Patrick Wormald, Historian, RIP

[liadnan]

I've just discovered that Patrick Wormald died recently. I feel rather sad: I knew him well enough to say hello and chat for a bit at drinks after seminars and similar when I was in my third year and then at Oxford. One of the best Anglo-Saxon historians of his day, and a genuinely interesting and friendly guy, at least when sober.

I remember him chain smoking throughout a seminar once, much to the chair's despair. I also remember seeing him drink... which was sad -as most who knew him were well aware, he was a heavy-duty alcoholic. His work was, even with that burden, an impressive body, despite the fact he was only 57 when he died.

Comments

[bitterfame.livejournal.com]

I met him a fair few times in a non-academic context. When sober, he was a nice chap. At least the pain is gone now though :)

[liadnan]

Yes indeed.
Actually I ran into him at non-academic Oxford things a lot too. And he had incredibly wide interests, not only as a historian although there he was kind of ubiquitous.
His behaviour, and stories of things like Jenny throwing him out of the house at 2AM with no trousers, were fairly legendary in the history faculty.
I feel morbid now.

[bitterfame.livejournal.com]

Don't feel morbid - That's never a good way to be.

Were you a student of Patrick's? I wasn't, but had a good number of historian friends who were.

[liadnan]

No: I was doing post-graduate work at Oxford and he wasn't my supervisor. I did my undergraduate degree at UCL (ancient and medieval). But his general area of research, ie the British Isles in the early medieval ages, was pretty close to mine, and he used to go to lots of seminars, both in London (I pulled my finger out and started going to such things in my third year) and in Oxford.