William Bedell Stanford was an Irish classical scholar and senator. He was Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College Dublin between 1940 and 1980 and served as the 22nd chancellor of the university between 1982 and 1984. He was born in Belfast, the son of a Dublin-born Church of Ireland clergyman who served in Waterford and Tipperary. He was educated at Bishop Foy's School in Waterford, where a special teacher had to be recruited to coach him in Greek. He subsequently won a sizarship to Trinity College Dublin. He was elected a Scholar in his first year at Trinity, having become an undergraduate in October 1928. He also served as auditor of the College Classical Society. He was editor of in Hilary term of 1931. He became a Fellow in 1934 and was one of the last Fellows to be elected by examination. Stanford was one of seven candidates nominated for the Provostship of the University on 11 March 1952 but was eliminated along with two other candidates in the first round of the election. He was considered, at the age of 42, to be too junior. The successful candidate on that occasion was the mathematician, Albert Joseph McConnell, who remained in office for 22 years. His grandfather's cousin was the composer Charles Villiers Stanford.
Academic career
Stanford established himself as a Greek scholar in his twenties with the publication of two books which approached Greek literature as a subject for literary criticism, Greek Metaphor and Ambiguity in Greek Literature. He is perhaps best remembered for his commentaries aimed at students on Homer's Odyssey, Aristophanes' Frogs, and Sophocles' Ajax. In 1965, Stanford gave the Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on the topic of the pronunciation of Ancient Greek. The lectures were revised into a book published in 1967. Stanford had a particular interest in the classical tradition, in Ireland and elsewhere, and published a number of articles on this topic in the Trinity journal Hermathena, as well as a brief but wide-ranging book entitled Ireland and the Classical Tradition. A long-time member of the Royal Irish Academy, Stanford was appointed chairman of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies by the President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera. Stanford's poetry appears in several anthologies and his posthumously published memoirs. After Stanford's death, a series of lectures in his honour was established at Trinity College, Dublin. The first lecturer in the series was Duncan F. Kennedy, a former student of Stanford's.
Seanad career
He also represented Trinity in Seanad Éireann between 1951 and 1969. During the 1950s, however, he had the courage to come out publicly against the Fethard Boycott, and he also demanded an inquiry into the assault on Jehovah's Witnesses in Clare. In both cases, Éamon de Valera proved sympathetic personally but declined to take any public action. As a leader of the Republic of Ireland's small Protestant population, Stanford was a lifelong champion of the proportional representationelectoral process, believing that it protected the rights of minorities.
