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English Poet Roche, Known For Greek, Latin Translations, Dies

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By MARGALIT FOX, The New York Times

Published: November 25, 2007

Paul Roche, a noted English poet and translator who was among the last living associates of the Bloomsbury group, the skein of artists and writers twined around Virginia Woolf and her family, died Oct. 30 at his home in Soller, Majorca. He was 91.

The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Cordelia Roche de Aguiar.

The author of several well-received volumes of poetry, Roche (pronounced "rawsh") taught over the years at colleges and universities throughout the United States, among them Smith College, the University of Notre Dame, Centenary College in New Jersey and Emory & Henry College in Virginia, where, his family said in a statement, "He used to wander stark naked through the woods carpeted with violets."

Roche's translations of Greek and Latin works, published in the Signet Classics series and by New American Library, have long been familiar to students in the United States and in Britain. He was also known for his three-decade-long relationship with the prominent English painter Duncan Grant, a founder of the charmed, unorthodox Bloomsbury circle.

Among the remarkable characters, Bloomsbury and otherwise, threading through Roche's life were these (the events described were confirmed by Roche's daughter and by many published accounts):

•Vanessa Bell, a painter and designer (and Virginia Woolf's sister) who married Clive Bell but also had a daughter with Grant. She was passionately jealous of Roche's friendship with Grant, though Roche, who was considered breathtakingly handsome, occasionally modeled for her. She died in 1961.

•Grant, whom Roche met in 1946 when they found themselves crossing a London street together. Before long, Roche was posing, clothed and unclothed, for Grant's paintings. Roche neglected to inform Grant that he was also an ordained Roman Catholic priest. After some time went by, he told Grant this. Grant was surprised. Roche eventually left the priesthood.

•Mary Blundell, a young English physicist who gave birth to Roche's oldest child in 1953 but later married someone else.

•Clarissa Tanner, a young American traveling in Europe who married Roche in 1954 and shortly afterward gave birth to their first child; they had three more children together. They divorced in 1983.

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Orson Welles and Christopher Plummer also make cameo appearances in his life.

Donald Robert Paul Roche was born in Mussoorie, a hill station in India, on Sept. 25, 1916.

His father, an engineer, designed bridges and stations for the Great India Peninsular Railways; his mother died of smallpox when Roche was 9.

Sent to England for schooling, Roche went on to earn degrees in philosophy and theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained in 1943, later becoming the assistant personal secretary to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster.

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