The Presocratic Philosophers by Geoffrey S. Kirk

For English-speaking readers this is a precious substitute for the standard edition of the Presocratics by H. Raven in the second edition of 1983 he had a second partner in M. In 1957 appeared The Presocratic Philosophers, in which he collaborated with J.E. In 1954 he published Heraclitus: the cosmic fragments, a learned and intelligent study, which remains indispensable. After his retirement he lived for some time in Bath, finally moving to Fittleworth in Sussex. His home was then at Sudbury in Suffolk, and he would disappear to it at weekends, and it was left to others to conduct the kind of graduate seminars that were desirable. Following his divorce from his first wife, Barbara Traill, whom he had married in 1950, he had married Kirsten, formerly wife of Christopher Ricks, then Professor of English at the university.

Unfortunately his tenure of the chair was somewhat disappointing. Three years later he succeeded Sir Denys Page as Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. Although from 1965 to 1970 he was Professor at Yale, he retained his Fellowship until 1971, when he became Professor of Greek at Bristol. Then after a year at Harvard as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow he became an official Fellow of Trinity Hall. Almost immediately he became a Research Fellow of Trinity Hall, a post which he held for three years, during which he spent a year at the British School in Athens. Returning to Cambridge, he obtained a First Class in Part 2 of the Tripos, specialising in ancient philosophy. In Towards the Aegean Sea: a wartime memoir (1997), he gave a fascinating account of the exciting life which he led during the war, as well as of his undergraduate years at Cambridge. He managed to get posted to the Levant Schooner Flotilla, and having learned some modern Greek was able to co-operate most effectively with the Greek resisters to the Germans, winning the Distinguished Service Cross.

Being strong and athletic, he was well qualified to be a naval officer. Kirk was handsome and had great charm in his own words, 'The trouble was that I liked, in one way or another, practically all girls', and this liking was very often reciprocated.

The Presocratic Philosophers by Geoffrey S. Kirk