Dominic Rieu; Scholar who translated the Acts of the Apostles for Penguin and later revised his father E. V. Rieu's versions of Homer
Hyfler/Rosner
May 24, 2008
Dominic Rieu
Scholar who translated the Acts of the Apostles for Penguin
and later revised his father E. V. Rieu's versions of Homer
A recipient of the Military Cross for action in Somaliland
during the Second World War, Dominic Rieu became a
well-respected headmaster and translator of the Acts of the
Apostles for Penguin.
Dominic Christopher Henry Rieu was born in Bombay in 1916,
where his father, E. V. Rieu, had set up the first overseas
office of Oxford University Press. (E. V. Rieu went on to
edit the Penguin Classics, and his wife, Nelly Rieu, was at
one time editor of the literary magazine, The Athenaeum. She
was also the first to translate Babar the Elephant into
English.)
Dominic Rieu went from Highgate School to the Queen's
College, Oxford, where he read Greats and then English. On
the outbreak of war he was commissioned into the West
Yorkshire Regiment. It was in 1941 that he saw action in
Somaliland, where he came under what he later described as
competent Italian artillery fire at Cheren. Churchill
commented in the House of Commons about the hard fighting,
which cost the Allies 4,000 casualties. One of those was
Rieu, who was hit in the foot by shrapnel. He went to South
Africa to recuperate and there he met his wife. Awarded the
Military Cross, he spent the rest of the war in London,
working for the War Office Selection Board.
He went into education after the war, firstly at William
Ellis Grammar School, then as head of English at Warwick
School. From 1955 to 1977 he was headmaster at Simon Langton
Grammar School, Canterbury. Rieu led the school from
strength to strength, with growing numbers of places at
Oxbridge. Musical talents produced by the school in those
years ranged from members of pop groups such as Soft Machine
to the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, while the school
also made its name in sport.
Rieu himself was a charismatic yet lofty figure, striding
around the school wearing his gown and carrying his
mortarboard, in some ways aloof, but with a knowledge of his
boys that often surprised them. His was a mix of tradition
and liberal thinking which was at times perplexing, with the
introduction of boaters in the mid-1950s at one extreme and
the suggestion in the mid-1960s that We Shall Overcome would
make a good school song at the other. He passionately
defended grammar schools at speech days, but also spoke
profoundly at a service in Canterbury Cathedral about the
ultimate hollowness of the beatnik movement. His focus was
on the good of the school and what he saw as the best
interests of the boys. As he explained once to the press,
freedom in a school was best born of a freedom of
atmosphere: boys should be appreciated for what they were
becoming without being pressed into a mould.
Rieu was a man of strong faith. He became a lay preacher
during the war, and in middle age discovered Subud, a
spiritual movement that hailed from Indonesia. He became
known and respected for his beliefs as well as his writings
and he also gained a name as a translator, having translated
the Acts of the Apostles for Penguin Classics in 1957. In
later life he revised his father's translations of Homer. To
some people he was an enigmatic man, almost an anachronism
with his public-school style in a grammar-school setting.
Yet in many ways he was the right man for the time when
state education was reaping the benefits of Butler's 1944
Education Act. Within the limitations of the system he
created opportunities for boys from towns and villages
across east Kent. Many of them have good reason to be
grateful to him for that.
His wife, Laura, whom he married in 1946, predeceased him.
He is survived by a daughter and a son.
Dominic Rieu, MC, soldier, translator and headmaster, was
born on October 26, 1916. He died on April 29, 2008, aged 91