Francis Robinson: personal recollections

Abstract

The three years that I spent at Royal Holloway, University of London between 1975 and 1978, as professor and head of the History Department, were among the happiest and most purposive of my entire academic life. This was due, in no small part, to my instant friendship with Francis Robinson. We soon realised that our interests converged to a remarkable degree, despite the gulf of almost two millennia between my own concern for the world of Late Antiquity and his with religion and politics in contemporary India and Pakistan.