All The People, So Many People…

This year is turning out to be rather iffy for people who were significant influences on my early academic career – besides Dolly and Tim, of course – to the point where I almost feel I should send ‘Wishing you continued good health’ cards to the survivors. First Rosamond McKitterick, from my undergraduate days, and now the Italian historian Elio Lo Cascio, whom I haven’t seen for years, but was quite a looming presence as I tried to find my feet after finishing the doctorate. I first met Elio in Cambridge, which he visited regularly, when I was still a graduate student, and found him rather terrifying. To be fair, I found most senior academics terrifying, and compared to many Italians (who have, or at any rate had back then, a very clear sense of hierarchy which puts graduate students a long way towards the bottom) he was affability itself, but it was a rather larger-than-life, almost Falstaffian affability, that made me shrink instinctively. Obviously it didn’t help that my spoken…