Obituary: David Mackenzie, 1943–2016

Abstract

David Mackenzie was born in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. As his surname and perhaps even his temperament suggest, the ancestry of his family was Scottish. He attended Brighton Grammar School. In a characteristically forthright interview given in October 2013 to Cuttings, the online journal of the Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland, he explained that he had originally intended to go on to study photography, but was pushed by the school and, even more firmly, by his mother in the direction of university:I decided that I wanted to take Romance Linguistics (or Spanish and Arabic at Edinburgh), having loathed literature at my Brighton Grammar school. [...] Edinburgh and Birmingham rejected me, but then I was called for interview at Cambridge, and this time I rejected them on the grounds that they didn't do a year abroad.In the meantime, David had spent seven weeks in the summer of 1960 at the home of his Galician penfriend in rural Mosteiro de Meis, an experience that marked the beginning of what was to be a deep, lifelong relationship with the language and culture of that region.In the end, he matriculated at Keble College, Oxford, in 1962, 'They charitably gave me a place on the strength of my performance in the Scholarship Exam., but no Scholarship, unfortunately'.The humane attitude towards students that characterized him as a teacher was largely a matter of his own personality, but also owed not a little to his formation at Oxford in the early 1960s. In the interview, when asked who his most inspirational teacher there had been, David replied:Fred Hodcroft [...], because whenever I dried up in the one-to-one tutorials because I'd written the paper I was to read out to him overnight, he would fill in the gap by explaining the different sensations to be derived from smoking the pipe or the cigarette or the hazards of being a rear gunner on a plane (Mosquito, I think, but do they have a rear gunner?) in the far east, fighting the Japs.After taking a BA Honours degree in Spanish in 1966, he worked as Assistant Keeper of Printed Books in the British Library from 1970 to 1974.In 1975 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Nottingham for a thesis entitled 'A Critical Edition with Linguistic and Historical Introduction of the Coronica de Santa Maria de Iria' (a mid-15th-century Galician chronicle tracing the history of the diocese of Iria). The Chronicle pays special attention to the period of the first Archbishop of Santiago, Diego Xelmirez (1068/70-1136), whose name David latterly incorporated into his email address, much to the mystification of the uninitiated.From 1974 until 1986 he was lecturer in Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Ulster at Coleraine, and an enthusiastic member of its men's hockey team.He lectured at the University of Birmingham between 1986 and 1996, before taking up the Chair of Spanish at University College Cork in 1996, a position he held until his retirement in 2008. Ireland suited his temperament and he proved to be an engaging and energetic Head of Department, securing additional posts, reinvigorating medieval and linguistic studies, generally expanding horizons, particularly the department's range of external (and internal) connections and relationships, and playing a key role in establishing the Irish Centre for Mexican Studies.David's research interests lay in the fields of Medieval Spanish Literature, especially the works of Juan Rodriguez del Padron and the Sentimental Romance; the editing of Medieval Castilian, Galician and Aragonese texts; and Lexicography. …