J.D. Fage 1921–2002

Extract

In John Fage's company one never felt subject to demands that his eminence be ritually acknowledged. Somehow he did not require this kind of reassurance and managed to be utterly free of pomp. Though he was the founder of our Birmingham Centre of West African Studies, he did not expect the rest of us to see its headship as his natural preserve. In the 1970s he unsuccessfully tried to modify the conditions of his university appointment so as to pass on the directorship to each of his CWAS colleagues in rotation, independent of rank. He was a man of elegant deportment and refined manners, cultivating what now seems an old-worldly reticence about his feelings and achievements. (At the time that oh so very British style could already induce some amusement in barbarians from, say, the European continent, South Africa, or South America. But some other styles that have become current since make one remember the old dispensation with nostalgic fondness).

All he did was done effortlessly, or so his behavior seemed to suggest: running CWAS, being a family man, co-founding (1960) and co-editing (up to 1973) with Roland Oliver the Journal of African History, co-editing (also with Oliver) the Cambridge History of Africa, authoring successful and much reprinted books, supervising theses, teaching undergraduates, helping to launch and edit the UNESCO General History of Africa, serving as the first Honorary Secretary of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom, serving in the Executive Council of the International African Institute, fulfilling increasingly senior functions in the government of the University of Birmingham, and this is not a complete list.