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AbstractGilbert Murray was one of the towering figures of 20th century cultural and intellectual life, and the foremost Hellenist of his generation. He was also a tireless campaigner for peace and international reconciliation, and a pioneer in the development of international intellectual cooperation, not least in the field of International Relations (IR). Yet in IR today he is largely forgotten. This article seeks to put Murray back on the historiographical map. It argues that while in many ways consistent with the image of the inter-war 'utopian', Murray's thinking in certain significant ways defies this image. It examines the twin foundations of his international thought – liberalism and Hellenism – and their manifestation in a version of international intellectual cooperation that while aristocratic and outmoded in some respects, nonetheless contains certain enduring insights.

All law," as Professor Gregory Tunkin, the former Principal Legal Adviser to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, has remarked, "is a species of coexistence." I take it that Dr. Tunkin means by that that legal norms, if they are to be really meaningful as law-in-action in any community, must proceed on a basis of the reconciliation of the competing claims advanced by the main social interestgroups in that community. The international law of the era of the Soviet-Western détente, that hopefully has succeeded to the erstwhile Cold War conflicts, is based on just such a species of intersystems accommodations and compromises, highlighted of course by the Moscow Test Ban Treaty of August 1963 but represented also in a series of lesser agreements and adjustments of fundamental interests-conflicts. The essence of international law-making under these circumstances, if it is to yield a viable system of norms that actually will operate as law-in-action in the contemporary World Community, becomes one of looking for genuine mutuality and reciprocity of interest as between the main political-ideological groupings in the World Community.