Martin Litchfield West

Who is Martin Litchfield West?

Martin Litchfield West, OM, FBA is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology. In 2002, upon his receipt of the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies from the British Academy, he was called "the most brilliant and productive Greek scholar of his generation." He is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford.

He has written extensively on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connexion between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin.

In 2001, West produced an edition of Homer's Iliad for Teubner, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology, entitled Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad; a further volume on The Making of the Iliad appeared ten years later for Oxford University Press.