When Peter Mackridge, who has died aged 76 of cancer, embarked on his academic career, “Greece” was widely regarded as either a tourist destination in the sun or the preserve of classicists and archaeologists. But he saw modern Greece – its people, its culture and above all its language – as worthy of appreciation and study in their own right. At King’s College London and later at Oxford University, Peter, whom I first met in 1976, did much to establish Modern Greek studies in the UK university curriculum.
Peter’s expertise, while mainly focused on the period from about 1750 to the present, reached back to the 12th century. Equally at home in linguistics and literature, he often wrote on wider cultural matters, including how the modern Greek world connects with the ancient, and the ways in which the Greeks of today have shaped and reshaped their sense of identity in response.
