Dr Michael Grant, who has died in London at 89, was a classical historian and author on the ancient world who garnered the respect of academics and lay readership alike. He was vice-chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast, from 1959 to 1966.
A cultured and insightful vice-chancellor, Grant's tenure reflected a time when universities were under less pressure. But in a 1960-61 annual report, he warned with prescience: "I hope we do not have to think of a new era of competition between universities, in which vice-chancellors, after their monthly meetings, will no longer be able to lunch together on speaking terms."
His time at Queen's is fondly remembered as charming and scholarly in an age of expansion and transition before the Troubles and before recruitment of overseas students diminished. But the sectarian divisions he saw gradually led him to believe that Britain should withdraw from the North, a sentiment he did not voice until after retirement.
Grant left Queen's in 1966 to pursue a full-time writing career in Italy, where he spent the remainder of his life with his wife, Anne-Sophie Beskow.
Born in London in 1921, he was educated at Harrow and Cambridge. He produced more than 50 books on topics from the Gospels to the eruption of Vesuvius and numerous biographies, including Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Christ and Constantine.
Michael Grant: born November 21st, 1921; died October 4th, 2004.