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Emeritus Professor Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton: an appreciation Bom 17 August 1921, died December 4 1994 The numerous obituaries of Geoffrey which have appeared in British newspapers have virtually ignored that aspect of his life which means that he will be as gready missed in Australasia as in Britain. In the many years he spent at Cambridge, first as assistant lecturer, then as reader in Tudor studies, as professor of English constitutional history, and as Regius professor, and in retirement he gave supervision, friendship, advice, assistance, and encouragement to innumerable uncertain and often lonely staff and students from other parts of the globe. H e helped them obtain positions and gain promotions, so that by the 1970s he had so global a network of colleagues and friends that he could travel round the world (alwaysfirstclass—a minor self-indulgence) andfinda welcome, a bed, a game of squash, and a good whisky in every city he visited. Australasia is innured to 'visiting firemen' w h o assume that anything will do for the 'unsophisticated colonies' and produce old papers, sometimes already in print. Geoffrey, on the contrary, was the ideal visitor. Perhaps it was his own early experiences as a stranger in a foreign land which prevented him from assuming ignorance or inferiority were a natural product of distance. It was for an Australian press that hefirstwrote The Practice of History, hisfirstmethodological credo. H e delivered papers to academic audiences which were as up-to-date and challenging as any he might give in Britain and treated suggestions and questions with the same courtesy. His presentation was meticulous, clear, and well-structured. H e delivered public lectures which helped sustain interest in history in a non-academic public; he willingly went to the most out-of-the-way places in N e w Zealand to lecture to school-children, and he did all this without notes, his formidable memory effortlessly producing the appropriate evidence. W h e n he attended conferences, he went to all the sessions possible, listened punctiliously to the papers and made positive and helpful comments when he could. Australasia took him to its heart, invited him back more often than he could come, and appreciated the help he gave local journals like Parergon and students interested in early m o d e m studies. Unlike many visitors, after the PARERGON ns 12.2 (January 1995) 2 Emeritus Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton trip was over he remembered his hosts, replied to letters prompdy and helpfully, and offered reciprocal hospitality in Cambridge. N o one could doubt that Cambridge, where he was a familiar sight on his old-fashioned bicycle, was the focus of his life but he was keenly aware that therestof the world was equally significant Perhaps it was his opposition to totalitarian government, his commitment to individual freewill and academic selfregulation which sustained his willingness, at a time when 'postcolonialism ' was deconstructing imperialism, to promote the study of English constitutional history in countries which preferred to deem it irrelevant. He had been early inoculated against adopting the fashionable for its own sake and strongly maintained the need for history to adhere to its own methodologies. Geoffrey was always good company, full of good stories and academic gossip, often both witty and scabrous. His basic cynicism was leavened with optimism. Closer acquaintance revealed an endearing strain of diffidence from the mild despair with which he combed the city for a present which his wife might like to the problem of laundry when staying (as he so often did) with colleagues rather than in a hotel. Much has been made in some obituaries of his unwillingness to modify his opinions, his tendency to exaggerate, and his willingness to send vituperative letters to reviewers w h o m he found guilty of misunderstanding. He was, however, able to supervise generations of post-graduate students who found new material which cast a new light on many aspects of his work while remaining on good terms with the vast majority of them and taking pride in their discoveries. His influence on Tudor history should be seen as much in the work of his students as in his own influential textbooks and...

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