Martin Litchfield West, OM, FBA (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar.

This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin.

His parents lived at that time in Orpington, but moved in 1939 to Hampton, where his father was appointed resident engineer at the Metropolitan Water Board-operated waterworks.

Excelling at both linguistics and mathematics, he was advanced to the 'Upper Eighth' and sat for a scholarship to Balliol College a year early.

[6] West married fellow scholar Stephanie Pickard in 1960 at Nottingham, after meeting her at a lecture given by Eduard Fraenkel at Corpus Christi College, Oxford,[2][7][8] whose seminars he attended.

[2][13] Fellow Oxford academic Armand D'Angour paid tribute to him as "a man of few words in seven languages".

In 1967, he published with Reinhold Merkelbach Fragmenta Hesiodea, an edition containing other fragmentary poems attributed to Hesiod.