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Peter Levi, Professor of Poetry at University of Oxford, was a poet, Jesuit priest, archaeologist, travel writer, biographer, scholar and prolific reviewer and critic. At the age of 17 he joined the Society of Jesus in the novitiate, and he remained a Jesuit until he resigned the priesthood 29 years later. Peter trained for the priesthood at Heythrop College and read Classics at Campion Hall (a private Jesuit College at Oxford University). After leaving the priesthood, he married and spent a year as archaeological correspondent for The Times before returning to academic life, as a fellow of St. Catherine’s College.
A dedicated classicist, Professor Levi’s prolific output includes works not easily categorised, covering history, religion, and the English landscape. He received particular acclaim for The Light Garden of the Angel King (1984), an account of his travels in Afghanistan, described by John Morris in the Sunday Times as “a beautiful book, a poetic evocation”. He published over twenty collections of poetry, including Collected Poems: 1955-1975 (1976), and also produced a number of well-regarded thrillers. His many religious, critical and scholarly works include a translation of the second-century Greek traveller and geographer Pausanias’ Guide to Greece (1971), a ground-breaking version of The Psalms (1976) for Penguin Classics, and books on Greece, the Ancient World and travel. His seminal account of a lifetime’s exploration of Greece, The Hill of Kronos (1981), was republished by Eland Books in 2007. He edited The Penguin Book of English Christian Verse (1994) and wrote The Penguin History of Greek Literature (1985), but towards the end of his life concentrated on poetry and biography, publishing celebrated biographies of Shakespeare, Boris Pasternak, Tennyson, Edward Lear, Virgil, Horace and John Milton.
His final publication was the posthumous poetry collection Viriditas (2001), which contains contemplations on his fading eyesight and the natural world, composed whilst walking round the green in the Gloucestershire village where he lived.
Recent books:
The Hill of Kronos (Eland Books: 2007
Viriditas (Anvil: 2001)
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