Luce was the twelfth of thirteen children of the Rev. John James Luce,
Vicar of
St Nicholas's,
Gloucester. He was educated at
Dean Close School,
Cheltenham, from where he gained a classical scholarship to
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and in 1911, obtained a first-class degree in
Classics. During his Cambridge years, he was a member of the
Cambridge Apostles and his circle of friends included
Arthur Waley, giving him admission to the friendship of such contemporaries as
Rupert Brooke,
Aldous Huxley, and
John Maynard Keynes and other members of the
Bloomsbury Group. In 1912 Luce was appointed Lecturer in English Literature at Government College,
Rangoon, later a constituent college of the
University of Rangoon. There he developed a lasting friendship with the young Pali scholar
Pe Maung Tin. In 1915, he married Pe Maung Tin's sister
Ma Tee Tee. Luce's studies of Burmese culture resulted in articles contributed to the
Journal of the
Burma Research Society. He was a prolific author throughout his life and wrote books and articles on a wide variety of subjects relating particularly to Burma's history and languages such as
Chinese Invasions of Burma in the 18th Century,
Inscriptions of Burma,
The Economic Life of the Early Burman, and
An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Karen Languages. His three-volume
Old Burma: early Pagan, covers the history, art and architecture of Burma and its capital city Pagan in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Phases of Pre-Pagan Burma, on the earlier history of Burma, appeared posthumously. His writings remain authoritative today and are widely cited. During the Japanese invasion in 1942 Luce and his wife escaped into
India. He returned to Rangoon after the war and remained there until 1964, when, like other foreigners, he was forced to leave the country. His final fifteen years were spent on
Jersey. The high esteem in which he was held by Burmese and Western scholars is reflected in the publication of the two-volume work,
Essays to G. H. Luce by his colleagues and friends in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, which appeared in 1966. ==The Luce Collection==