Professor Roderick Beaton

Sir Roderick Beaton is a leading authority on the history and culture of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean and the author, most recently, of Europe: A New History (soon to be a Penguin paperback), which takes a new look at the history of our continent, from the ancient Greeks to war in Ukraine. Born and bred in Edinburgh, he went on to Cambridge to take his BA degree in English Literature, followed by a doctorate in Modern Greek. For thirty years he served as Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London and is now Emeritus. He is also Chairman of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research in Greece supported by the British Academy. 

Roderick is the author of many books, among them Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution (2013); Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation (2019) and The Greeks: A Global History (2021). He has travelled very widely in Greece, the eastern Mediterranean and much of mainland Europe, and has many years’ experience of lecturing on cruises. 

He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA); a Fellow of King’s College; an Honorary Fellow of his old College at Cambridge, Peterhouse; and Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic. In 2023 he received honorary citizenship of Greece and an honorary doctorate from the University of Patras. In February 2025 he was knighted by King Charles III for services to History and UK/Greek relations.