Geoffrey Lloyd interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 7^th June 2005

0:05:17 Born 1933; father was a doctor, born in Swansea, as was mother; he was very Welsh; came to London as a T.B. specialist; mother full of dynamism; brother and I evacuated  with mother during the war; brother has written autobiography; moved many times and went to about six different schools before the age of twelve; father remained in London to deal with bomb damaged patients; experienced living in Wales during war; appalling education; went to a boarding preparatory school called Lambrook; scholarship to Charterhouse where brother was head boy; don’t recognise the Charterhouse I knew in the novels of Simon Raven and Frederick Raphael; it was pretty philistine – anti-intellectual; protected by prowess at sport; one sympathetic teacher, Harry Iredale; poetry group; at sixteen best subject mathematics; given bad advice to study classics

10:55:23 Tried for Oxford at seventeen; interviewed by Trevor-Roper; turned down; Patrick Wilkinson at Cambridge keen to recruit from Charterhouse and got a scholarship; gave up classics in last year at Charterhouse and did history and also learnt Italian from Wilf Noyce who had previously climbed Everest; came to King’s where brother had been a medical student; one group at King’s were people my brother had known, like Simon Raven, who were pretty unconcerned about exams and pretty dissolute; second group – the scholars – solemn and serious-minded, followers of right-wing Catholicism; third group included people like Neil Ascherson, Robert Erskine and Chris Foster; became an Apostle which included non-King’s men like Jonathan Miller, later Moses Finley; Noel Annan invited to become one quite late in life; Eric Hobsbawm was one

16:03:14 Coming to King’s was an absolute liberation after Charterhouse; could read what I liked, study what I liked; didn’t want to read classics here; had been advised by Noyce to see Prof. Vincent to see if I could read modern languages but not encouraging; classics teaching was very good – Patrick Wilkinson, Donald Lucas and John Raven; latter had come from Trinity; at that time writing ‘The Presocratic Philosophers’ with G.S. Kirk and giving very exciting lectures; did Part 1 and stayed with classics to do ancient philosophy because of Raven; encouraged by Patrick Wilkinson to widen experience; went to Leavis’s lectures etc., was taking lectures in philosophy and English literature; classics then was challenging from a linguistics point of view but not intellectually, so time to read widely; play reading society called ‘The Ten Club’ where Dadie Rylands appeared from time to time; met every Wednesday evening during term; Monday evening reading Greek plays organised by Frank Adcock

23:05:08 By third year seriously wondering what to do with life; considered training as a medical student but deterred by time it would take, also had done well in classics and could get money for research and was in love with Ji, my future wife; she was also a Lloyd; met at Pevsner’s art lectures on 14^th February 1953; decided to try research; got two studentships, both of which dictated that I should live in classical lands; for three months of the year was either in Greece or Sicily or Italy; supposed to be working on ancient philosophy; 1954-5 in Athens, a very lively place; Sarah Rock, a friend who worked for World Council of Churches, introduced me to musicians; I bought and learnt to play a bouzouki, and did very little work; I was advised by T.B.L. Webster to study abstract terminology in Greek philosophy; Prof. Guthrie had not known what to advise but had introduced me to Greek medicine

29:28:03 Can’t remember when I first met Meyer Fortes, but reading anthropology and meeting him led to my PhD research - Polarity and Analogy; Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl suggested something to be done; wrote first draft of thesis in 3-4 months and put it in for the research fellowship competition at King’s College (Cambridge),  which I got; due to start March 1957 by which time I had married; living in London where Ji worked as translator for Shell; learnt that I had been supported by Richard Braithwaite and Arthur Hibbert

33:35:00 Bought a little house in  Cambridge but still had National Service to do; most friends at Charterhouse did their National Service immediately after leaving school; three friends died within three years of leaving school doing National Service; had seriously considered pleading I was a conscientious objector but warned by Neil Ascherson of the consequences; delayed doing it as long as I could but called up in 1958 when already married and  a fellow of King’s, and had a son

