GRANT, Michael 1914-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born November 21, 1914, in London, England; died October 4, 2004, in London, England. Historian, educator, and author. Grant was a scholar of the classic Roman and Greek civilizations who was particularly notable for his expertise on the coinage of those cultures. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he earned his B.A. in 1936 and his M.A. in 1940 after serving for a year in British Army intelligence. After spending five years in Turkey as a representative of the British Council, Grant began his academic career at the University of Edinburgh. He left Scotland in 1959 for Northern Ireland, where he served as president and vice chancellor from 1959 to 1966. By the mid-1960s, he was doing so well as a writer that he left the university to become a full-time author. Grant's early books focused on numismatic studies. He was convinced early on in his studies that detailed examination of the money used in Greek and Roman times could reveal considerable details about those cultures. Among his first books are From Imperium to Auctoritas: A Historical Study of Aes Coinage in the Roman Empire, 49 B.C.-A.D. 14 (1946), Aspects of the Principate of Tiberius: Historical Comments on the Colonial Coinage Issued outside Spain (1950), Roman Imperial Money (1954), and Roman History from Coins. As a writer, Grant was notable for his lucid, often entertaining style that made his scholarly books not only useful to experts but also accessible to amateurs in the field. This was especially true after he started writing more general histories and biographies about ancient civilizations. Such books in this area include Gladiators (1967; revised edition, 1971), Julius Caesar (1969), Cleopatra (1972), The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Reappraisal (1976), The Rise of the Greeks (1988), A Social History of Greece and Rome (1992), and his last book Sick Caesars (2000), among many others that helped bring the ancient world to life for many readers.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

books

Grant, Michael, My First Eighty Years, Aidan Ellis, 1994.

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2004, p. B10.

New York Times, October 25, 2004, p. A23.

Times (London, England), October 13, 2004, p. 61.