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satyricaTeaching me Classics is clearly not good for your health. Not only did our head of classics at school die a couple of years after I left, but have just heard that one of my undergrad tutors, Michael Comber, has died, equally before his time.
He was such a distinctive little man, with more than a passing resemblance to Danny Devito, always dressed in black, who wrote reviews for Empire and lectured on cinematic treatments of classical texts (it was liver failure, rather than heart failure, otherwise I'd be forced to wonder if he'd just been to see Troy at the time.) He travelled up from London to teach the whole time so whenever we had a tute first thing, he would finally open the door crumpled & clutching a coffee, having quite clearly slept the night camped out in his study in Fyfield Road, about which was scattered a pharmacy's worth of pill-bottles. When we read out our essays he would sit there, dwarfed in the high-back chair, with his eyes closed and fingers pressed against his temples, maintaining a pained grimace the entire time, or else, even more disconcertingly, get up and wander round to answer whatever e-mail the beeping of his laptop indicated had just arrived as we continued to read. Then, once we'd stopped, there was a moment's pause, an intake of breath like a world-weary sigh, and for the next half an hour he'd launch into an unfalteringly fluent analysis of the issue at hand as punctuated by unimagined insights and comprehensive explanations as it was by growling emphasis and sardonic contempt.
Yet, for all his scowling demeanour, when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iruineverything [the entity formerly known as L.] was trying to get her first teaching jobs, he did a lot to help her and he was always someone I had a great deal of time for.
He was such a distinctive little man, with more than a passing resemblance to Danny Devito, always dressed in black, who wrote reviews for Empire and lectured on cinematic treatments of classical texts (it was liver failure, rather than heart failure, otherwise I'd be forced to wonder if he'd just been to see Troy at the time.) He travelled up from London to teach the whole time so whenever we had a tute first thing, he would finally open the door crumpled & clutching a coffee, having quite clearly slept the night camped out in his study in Fyfield Road, about which was scattered a pharmacy's worth of pill-bottles. When we read out our essays he would sit there, dwarfed in the high-back chair, with his eyes closed and fingers pressed against his temples, maintaining a pained grimace the entire time, or else, even more disconcertingly, get up and wander round to answer whatever e-mail the beeping of his laptop indicated had just arrived as we continued to read. Then, once we'd stopped, there was a moment's pause, an intake of breath like a world-weary sigh, and for the next half an hour he'd launch into an unfalteringly fluent analysis of the issue at hand as punctuated by unimagined insights and comprehensive explanations as it was by growling emphasis and sardonic contempt.
Yet, for all his scowling demeanour, when
iruineverything [the entity formerly known as L.] was trying to get her first teaching jobs, he did a lot to help her and he was always someone I had a great deal of time for.
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Date: 2004-07-01 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-02 01:02 am (UTC)MICHAEL COMBER
Date: 2004-07-15 01:12 pm (UTC)