Michael Silk

Michael Stephen Silk, FBA, is a decorated emeritus professor author and a retired professor of classical and comparative literature at King's College, London. He was elected a member of the British Academy in 2009 and has illustrated 7 works of literature in relation to the theory and practice of tragedy and comedy, Greek poetry and drama, literary theory, and the classical tradition. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1999.

Born in Birmingham on the 11th June 1941, Michael was born to parent who were Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated Poland, Warsaw 9 years prior to his birth to escape the Holocaust. He lived with his older brother John Silk. He attended King's Heath High School and then attended Cambridge in 1959 on a scholarship to study Greek Classics, where he then obtained his PhD after 8 years. This is where he met Laurel Silk (a retired podiatrist) - his wife since 1962, who he had children with. He then moved to teaching at King's College London where he became a tenured professor after teaching for 50 years, now having retired in 2017. He now a father, grandfather and great-grandfather who lives in Kent and still composes literary pieces. He is also a chess international master.

Selected publications

• "Hughes, Plath and Aeschylus: Allusion and Poetic Language", Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 14 (3) (2007), pp. 1–33.
• Standard Languages and Language Standards – Greek, Past and Present, Ashgate, 2009. Editor with Alexandra Georgakopoulou
• The classical tradition: Art, literature, thought. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2014. (With Rosemary Barrow and Ingo Gildenhard) ISBN 978-1405155496