Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
King's College, Strand, London, Greater London WC2R 0RN
Plas Dulas, Pencoed Rd, Llanddulas, Abergele LL22 8ER
Richard MacGillivray Dawkins FBA (24 October 1871 – 4 May 1955) was a British archaeologist.[1][2] He was associated with the British School at Athens, of which he was Director between 1906 and 1913.[3]
A benefactor
of Baron Corvo was insufficiently extravagant to please the practised
scrounger. Professor Dawkins was a queer Oxford character, who took
Corvo on a holiday in Venice which did not come up to his expectations. So -
Dawkins is described as "the blubbler-lipped Professor of Greek who has let me
down with a bang." Later, in The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole, in which
Corvo's Venetian acquaintance recognizably appears, he is "bored (to the
extent of a desire to do something violent) by the alternate screams and
snarls of a carroty Professor of Greek". Anyone who knew Dawkins will
recognize his idiosyncratic manner of conversation.
Richard MacGillivray Dawkins was born on 24 October 1871 at Surbiton, Surrey, the eldest child of Rear-Admiral Richard Dawkins of Stoke Gabriel and his wife Mary Louisa McGillivray, only surviving daughter of Simon McGillivray. He was educated at Marlborough College and at King's College, London where he trained as an electrical engineer.
He took part in the dig at Palékastro,[4] and the survey of Lakonia;[5] also at Rhitsona.[6] He undertook linguistic fieldwork in Cappadocia from 1909 to 1911, which resulted in a basic work on Cappadocian Greek. Then he led a dig at Filakopí from 1911.[7]
He was the first Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Between 1928 and 1930 Dawkins served as President of the Folklore Society, and in his later life published three considerable collections of Greek folk tales.[8]
In 1907, he inherited the Plas Dulas estate from a first cousin. There he experimented with plant importation and cultivation. He also displayed archaeological antiquities within the garden.[9]
My published books:
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