Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) was a British historian. He studied at Oxford and taught at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of London, and at the London School of Economics; he also was Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. His brief stay (1911-1912) at the British School at Athens (Greece) greatly imbued his philosophical ideas about the decline of civilisations. He was a prominent analyst of the developments in the Middle East, while some of his numerous studies are dedicated to Greek history.