 Bernard Williams was born in Essex in 1929, and educated at Chigwell School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Greats, the uniquely Oxonian degree that begins with Homer and Vergil and concludes with Thucydides, Tacitus, and (surprisingly perhaps) the latest in contemporary philosophy. Both Williams’ subject of study and his tutors, especially Richard Hare, remained as influences throughout his life: the Greeks’ sort of approach to philosophy never ceased to attract him, Hare’s sort of approach never ceased to have the opposite effect. (Williams’ contemporaries at Balliol, John Lucas for example, still report their mischievous use of “combined tactics” in philosophy tutorials with Hare; or perhaps the relevant preposition is “against”.) 