Freeman-Grenville, Greville Stewart Parker
1918-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born June 29, 1918, in Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, England; died February 3, 2005. Historian, civil servant, educator, and author. Freeman-Grenville was well known for his writings on East Africa and the Middle East, and was an advocate for the preservation of archaeological sites in those areas. He studied history at Worcester College, Oxford, where he earned a master's degree in 1943. After serving in the British Army during World War II in Egypt and Palestine, he developed an interest in Arabic history. When the war ended, he took a job as a teacher in Abadan, Iran, and later taught in Baghdad. In 1951 he joined the Civil Service and became an education officer in Tanganyika, where he learned to speak Swahili and became fascinated by ancient coinage there. Next, from 1961 until 1964, he became an education officer in Aden. Resigning from the Civil Service in 1964, he moved to Accra, where he taught languages at the University of Ghana and was senior research fellow in African history. Freeman-Grenville continued this teaching path at the University of York during the late 1960s, and then at the State University of New York from 1969 until 1974. After that, he spent the remainder of his career as a freelance writer and translator fluent in Swahili, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. Named a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher and earning the Papal Cross, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, for his work to restore important archaeological and religious sites, Freeman-Grenville was also the author of numerous other histories and reference works. Among these are The Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika (1962), Chronology of African History (1973), The Swahili Coast, Second to Nineteenth Centuries: Islam, Christianity, and Commerce in Eastern Africa (1988), and The Holy Land: A Pilgrim's Guide to Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai (1996).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), March 15, 2005, p. 59.