Michael Swanton


Michael James Swanton is a British polymath: historian, linguist, archaeologist and literary critic, specialising in the Anglo-Saxon period and its Old English literature.

Early life

Born in Bermondsey, in South London, in childhood Swanton experienced the London blitz; he was an epileptic who suffered from bullying. Disadvantaged, he failed the Eleven-plus, but was educated at a Modern, a Technical and then a Grammar school in South London. At the University of Durham, he was chairman of the students' council and also of the Standing Congress of Northern Student Unions. At Bath, he graduated M.Sc. in architecture; at Durham Ph.D. in archaeology and D.Litt. in arts.

Career

Swanton became an expert on Anglo-Saxon England. He first taught Beowulf at the University of Manchester, then Linguistics at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen in Germany and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and finally Medieval Studies at Exeter, where he also acted as the university's Public Orator for several years. During the 1960s and 1970s he served as Honorary Editor of the Royal Archaeological Institute. In 1975 he founded the Exeter Medieval Texts & Studies series. Reckoned an authority on Anglo-Saxon England, he was elected Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. In retirement, he remains Emeritus Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Emeritus Professor of Medieval Studies at Exeter University. He now lives in Devon, writing under noms de plume.
Swanton’s own scholarly publications included translations of Beowulf, the Gesta Herewardi, the Vitae duorum Offarum, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as books on early English literature, art, architecture, and archaeology.

Private life

In 1965, at Richmond upon Thames, Swanton married Averil Birch, who had also been chairman of the Durham University students' council, and they had three children.

Publications