E. F. Watling

Who was E. F. Watling?

Edward Fairchild Watling was an English school-master, classicist and translator. He produced translations for Penguin Classics of Sophocles's Theban Plays, nine plays of Plautus and a selection of Seneca's tragedies.

The son of a Denbighshire dairy farmer, Watling was educated at Christ's Hospital and University College, Oxford.

Watling taught Classics at King Edward VII School in Sheffield from 1924 until his retirement in 1960. He contributed to amateur dramatics in Sheffield both as actor and producer, initially for the Sheffield Playgoers and later in Geoffrey Ost's productions at the Sheffield Playhouse. He also wrote sketches for the West End revues of André Charlot, and was a regular reviewer of both books and theatre for the Sheffield Telegraph. As "Marcus", he compiled crosswords for The Listener until he was in his seventies.

In 1928 Watling married Cicely Porter, and died on 6 September 1990.