Philip Ford (1949–2013)

Philip Ford, Professor of French and Neo-Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge, died of cancer on 8 April 2013. Profoundly public-spirited, he contributed to the profession on many levels. He was an outstanding scholar. He advanced enormously our understanding of Renaissance literature and thought, especially poetry, written in Latin as well as in French. He was a leader of the critical revolution that has seen early modern Latin-language literature recognized as fundamental rather than dismissed as ‘an eccentric sideshow’ (as his last book puts it). He transformed the prevailing picture of the impact of the humanist rediscovery of Homer. And he made Renaissance multilingualism an object of study in its own right, by exploring what was at stake as writers switched between the standard form of French, their own dialect, Latin, and even ancient Greek. He was a powerful defender of modern languages and the humanities. He led many associations, bodies, and committees at international, national, university, faculty, and college level. And his numerous teaching innovations included the extensive embedding of neo-Latin language and literature at undergraduate level.

Philip was born on 28 March 1949 in Ilford, where he attended the County High School. From 1968 to 1971 he took a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge (King’s College), choosing French, Latin, and modern Greek. More language apprenticeship followed the next year, which he spent teaching English at the Centro Linguistico Audiovisivo in Milan. His interest in the classical tradition had been fostered by the presence at King’s of Patrick Wilkinson and Robert Bolgar. He returned there in 1972 to undertake a PhD in neo-Latin literature. His supervisor was the great British pioneer in the field, Ian McFarlane. The thesis, completed in 1976 and approved early the next year, was on ‘The Poetical Works of George Buchanan before his Final Return to Scotland’. The return in question was from France, where the Scot, then in his mid-fifties, had spent the vast majority of his adult life, becoming one of Europe’s greatest humanists. Philip spent 1976–77 obtaining a maîtrise ès lettres modernes at the Université de Bordeaux III while also being a lecteur at the city’s Centre pédagogique régional. He returned to Cambridge for a year as Research Bye-Fellow at Girton College before taking up in 1978 a Lectureship in French at the University of Aberdeen. After three and a half years he returned again to Cambridge for (what was called in those days) a University Assistant Lectureship in the Department of French (1981), plus a Fellowship at Clare College (1982), where he was to forge lasting friendships. This period saw him lay the foundations of over thirty years of personal happiness when in 1982 he married Lenore Muskett.

It was also the year of his first major publication, George Buchanan, Prince of Poets. The title alludes to Henri Estienne’s sixteenth-century description of Buchanan as the foremost poet of the entire era. Philip’s volume shed striking new light on the writing of this remarkably neglected figure. (Philip later also co-edited a collection of essays on Buchanan and planned a collective edition of the complete poetry.) Broader than the doctorate, George Buchanan, Prince of Poets lucidly studied the poetry’s innovations in genre and technique, its relation to ancient Roman verse (Horace and Catullus), and the early drama. Philip’s account of Buchanan’s circles introduces figures who would loom large in Philip’s own later publications: Ronsard, Dorat, the Morel household, including Camille de Morel. The volume, which concluded with an edition and translation (with commentary) of a Buchanan verse collection, was entwined with Philip’s Scottish years, not only because of its subject, but also because the collaborating editor was an Aberdeen colleague (W. S. Watt) and the publisher was the Aberdeen University Press.

In Cambridge, Philip’s teaching at all levels inspired and trained a new generation of seiziémistes and neo-Latinists, from his first doctoral student (Ingrid De Smet) onwards. With a 1984 conference on Ronsard, he initiated the remarkable series of Cambridge French Colloquia...