Knox, Bernard

Knox, Bernard (MacGregor Walker)

(1914– ) classics scholar, author; born in Bradford, England. After taking his B.A. at St. John's College, Cambridge (England) (1936), he went to Spain and fought (and was wounded) with the International Brigade in the Civil War. He came to the U.S.A. in 1939. While serving with the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II (1942–45), he became an American citizen (1943), and was awarded two Bronze Stars and the French croix de guerre. He earned his Ph.D. at Yale (1948) and taught classics there (1948–61). He then served as director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. (1961–85). Among various honors and awards, he was the 1963 Sather lecturer at the University of California: Berkeley and received the 1978 George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism. In addition to his articles, reviews, and translations, his books include The Heroic Temper, Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (1980), Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre (1980), and The Oldest Dead White European Males (1993). He wrote the script for and performed in four films for educational television on Sophocles' Oedipus the King; these films are used in classrooms throughout the U.S.A. He was the assistant editor and a contributor to Volume I of the Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1985) and he was editor of The Norton Book of Classical Literature (1993).