Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

• 1. Introduction

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  Andrew Frederick Wallace-Hadrill was born in Oxford on the 29th of July 1951, the son of a mediaeval historian. That family connection to the deep past may explain something about the direction his life took. He became one of Britain's most prominent scholars of the ancient Roman world, a man who spent decades studying cities buried by a volcano nearly two thousand years ago. But his story is not simply one of academic achievement. It is also a story about what happens when ancient sites are left to decay, and about what one historian decided to do about it. Who is the "angry archaeologist" who appeared on Australian television to warn that Pompeii was suffering a "second death"? What drew him to Herculaneum, Pompeii's less famous neighbour? And how did a man trained in classical texts at Oxford end up directing a conservation project for sixteen years? Those questions run through his life's work.

• 2. Oxford Roots

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  John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew's father, was a mediaeval historian, and the household Andrew grew up in was steeped in scholarly life. He was educated at Rugby School, the private institution in the English Midlands, before arriving at Corpus Christi College, Oxford to study Literae humaniores, the rigorous classics course that combines ancient languages, philosophy, and history. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, which Oxford's tradition later promoted automatically to a Master of Arts. He then moved to St John's College, Oxford to pursue doctoral research, submitting his thesis in 1980. That thesis, titled "Suetonius on the emperor: studies in the representation of the emperor in the Caesars", announced the preoccupation that would shape his early published work: the biography and self-presentation of Roman emperors. His first book, Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars, appeared in 1983 through Duckworth, followed by a further volume on Suetonius in 1995.

• 3. An Academic Life in Motion

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  Wallace-Hadrill's first academic post was a Fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he served as Director of Studies in Classics from 1976 to 1983. He then moved to the University of Leicester, where he lectured from 1983 until 1987. In 1987 he took up a Professorship of Classics at the University of Reading, a position he held until 2009. That two-decade span at Reading proved enormously productive. His 1994 book Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, published by Princeton University Press, won the Archaeological Institute of America's James R. Wiseman Award in 1995. Rome's Cultural Revolution followed in 2008 from Cambridge University Press. Through those same years he was also directing the British School at Rome, the prestigious institution that supports British researchers working in Italy, a role he held from 1995 to 2009. The combination of a Reading professorship and a Rome directorship placed him at the centre of British-Italian scholarly exchange, a contribution recognised in the 2004 New Year Honours when he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to UK-Italian cultural relations.

• 4. Pompeii's Second Death

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  In 2004, Wallace-Hadrill agreed to an interview for the Australian television programme 60 Minutes, and what he said there stuck. He described Pompeii as suffering a "second death", and he placed blame squarely on human neglect rather than nature. His words were direct: "Man is wreaking a damage far greater than Vesuvius. The moment of Pompeii's destruction was also the moment of its preservation. The public needs to understand that unless constant efforts are taken to arrest the decay, the site will, within decades crumble to nothing." The programme labelled him an "angry archaeologist", a tag that captured something real. His argument was that Pompeii's conservation problems were being neglected when they needed urgent attention. That concern was not abstract. From 2001 he had been directing the Herculaneum Conservation Project, focused on the neighbouring Roman city that was also destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. He directed that project until 2016, and his 2011 book Herculaneum: Past and Future, published by Frances Lincoln, made the case for the site to a wider readership.

• 5. Cambridge and Herculaneum

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  Wallace-Hadrill was elected the 25th Master of Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge, taking up the position in August 2009 when Professor Dame Sandra Dawson's tenure expired by statute. He held the role until 2013, stepping down to concentrate on the Herculaneum Conservation Project. The announcement of his departure came in June 2012. From the 1st of October 2012 he continued at Cambridge as Director of Research of the Faculty of Classics, eventually attaining emeritus Professor status. Sidney Sussex itself is one of Cambridge's smaller colleges, founded in the sixteenth century, and the mastership is an administrative and ceremonial responsibility that sits alongside a scholar's research. For Wallace-Hadrill the pull of Herculaneum proved stronger. His full Cambridge title is Professor of Roman Studies and Director of Research in the Faculty of Classics. In 2014 the University of Reading, where he had spent two decades, awarded him an honorary DLitt degree. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2010, and had been elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on the 30th of April 1998.

• 6. Documentary Presence

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  Wallace-Hadrill made three documentary programmes for BBC television, all of which were well reviewed. The first, The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum, was first screened in April 2013. Arts desk critics described it as "a straightforward, lively but informative documentary of substance" about Herculaneum. The two-parter Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome screened in August 2015 and drew a notable response from critics for its argument that the physical construction of Athens and Rome ran in parallel with the development of democracy in those two cultures. Daisy Wyatt, writing in The Independent, singled out Wallace-Hadrill's on-screen manner: "An exuberant Wallace-Hadrill made the documentary watchable thanks to his passion for the subject. It was hard to feel anything but warmth for the antithesis of the typical Oxbridge academic presenter." That characterisation of him as the antithesis of a detached academic presenter sits alongside the "angry archaeologist" label from 60 Minutes a decade earlier. His most recent major publication, The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity, appeared from Cambridge University Press in 2025, extending his scholarly range well beyond the Vesuvian cities that made his public reputation.