After attending St Paul's School in London, Speake studied Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won various prizes for, among other things, poetry in ancient Greek.
He continued his studies at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate for an unpublished dissertation on the Byzantine transmission of ancient Greek literature.
His publications include the Penguin Dictionary of Ancient History (1995) and the two-volume Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition (2000).
[1] In 1990, with Derek Hill, he founded the Friends of Mount Athos society, under the patronage of Charles, Prince of Wales.
For his book Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2002) he received the 2002 Criticos Prize, awarded by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.