Terence Mitford - Biography

Biography

Mitford was born in Yokohama, Japan. His father was C. E. Bruce Mitford, and Mitford's name was sometimes given as "Bruce-Mitford". Mitford was educated at Dulwich College before reading Literae Humaniores at Jesus College, Oxford – his rugby-playing interfered with his studies, and he did not obtain as high a class of degree as hoped. He spent his entire career at the University of St Andrews, teaching Latin text and prose composition, but his main interest was archaeology, in which he involved residents of St Andrews as well as students. He spent time in the 1930s on excavations in Cyprus – his main archaeological interest throughout his career was the exploration of the inscriptions on Cyprus. His obituary, in The Times, said that Mitford "contributed more than anyone has ever done to our knowledge of the mass of documentation which exists in the Cypriot dialect and the Cypriot syllabic script." He also worked on the history of Cyprus, looking at the island in Ptolemaic and early Roman times.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was commissioned into the Dorset Regiment as a second lieutenant on 15 October 1939. He later fought in the Aegean as a member of the Special Air Service. He was parachuted into Crete and fought with guerrilla forces against the occupying German army. He then served in the Special Boat Service and was involved in the capture of Patmos and the Allied invasion of Sicily. For his war service he was awarded the Greek decoration of Knight of the Royal Order of King George I with Swords. After the war, he returned to St Andrews (where he was attached to the Officer Training Corps) and resumed his archaeological explorations in Cyprus. He was promoted to major on 1 April 1948, and nominally transferred to the Intelligence Corps. In his later career, he also looked at the archaeology and epigraphy of southern Turkey, making many expeditions there. He found many previously unknown inscriptions, assisting the work of the Austrian Academy of Sciences's Committee for the Archaeological Exploration of Asia Minor. His explorations were aided by his physical stamina, his resilience and his fluency in Greek and Turkish.

Mitford was appointed Reader in Classical Archaeology and retired as Honorary Emeritus Professor in 1973, the year that he was awarded a DLitt by the University of Oxford; he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in the following year. He was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1940, and was also a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute and a Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In retirement, he continued his hobby of studying birds, compiling data on Scandinavian migration and becoming an advisor to the government of Jordan on bird conservation. He died on 8 November 1978, aged 73.