Bill
Speck in Carlisle:
An Appreciation by Robin Smith
An Appreciation by Robin Smith
Bill Speck was a superb acquisition for what in the 1990s
passed muster as Carlisle’s intellectual life.
He pitched up unexpectedly in my office - I was then head
of Carlisle’s university campus - in 1998, having just retired from the Chair of
Modern History at Leeds. He wanted a
base for easy access to Greta Hall in Keswick to work on the Robert Southey
papers for the biography he was commissioned to write. Now we had a real, internationally
recognised scholar in Cumbria!
His requests were simple: a desk with a computer connected to the academic network, in return for
which he would do some lecturing. He did not want any payment: music to the
ears for someone struggling with ever-shifting budgets. The university gave him an Honorary Visiting
Professorship, not perhaps the most prestigious he had received in his
distinguished career, but one for which he remained grateful.
Bill was a noted controversialist. He invited a group of friends to join him for
a monthly luncheon where discussion and argument was enhanced by much pasta and
good Italian wine. He termed it the Carlisle Victor Meldrew Appreciation
Society. Members were primed to come with the news story that had most enraged
them in the previous month, to bring out the “Would you believe it!” factor, as
elderly men viewed with despair the bizarre ways of the modern world.
Accordingly, the world was put right every month, but
curiously nothing seemed to change because of it. Not even the waiters seemed to notice.
Membership changed over the years as people moved
away. The VMAS still meets in a splendid
new Sicilian restaurant. It is now
customary to dedicate the first glass to the memory of a much-loved friend and
colleague. He would be wryly amused.
Robin
Smith
