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9781800423244

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Martin Ferguson Smith, OBE, is professor emeritus of Classics at Durham University. He has an international reputation for his editions and translations of the Epicurean writers Lucretius (first century BC) and Diogenes of Oinoanda (second century AD). Diogenes, whose ruined home city is in the mountains of southwest Turkey, set out his philosophy in the form of the longest known Greek inscription. It is addressed to the people of Oinoanda and to so-called foreigners who are actually fellow citizens in a world which is one country for humanity. To the discovery and interpretation of Diogenes' extraordinary work Martin has devoted nearly sixty years of his life, during which he has been much influenced by Epicurean philosophy. Martin the Epicurean, as well as describing the author's long engagement with Diogenes and his spectacular fieldwork in Turkey, contains chapters on his unusual adventures in communist Albania and Romania and on his modern work, which includes his acclaimed books Dearest Jean: Rose Macaulay's Letters to a Cousin (2011), Madeleine Symons: Social and Penal Reformer (2017), In and Out of Bloomsbury: Essays on Twentieth-Century Writers and Artists (2021), and The Artist Helen Coombe 1864-1937: The Tragedy of Roger Fry's Wife (2023).  The book also describes the thirty years he has spent living on the remote island of Foula in Shetland without a shop, television, or smart phone, in fulfilment of a childhood ambition.

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