Sunday, 2 April 2017

Emeritus Professor W.A. Speck R.I.P.

I was saddened to learn of the death of Bill Speck in February 2017. He will, I'm sure be sadly missed by the whole community of eighteenth-century studies. I first met him at the University of Nottingham at a meeting of the Historical Association, a society which he was a great advocate and past President. I would later work alongside him co-convening the University of Nottingham Interdisciplinary Eighteenth-Century Research Seminar (2009-2011). His passion for History, and the Eighteenth-Century in particular, was infectious and he rapidly became a friend and mentor. He was a regular and popular figure at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, where we continued to meet after I left Nottingham. His work has left an indelible mark upon the history of the reign of Queen Anne, and his later work on the poet Robert Southey demonstrated his intellectual talent and adaptability, publishing across the length and breadth of the long eighteenth-century. 


Rest in Peace Old Friend.

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