Christopher Stray

Christopher Allan Stray is a British historian of classical scholarship and teaching.

Early life and education

Born at Norwich, son of Peter Stray and Margaret, Stray read Classics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, taking a BA in 1966 and MA in 1985. He worked as a classics teacher, including at Latymer Upper School, West London, and was a member of the JACT Ancient History Committee in the late 1960s, under the chairmanship of Sir Moses Finley.

Career

His academic writings began with his PhD thesis on the history of classical education in England, which was published as Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1960. The book was awarded a Runciman Prize in 1999. Stray has also worked on the history of universities, on examinations, and on institutional slang.
Despite never holding a salaried academic post, Stray has held numerous prestigious fellowships and honorary positions, including: Honorary Research Fellowship, Dept of History and Classics, Swansea University ; Visiting Fellowship, Wolfson College Cambridge ; John D and Rose H Jackson Fellowship, Beinecke Library, Yale University ; Senior Research Fellowship, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London ; Member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton ; Visiting Fellow Commonership, Trinity College Cambridge. He has also been active in collaborative research projects, and in the organisation of conferences and colloquia, including: Convener of the Textbook Colloquium ; co-organiser of conference on “Classical Commentaries” ; member of advisory board, “Classics and Class in Britain”, King's College London, 2013–16 ; co-organiser of conference on “Liddell & Scott”. A colloquium in his honour was held in Oxford in October 2018, organised by Stephen Harrison. In 2021 De Gruyter published the Festschrift, Classical Scholarship and Its History From the Renaissance to the Present. Essays in Honour of Christopher Stray, edited by Stephen Harrison and Christopher Pelling. In 2024 he was awarded the Kenyon Medal by the British Academy "for almost single-handedly creating the field of the institutional history of Classics." In 2024, Stray was a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College Cambridge.

Personal life

Stray married anthropologist Margaret Kenna, of Swansea University; they have a son.

Works

Books

The Living Word: W. H. D. Rouse and the Crisis of Classics in Edwardian England
Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1960
''Classics in Britain, 1800-2000''
As editor
The Classical Association: ''The First Century 1903–2003
Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community
The Owl of Minerva. The Cambridge praelections of 1906. Reassessments of Richard Jebb, James Adam, Walter Headlam, Henry Jackson, William Ridgeway and Arthur Verrall
Gilbert Murray Reassessed. Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics
Oxford Classics: Teaching and Learning 1800–2000
Classical Books: Scholarship and Publishing in Britain Since 1800
Classical Dictionaries. Past, present and future
Sophocles’ Jebb: A Life in Letters.
Expurgating the Classics: Editing Out in Greek and Latin
With David Butterfield: A. E. Housman: Classical Scholar
With Michael Clarke and Joshua Katz: Liddell and Scott: The History, Methodology, and Languages of the World's Leading Lexicon of Ancient Greek
With Judith P. Hallett: British Classics Outside England – The Academy and Beyond
With Lorna Hardwick: A Companion to Classical Receptions
With Chris Pelling and Stephen Harrison: Rediscovering E.R.Dodds: ''Scholarship, Poetry, and the Paranormal
With Jonathan Smith: Cambridge in the 1830s. The Letters of Alexander Chisholm Gooden, 1831–1841
With Jonathan Smith: Teaching and Learning in Nineteenth-century Cambridge
With Stephen Halliwell: Scholarship and Controversy: Centenary Essays on the Life and Work of Sir Kenneth Dover''
As contributor
''Classics in the curriculum up to the 1960s''