Donald Beves

Donald Howard Beves (6 March 1896 – 6 July 1961) was an English academic whose subject was modern languages, and dean and later vice-provost of King's College, Cambridge.

He gained a classics scholarship to King's in December 1914 but postponed his further education to serve with the Rifle Brigade during World War I.

He became a clerk at the House of Commons, but after writing a thesis on the Holy Grail he was given a Fellowship of King's.

At his death in 1961, The Times said of him "although he wrote little, he delivered ... important lectures on sixteenth-century French literature".

[1] In June 1977, Peter Hennessy accused Beves of being the "fourth man" in the affair of Philby, Burgess, and Maclean.