London-born Eric Havelock (1903­1988) was a leading scholar of 
ancient Greek culture. He was a professor of Classics at Acadia 
University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia (1926­9), and at Victoria College, 
University of Toronto (1929­47). Havelock went on to teach at 
Harvard University from 1947­60, and later at Yale (1963­71). 
McLuhan was greatly impressed with Havelock’s seminal book Preface  
to Plato  (1963) which examined the profound effect of the alphabet 
on the oral culture of ancient Greece.