Colin Buchanan Radford (1931–2022)

Abstract

Colin Buchanan Radford was raised by his grandparents in a modest Nottingham household. His love for French, drama, and performance was instilled by a housemaster at the school where he was educated from the age of seven, and where he became a keen cricketer and county shot-putter. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery, and was stationed in what was known then as British Malaya. His PhD thesis, on ‘The Role of Woman in Twentieth-Century French Drama’, was completed in 1970 at Queen’s University Belfast, and he delivered his inaugural lecture, ‘A Dramatist in Search of His Public’, on Armand Salacrou, in QUB in 1975. He published a number of pieces on French theatre, and co-authored, with Christopher Shorley and Mary Hossain, Signposts to French Literature (London: Hutchinson, 1988), a wide-ranging introduction to the canonical authors of French literature, and a staple of the A-level classroom for many years. Colleagues in Queen’s remember Colin first and foremost for the major part he played in shaping French studies at Queen’s in the 1970s and 1980s, as Professor and Head of the Department of French, as Head of the newly formed School of Modern Languages in the early 1990s, and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He was a specialist in French drama, ahead of his time in examining the role and representation of women in French theatre, and also a pioneer in teaching twentieth-century and, in some cases, living authors. For Colin, French drama was not just an academic pursuit: he was synonymous with, and widely remembered for, the ‘French play’ — produced in the Group Theatre, Belfast, and elsewhere. He spearheaded the production of plays by experimental writers such as Jean Anouilh, Jean Cocteau, and Eugène Ionesco. He is particularly fondly remembered as an inspiring director who instinctively understood how theatre worked: he was able to nurture the talents of even reserved students, and knew how to captivate an audience confronted with challenging, and even uncomfortable, dramatic materials.