Short answers, pulled from the story.
Oswyn Murray, born on the 26th of March 1937, is a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and a distinguished classical scholar. He is known for his work on early Greece and the ancient symposion, and as joint editor of the Oxford History of the Classical World alongside John Boardman and Jasper Griffin.
Oswyn Murray is a great-grandson of James Augustus Henry Murray, the Scottish lexicographer who served as the original editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Yes. Boris Johnson was one of Murray's students when Johnson was reading Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. Murray has described Johnson as "a buffoon and an idler."
In 2018, when Johnson became prime minister, Murray sent him a renuntiatio amicitiae, a formal public revocation of their friendship drawn from ancient Roman practice.
Murray's major works include Early Greece, published by Harvard University Press with a second edition in 1993; Symposia, edited by Murray and published by Oxford University Press in 1990; and The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present, published by Allen Lane in 2024.
Murray has five children: James A. H. Murray (born 1961), the glaciologist Tavi Murray (born 1965), Alexander Edmund Murray (born 1976), Malcolm Patrick Murray (born 1980), and Rosamund Jean Murray (born 1982).