greek. The goal was to raise sufficient funds to secure premises in Kensington for the newly founded King's College Lectures for Ladies.[11][12][13][14][15]

Although originally planned on a modest scale, the end product was a lavish spectacle staged in the South Kensington mansion of Sir Charles and Lady Freake. The plays were attended by prominent figures in scholarship, art, music, theatre and high society. The production was revived in May 1886, this time to raise funds for the extension of university teaching in London. This expanded version was moved to Prince's Hall in Piccadilly and included the story of Orestes, adapted from Aeschylus's Oresteian Trilogy. The Prince and Princess of Wales were also in attendance. The complete final version was published in 1887 under the title Echoes of Hellas with illustrations by Walter Crane.[11][13][14][16]

Adamantios Koraes

The Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature was established at King's College in 1918 to serve as the focal point in Britain for Hellenic studies beyond antiquity.[17] It was championed by the likes of the Anglo-Hellenic League and by Eleftherios Venizelos, then Prime Minister of the Hellenic Parliament and a close friend of King's College Principal Ronald Montagu Burrows.[18][19] Burrows was himself a famous classical scholar and philhellene.[20]

The Koraes Chair is named in honour of Adamantios Koraes, the founding father of the modern Greek nation state. Its inauguration also marked the beginning of the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, which has itself since been merged into the Department of Classics.[21][22][23]

The Koraes Chair was recently held by Roderick Beaton for a thirty-year period from 1988 to 2018. It is currently held by the Belgian-American scholar Gonda Van Steen.[24]

The Parthenon sculptures were hidden directly underneath the department in the tunnels of the now-disused Strand station during the Second World War. They were only brought back to the British Museum in nearby Bloomsbury in 1948, where they have remained since.[25][26][27]

The work of the original Chair of Classical Literature was split into two separate Chairs of Greek and Latin during this period.[28]

The Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) was established at the Department in 1989 to promote research and scholarship of Hellenic history, culture and language. On Greek Independence Day in 2010, plans were announced for the CHS to include teaching alongside its research activities. Under these new arrangements the CHS also came to incorporate the Department of Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies.[29]

A public dispute arose in 2010 over plans to axe the last Chair of Paleography in the United Kingdom and wider English speaking world.[30] Principal Rick Trainor announced the controversial plans as part of a College restructuring project.[31] The issue was debated as an Early Day Motion in Parliament.[32]

The British parliamentarian Boris Johnson visited the College in 2011 as Mayor of London to deliver a speech on the importance of classical education.[33][34]

In 2014, the Centre for Hellenic Studies merged its teaching and research activities with the Department of Classics. The CHS continues to be a prominent research centre of its own in the Arts & Humanities Research Institute (AHRI).[35][36]

• Joseph Anstice, Professor of Classical Literature (1831-1835)[63]
• George Charles Winter Warr, Professor of Classical Literature (1879-1901)[64]
• Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature (1919-1924)[65]
• Edwyn Robert Bevan, Lecturer in Hellenistic History and Literature (1922-1933)[66]
• Leonard Robert Palmer, Professor of Classical Literature (1945-1946), Professor of Greek Language & Literature (1946-1952)[63]
• Romilly James Heald Jenkins, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature (1946-1960)
• Reginald Pepys Winnington-Ingram, Professor of Greek Language & Literature (1953-1971)[63]
• Howard Hayes Scullard, Professor of Ancient History (1959-1970)[67]
• Cyril Alexander Mango, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature (1963-1968)[68]
• Donald MacGillivray Nicol, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature (1970-1988)[69]
• Alan Cameron, Professor of Latin Language & Literature (1972-1977)[70]
• John Barron, Professor of Greek Language and Literature (1971–1980), Head of Department (1972–1984), Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1976–1980), Director of the Institute of Classical Studies (1984–1991), Dean of the Institute of Advanced Study (1989–1991)
• Averil Millicent Cameron, Professor of Ancient History (1978-1989)[71]
• Geoffrey Waywell, Professor of Classical Archaeology (1987-2004)[72]
• Roderick Beaton, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature (1988-2018)[73]
• Michael Silk, Emeritus Professor of Classical & Comparative Literature[74]
• Judith Herrin, Constantine Leventis Senior Research Fellow[75]
• Charlotte Roueché, Professor Emeritus of Digital Hellenic Studies[76]
• William Fitzgerald, Professor of Latin Language & Literature[77]
• Edith Hall, Professor of Classics[78]
• Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature[79]

• 
  Alfred John Church
• 
  Matthew Phipps Shiell
• 
  Roger Bland
• 
  Virginia Woolf

• Alex Beard, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House[80]
• Alfred John Church, Professor of Latin at University College London (1880-1888)[81]
• Anthony Crockett, Bishop of Bangor (2004-2008)[82]
• Donald William James Woodman, Headmaster of Portadown College (1946-1973)[83]
• Dorothy King, author and archaeologist[84]
• Edward Perchard, Editor of Resource Media[85]
• Emily Parker, Tours & Choir Manager at Monteverdi Choir[86]
• Francesca Spiegel, academic at Humboldt University of Berlin[87]
• Jack Baldwin, West End actor[88]
• Jacob Lipton, Programme Director of the Systemic Justice Project, Harvard Law School[89]
• Jacob Samuel Klein, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Colgate University[90]
• John Manners-Bell, Chair of the Logistics and Supply Chain Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum[91]
• John Psaropoulos, Editor-in-chief of Athens News (1999-2009)[92]
• Julia Jordan, lecturer at University College London[93]
• Marie Louise Cookson, narrator and voice over artist[94]
• Matthew Phipps Shiell, writer[95]
• Nona Shepphard, Associate Director at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art[96]
• Michael Harley, pastor and committee member of the Trinitarian Bible Society[97]
• Philip Egan, Bishop of Portsmouth[98]
• Ralph Jackman, writer[99]
• Roger Bland, former curator at the British Museum and Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge[100]
• Virginia Woolf, writer and pioneering modernist[101]