WYKEHAM JOURNAL 2024
The stream of humane Wykehamist Greek scholars following in Grocyn’ s footsteps( an article in The Wykehamist of July 1893 dubs him‘ father of the New Learning’) has been pretty constant ever since. Winchester has produced no fewer than four Oxford Regius Professors of Greek( more than any other school), easily the most illustrious being John Harmar, who was also by turns Headmaster and then Warden of Winchester, and who played a major role in the translation of the King James Bible; and there is also a distinguished succession of other professors, lecturers, college tutors and schoolmasters down through the centuries. In this roll-call I too have my own little part: after thirtyfive years in the Classics department at Winchester, I now teach at New College, perhaps sometimes in the very same rooms where Grocyn took his first steps in Greek over five hundred years ago!
WINCHESTER COLLEGE DONS, 1982( above) Stephen is second from the right on the back row
THE CLASSICS DEPARTMENT IN 2000( below) Standing l to r: Frank Garcia, Caroline Butler, Stephen Anderson, Coralie Ovenden, Claire Webster Seated l to r: Andrew Leigh, Geoff Hewitson, James Sabben-Clare, Jock Macdonald, John Falconer
Grocyn’ s lasting fame is assured: his bust looks down from Musā on today’ s Wykehamists as they make their way up to books along Meads Path, he has a memorial brass plaque set up by New College in Newton Longville church, and the principal teacher of Greek and Latin language in the Oxford Classics Faculty bears the title Grocyn Lecturer.
This is no more than his due; and he would be pleased, too, I think, to see how the study of Classics still flourishes in his own old school, a bright beacon in a world where such learning isn’ t always valued as it might be. In an age when even the national government thinks it proper to cancel at the stroke of a pen its support for Latin teaching in the maintained sector, long may this particular Wykehamical light continue to shine!
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