Willcock, M.M. 1925-2006
(Malcolm Maurice Willcock)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born October 1, 1925, in Leeds, England; died May 2, 2006. Educator and author. Willcock was a professor of the classics who was especially noted for his work on Homer and Pindar. After service in the Royal Air Force as a flying officer from 1944 to 1947, he graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1950. A fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, from 1951 to 1965, he was named the first professor of classics at the University of Lancaster in 1965. Also while at Lancaster, he was principal of Bowland College and, beginning in 1975, pro-vice-chancellor. Willcock spent his last years in academia at University College, London, where he taught Latin from 1980 to 1991 and was vice-provost from 1988 to 1991. As an educator, he was admired for his willingness to modernize the study of Latin and the classics, adapting his methods to make these subjects more accessible to a wider range of students. For example, while at Lancaster he was the first to allow beginning Latin and Greek language students to attend programs in the classics, and he was flexible enough to encourage the production of classic plays in English translation. As a scholar, Willcock was noted for his publications on Homer, Cicero, and Pindar, and he was president of the Virgil Society, despite confessing that he did not hold Virgil in as high regard as Homer. Among Willcock's publications are A Companion to the Iliad (1976), the two-volume A Commentary on Homer's Iliad (1978, 1984), the edited Victory Odes: Olympians 2, 7, 11: Nemean 4: Isthmians 3, 4, 7 by Pindar (1995), and Xenophon and Arrian on Hunting with Hounds (1999), which he edited with A.A. Phillips.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), June 16, 2006, p. 67.