36:08:15 Recruited into the Northamptonshire Regiment; traumatic; learnt about institutional torture and humiliation; on arrival at the barracks had to clean the urinals with a bayonet; trying to get out of this regiment and thought I could use fluency in modern Greek to help in the Cyprus situation where E.O.K.A. was conducting a war of independence against Britain; introduced to Philip Noel Baker, possibly by Noel Annan, an M.P. with Greek connections; he suggested I talk to people in the Foreign Office; interviewed prior to going to the Northamptonshire Regiment and told they were looking for interrogators; offered lots of money but not what I wanted to do; later became an officer in the Intelligence Corps; despite wanting to stay in England I was sent to Cyprus; had not told them I spoke Greek; arrived in Famagusta, then taken to register in Nicosia in a lorry driven by a Cypriot who’d been a patient of my father’s; started talking to him in Greek; other soldiers reported me; asked why I was speaking Greek and told they had never had a Greek speaker in the Intelligence Corps in Cyprus! Given job in Famagusta harbour in port and travel control

41:50:16 There was one person on the black list that I did have to check out; he was on the black list as wanted to have a university career and there was no university in Cyprus so he went to Warsaw and did a PhD in philosophy; assumed to be a communist and when he in all innocence came in via Famagusta I was called to translate; asked him what he was doing – writing on Aristotle’s categories; started to talk surrounded by non Greek speaking soldiers; later became a good friend and a professor in Toronto; spent a year in Cyprus and Ji and eldest son came to join me; 1959 the agreement had been signed and Greeks and Turks on much better terms than later

45:59:00 Back to Cambridge in 1960; significant conversation with Edmund Leach who had been to America in 1961; we were in the chapel waiting  to admit a new fellow; started talking about right and left and Leach as a result introduced me to Rodney Needham; inspiring; this was a different sort of anthropology from Fortes’s, acknowledged in the book which came from PhD research, ‘Polarity and Analogy’; by then I was using anthropology to analyse ancient Greeks and Levi-Strauss was all the rage; my copy of ‘Anthropologie Structurale’ I bought in 1960; devoured it and studies he referred to; Meyer Fortes had encouraged my interest in anthropology but it was my meeting with Leach that really made me take it much more seriously

49:21:10 ‘Polarity and Analogy’ came out in 1966; got to know Moses Finley soon after I got back in the 1960’s; he was an inspiration and a great person; ‘The World of Odysseus’ showed how sociological insights could throw light on ancient texts; helped me and also Ji as he gave her her first translating job; Finley had been taken up by the French; article by Vidal-Naquet on the works of Moses Finley in ‘Annales’ published in 1965, and very complimentary; Finley invited him and Vernant to Cambridge; I met them both at a dinner party in Finley’s house which was a further important turning point; led to my going to Paris to lecture where I also met people like Detienne

53:10:16 There had been a major quarrel in the classics faculty over a university assistant lectureship that had been advertised in 1963-4; two camps, one of which said it must go to a philologist, the other, Finley, who suggested Lloyd; appointments committee hung so Finley suggested all resign and a new committee; I was appointed in 1965 which meant I would probably be making my career in Cambridge; by then an assistant tutor in King’s; doing quite a bit of writing and assisting John Broadbent, the senior tutor, also heavily involved in admissions; we entertained students at our house every Sunday evening during full term; King’s not co-residential then so had to persuade unsuspecting New Hall  or Newnham girls to come

57:02:08 1966 ‘Polarity and Analogy’ came out to very mixed response; became involved in rather more popular books and 1968 published book on Aristotle which is still in print; Moses Finley got me to do two books on Greek science; reception of ‘Polarity and Analogy’ by classics was bemusement, in philosophy that it was totally unphilosophical - very critical review by David Hamlyn; Rodney Needham wrote a favourable review in ‘American Anthropology’ saying that this was the sort of applied anthropology that should be encouraged; taken up by the French; Brunschvig, who later translated my books on science, warmly welcomed the book; popular in other circles but not main-stream classics; use of anthropology caused scepticism even with my PhD supervisor, Geoffrey Kirk