Christina's father obituary
DR. EDWYN BEVAN CLASSICAL SCHOLAR AND HISTORIAN Dr. Edwyn Bevan, O.B.E., F.B.A., who die' in London yesterday at the age of 73, was a man of varied gifts, a classical scholar and archaeologist, a student of the philosophy of religion and especially of Christianity, and an observer of contemporary politics. To The Times he contributed letters chiefly on Indian and foreign policy which revealed judgment, knowledge, and grasp of affairs, combined with the detachment of a philosophic historian; and he had been a frequent contributor to The Times LiterarS' Supplement. Born on February 15, 1870, Edwyn Robert Bevan was the seventh son of the 16 children born to Mr. Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, of Trent Park, Middlesex, and Fosbury House, Wilts. Like his brother, the late Anthony Ashley Bevan, Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Oxford, he was an exception among the large clan of Bevans, who have been for the most part' country gentlemen with banking and other financial interests. He was educated at Cheam, Monkton Combe, and New College, Oxford, of which he was later elected an honorary fellow. After traveling in India he worked at the British School in Athens in' 1894, and took part in excavations at Alexandria in 1895. In the war of 1914 he worked successively in the Propaganda Department, in the Department of Information, and in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office. From 1922 to 1933 Bevan was lecturer on Hellenistic history and literature at King's College, London. For this work he was admirably qualified, for he had made an early reputation with his " House of Seleucus" and had followed that success up with other studies in the history, religion, and philosophy of the pre-Christian and post-Christian East; during. the tenure of his lectureship he wrote a history of Egypt under the Ptolemies and contributed to the Cambridge histories of the Ancient World and of India. In 1932 he wrote the volume on Christianity for the Home University Library; and in 1938 there appeared' his " Symbolism and Belief " which he had taken as the subject of his Gifford lectures. It is hardly possible here to enumerate all his books, which were those of an exceptionally well equipped scholar of remarkably wide range;, but it should be recorded that he also translated in English verse more than one of the plays of Aeschyltus. Last year he collected into a volume a number of poems which he had written at various times. Dr. Bevan was an honorary D.Litt (0xford) and LL.D.(St. Andrews). He married in 1896 the Hon. Mary Waldegrave, daughter of the 'third Baron Radstock. She died in 1935. There were two daughters of the marriage.
