David Raeburn, Classics teacher and translator who directed Greek plays into his 90s – obituary
Raeburn put on more than 30 school and university productions of Greek plays – some in the original Greek, many in his own translations
3 May 2021 • 3:53pm
David Raeburn being applauded at the end of a performance of Euripides Ion at New College, Oxford, in 2012
Credit: JL Lightfoot
David Raeburn, who has died aged 93, was a prolific director of Greek drama and translator of ancient literature, and as a headmaster and Oxford tutor played an important role in defending the status of Classics in the British education system.
Raeburn’s passion for Greek drama was the leitmotif that ran through his life. He directed a Greek play for the first time in 1947 as an undergraduate at Oxford: Aeschylus’s Agamemnon in Louis MacNeice’s translation. His last production, 72 years later, was of the same play in the same translation.