Peter Megaw

Peter Megaw studied at Peterhouse. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with Department of Antiquities and British School at Athens. Positions recorded include Director of the British School at Athens. Distinctions recorded are Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

• Name — Peter Megaw • Honorific Suffix — CStJ • Birth Name — Arthur Hubert Stanley Megaw • Born — 20 July 1910 • Birthplace — Portobello, Dublin, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland • Died — 28 May 2006 • Place of death — Hampstead, London, England • Title — Director of the British School at Athens (1962–1968) • Relatives — Eric Megaw, Basil Megaw (brothers) • Education — Campbell College • Alma Mater — Peterhouse, Cambridge • Workplaces — Department of Antiquities, Cyprus Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Institute of America British School at Athens

Megaw was born on 20 July 1910 at Portobello House nursing home in Portobello, Dublin, Ireland. He was the second of four sons of Arthur Stanley Megaw, a solicitor, and his wife, Helen Isabel Bertha Megaw (née Smith). Between 1924 and 1928, he was educated at Campbell College, Belfast, a boys' boarding school. He went on to read architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge, at the same time as the actor James Mason, graduating in 1931. Two of his brothers, Basil Megaw and Eric Megaw, also had notable careers in their own fields.

Megaw never held an academic post at a university. He spent 75 years "working on the study and preservation of the monuments of the Christian East". He first joined the British School at Athens as Walston Student in 1931, to study Byzantine architecture. He served as the first Director of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus between 1935 and 1960. In Cyprus he excavated the Kourion episcopal basilica and the Medieval fortress at Saranta Kolones. With the independence of Cyprus from British Rule in 1960, he spent two short, successive posts at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC and at the Byzantine Institute of America in Istanbul, Turkey. He served as Director of the British School at Athens from 1962 to 1968. Following his early retirement from the directorship, he joined the Harvard Centre for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks as a visiting scholar. He spent the remaining years of the 1960s and the 1970s splitting his time between Cyprus and the United States. Megaw's work can be seen in the photographic collection held at the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.

Megaw died of cancer on 28 June 2006 at his London home in Hampstead. He was cremated on 20 July 2006 at Golders Green Crematorium, London.

Megaw was known to his friends and colleagues as Peter. In 1937, he married Elektra Elena Mangoletsi. She was an artist who was born in 1905. She died in 1993. They did not have any children. In Cyprus he also acted as a public information officer and an intelligence officer on behalf of the island's British colonial government.

The authorities additionally record the headings Arthur H. Megaw, Hubert Megaw, Arthur Hubert Stanley Megaw and H. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Arthur Stanley Megaw. He married Elektra Megaw.