Anthony, a Leverhulme Special Research Fellow, has a brief to develop the teaching of Modern Greek language and literature at Queen's University Belfast. He was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, in 1945. He studied Theology and English at Cambridge University (BA 1966). He returned to university – King’s College London – in 1992 following a non-academic career that included designing and making furniture, building contracting, and architectural design. After an MA in Byzantine Studies (1994), he wrote a PhD thesis on modern Greek poetry, ‘The appropriation of biblical and liturgical language in the poetry of Palamas, Sikelianos and Elytis’ (1999). Anthony spent a year at Princeton as post-doctoral research fellow in Hellenic Studies, and was recently appointed to a similar position at Queen’s University Belfast. Most of his publications, and his current research, focus on the work of the Alexandrian Greek poet C.P. Cavafy (1863–1933). He is currently writing a book, provisionally titled Poetry and Empire: Cavafy’s Byzantium, and also hopes to produce the first critical edition of Cavafy’s poems. Another future project involves a Cavafy Database, an innovative structure designed to synthesise all available biographical and bibliographical information relating to Cavafy (and it could be readily adapted to the study of any other author). He is also interested in the literary study of Greek liturgical poetry and in particular the work of the sixth-century Greek hymnographer Romanos the Melodist.

Publications
A. Hirst, '"The old poet of the city": Cavafy in Darley's Alexandria', Lawrence Durrell and the Greek world, ed. A. Lillios (Selinsgrove, PA, 2004), 106-119
A. Hirst, 'C.P. Cavafy: fourteen Byzantine texts and translations', Metaphrastes, or, gained in translation, essays and translations in honour of Robert H. Jordan, ed. M. Mullett (BBTT, 9, Belfast, 2004), 296-313
Alexandria, real and imagined, ed A. Hirst and M. Silk (Aldershot, 2004)
A. Hirst, 'Cavafy and Cantacuzenus; allies or enemies?', Kampos, 11 (2003), 51-81
A. Hirst, '"The old poet of the city": Cavafy in Darley's Alexandria', Deus Loci, 8 (2002)
A. Hirst, 'C.P. Cavafy: Byzantine historian?', Kámpos: Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek, 8 (2000), 45-74
A. Hirst, 'Left out, crossed out and pasted over: the editorial implications of Cavafy's own evaluations of his uncollected and unpublished poems', with Sarah Ekdawi, Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand), 5 (1997-99), 79-132.
A. Hirst, 'A glimpse of Cavafy at work', Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 23 (1999), 246-254.
A. Hirst, 'Two cheers for Byzantium: equivocal attitudes in the poetry of Palamas and Cavafy', Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity, ed. D. Ricks and P. Magdalino (Aldershot, 1998), 105-117.
A. Hirst, '"Old mens souls": an analysis of Cavafy's poem and its English translations', Greek Letters, 11 (1997-98), 81-105.
A. Hirst, 'The missing day: a mistake in the time scheme of Karkavitsas' The Beggar', Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, 12/13 (1996-97), 279-286.
A. Hirst, '"Hidden things": Cavafy's thematic catalogues', with Sarah Ekdawi, Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand), 4 (1996), 1-34.
A. Hirst, 'Philosophical, historical and sensual: an examination of Cavafy's thematic collections', Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 19 (1995), 33-93.

Translations
'Christ and the poetic ego in the work of Palamas, Sikelianos and Elytis', Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 27, 1-2 (2001), 243-265
Poems, or excerpts from poems, by Palamas, Mavilis, Elytis, Solomos, and Sikelianos, The mad and sacred olive tree: Its image in Greek poetry, ed. A. Stathi-Schoorel (Athens, 1998), 21-26, 29, 56, 63, 69. In the 2nd ed. (Athens, 1999) there is also a translation from Venezis, on p. 61.
'C.P. Cavafy: Poems 1897-1910', Greek Letters, 12 (1999)