The sad news reached me (and the rest of the world) last week that Dame Averil Cameron, the distinguished historian, has passed away, aged 86. I had the privilege of interviewing Dame Averil (or Averil, as she insisted) only a couple of years back, and I took the opportunity to ask her a range of questions about her career, life and publications. It was a real pleasure to me personally that she was pleased with the result and I was grateful indeed to her for the opportunity to talk with her, as were we all at Antigone Journal. The interview (here) is now doing the rounds again on social media, in the wake of the sad news of Averil’s death. The idea was to keep the questions and answers punchy and to stick strictly to a ’10 questions only’ format.
Of course since asking the questions posed in the interview, and particularly over the past week or so, I have thought of many more questions I could or should have posed. About her inspiring Headmistress at school; about the influence of Momigliano; about life as a teacher (and not just a producer of academic work) in the university world; and about the inspiration her short and brilliantly readable Fontana book on the later Roman empire provided for me when I was revising for my university finals and contemplating graduate studies on late antiquity. But most of all about politics and religion: Averil was, I know, a committed Christian, had been involved in various ways in the Anglican church, including attending General Synod. She was also, I believe, a supporter of the Labour party. It would have been good if we had touched on those subjects in the interview also.
Requiescat in pace et lux perpetua luceat ei
ad astra per mundum 