John read Classics at the University of Cambridge (BA, 1988) and did postgraduate research in Greek tragedy and comedy at the University of Oxford. He returned to university several years later, finishing an MA in Modern Greek Studies at KCL (2007). His PhD thesis at KCL (2019) examined matters of intertextuality in the work of the poet Yannis Ritsos and won the Niki Marangou dissertation prize of the UK Society for Modern Greek Studies.

John is currently working on several projects about Ritsos. He will publish an annotated English translation of Ritsos’s verse autobiography, A Monstrous Masterpiece, for Aiora Press, and is preparing a Greek edition of Ritsos’s translations of the songs from Bertolt Brecht’s play Round Heads and Pointy Heads. His immediate task is to bring to press, with co-editors Polina Tambakaki and Stephanos Geroulanos, the multi-authored book C.P. Cavafy: Poetics and Reception – Music, History and the Arts, for Routledge; for which he has contributed a chapter about Ritsos and Cavafy.

 

By profession, John was a diplomat and civil servant. From 2013-2016, he served as the British Ambassador to Greece. From 2018-2024, he was chair of the Anglo-Hellenic League. He is currently an independent academic and chair of governors at Hymers College, Hull. In 2021, the President of the Hellenic Republic awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Phoenix for services to British-Greek relations.