Hugh Lloyd-Jones

Who was Hugh Lloyd-Jones?

Sir Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones FBA was a British classical scholar and Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford.

Lloyd-Jones was educated at Westminster School where he developed an interest in Modern History before being converted to Classics by his Headmaster, J. T. Christie. He pursued undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Christ Church, Oxford. His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he learned Japanese and served in the Intelligence Corps in India, turning down the opportunity to work at Bletchley Park in order to serve in Burma. He ended the War as a Captain.

Lloyd-Jones took a first degree in Greats in 1948 and gained several University prizes. For a while he was a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and while there met his first wife, Frances Hedley, a Classics student at Newnham College, whom he married in 1953. The couple had two sons and a daughter and were divorced in 1981. In 1951 Lloyd-Jones returned to Oxford where he became the first holder of the E. P. Warren Praelectorship at Corpus.

Lloyd-Jones supervised many distinguished D. Phil. students, including Martin Litchfield West. In his inaugural address as Regius Professor in 1961 he called for a reduction in the emphasis laid on composition taught to undergraduates and suggested that Honour Moderations might have to be reformed to encompass studies taken from ancient philosophy and history as well as the traditional literature and language.