Michael Grant is a name that might refer to different individuals, but one prominent figure was a British classicist, numismatist, and a knight of the Order of the British Empire, born in London on November 21, 1914, and passed away in the same city on October 4, 2004. According to an obituary in The Times, he was one of the few classicists who earned the respect of both scholars and general readers. Grant was incredibly prolific, having written and edited over fifty non-fiction books and translations on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from coinage in ancient Rome and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the Gospels and Jesus. His "very convincingly revisionist" biography of Cleopatra has been described as "empathetic and intelligent." He described himself as "one of the few independent writers in the field of ancient history: a rare phenomenon."