SEER,Vol. 83, No.3, uly2005 Dr Henry Leeming I 920-2004 HENRY(HARRY) LEEMING,who had a distinguished career as Lecturer, and then Reader, in Comparative Slavonic Philology at the School of Slavonic Studiesin the Universityof London at a timewhen his subject was held in high esteem there, died at home in London on Christmas Day 2004. The eldest child of Thomas Leeming and Mary Ellen Leeming (nee Dunne), he was born on 6January I920 in Manchester, where he was also educated at St Bede's Grammar School. His aspirations to study classics at the University of Manchester were realized by means of a scholarship from Manchester City Council stipulatingthat he firstwork for a year as an assistantin a Manchester school. He matriculated in I939 and, despite the outbreak of war in September that year, completed his firstyear of study.In August 1940 he was calledup and aftertrainingwas assignedto the Royal Engineers on bomb-disposal work in London. In summer I942, having been transferredto a unit dealingwith railtransport,he wasposted to Egypt. He sailed on the Queen Mary, which was carryingsuppliesand troop reinforcementsin preparationfor the Battleof El Alamein. In summer I943 he was transferredto Baghdad, where he attended a course in teaching English and later that year he became a liaison officer and teacher of Englishwith the Polish Second Corps. This was not his first involvement with the Slavonic languages, for he had learned a little Russianfrom one of the mastersat St Bede's. Even so, Leeming'stime with the PolishArmy in the Middle East and Italywas a crucialfactor in his development. In December I946, afterdemobilization,he returnedto Manchester, where he completed his classics degree in I949, specializing in IndoEuropean philology. His Slavonic interests (and a scholarship) now drew him to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, where in I 952 he took a second BA, this time in Russian, specializing in Comparative Slavonic Philology. He embarked on a PhD, supervised by ProfessorW. K. Matthews, and in 1955 he was appointed to the staff of the School as lecturer. Two years later, in connection with his research, he made his firstvisit to Poland, where among the many Slavistshe met was Monika Didiakin, his futurewife. His thesis on Polish-Latin loan-words in pre-Petrine Russian was approvedfor the degree of PhD in I96 I, but it was not until 1976 that partof the materialassembledforthe thesiswaspublishedasRola j,zyka polskiegow rozwojuleksykirosygskiej do rokuI1696: wyrazypochodzenia 494 DR HENRY LEEMING lacin'skiego i roman'skiego (Wroclaw, I976). Owing largely to the years spent on war service and in taking a second BA, but partly to his uncompromising insistence on getting things right, the fruits of Leeming'sresearchbegan to appearrelativelylate. However, fromhis first articles, published in the I96os, the originality and rigour of his approach were evident. His interests were centred on historical lexicology and a collection of his contributions to this field was published as Historical andComparative Lexicology oftheSlavonic Languages (Krakow,200 i). He also had a literaryside, which was expressedin his many translations,mainlyfromSlovene. In i985 at the age of sixty-fivehe reluctantlyretired.In retirement, however, he blossomed and was not without honour in the countries whose languages he studied. He was a correspondingmember of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU) from I985 and of the Polish Academy of Arts (PAU) from i 99i. In I996 his overall achievement was acknowledged by the FestschriftCollectanea Slavica, publishedin Krakowand containing a bibliographyof his worksup to that time (I 62 items,pp. I I-24). Leeming was an inspiringteacher. In his hands, what seemed to be linguisticvagaries turned out to be capable of rational interpretation; but he had a tentative, semi-Socraticstyle of argument, preferringhis pupilsto drawtheirown conclusions. It is thusfittingthat his lastbook (H. Leeming and K. Leeming [eds], Josephus' JewishWaranditsSlavonic Version, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003), written in collaboration with his daughter Kate, purports not to answer the question whether the Slavonic version'sdivergencesfrom the Greekreflectthe lost Aramaic original, but merely to make it possible for readersto form their own judgement. HertfordCollege, Oxford GERALD STONE ...