William Miller (historian)

William Miller (1864–1945) was a medievalist and journalist.

The son of a Cumberland mine owner, Miller was educated at Oxford, where he gained a double first, and was called to the bar in 1889, but never practised law. He married Ada Mary Wright in 1895, and in 1896 published The Balkans, followed in 1898 by Travels and Politics in the Near East. In 1903 he and his wife left England for Italy, and despite an effort by Ronald Burrows to recruit Miller as the first incumbent of the Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language, and Literature at London University, he and his wife spent the rest of their lives abroad. They lived in Rome until 1923, when Miller found Benito Mussolini's rise to power distasteful, and they moved to Athens. There he was associated with the British School at Athens until the German invasion of Greece in 1941. Together the couple lived in South Africa for the rest of their lives, Ada Mary surviving him by four years. They had no children.

His important publications include:

• The Balkans (1896)
• Travels and Politics in the Near East (1898)
• Greek Life in Town and Country (1905)
• The Latins in the Levant (1908)
• The Ottoman Empire and its Successors (1913)
• Essays on the Latin Orient (1921)
• History of the Greek People (1821-1921) (1922)
• Trebizond the Last Greek Empire (1926)

Sources

• Paul Hetherington, "William Miller: Medieval historian and modern journalist", British School at Athens Studies, 17 (2009), pp. 153–161.