PROFESSOR JULIAN BROWN

Professor Julian Brown, FBA, Professor of Palaeography at London University from 1961 to 1984, died on January 19. He was 66. Thomas Julian Brown was born on February 24, 1923. From Westminster School he went to Christ Church, Ox - ford , in 1941. The following year he joined the Border Regiment and served for the rest of the war, mainly at the Infantry Heavy Weapons School. Re - turning to Oxford after the war he graduated in Greats in 1948. From 1950. until he got his

chair at London in 1961, he was an assistant keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum. Brown's abilities were demonstrated in a 1960 vol - ume of commentary accompa - nying the magnificent facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels, in which he collabo - rated with several other scholars. This was followed by other studies of Northum - brian books: the Stonyhurst Gospel (for the Roxburghe Club) in 1969, the Durham Ritual in the same year, and the Durham Gospels (with C. D. Verey and E. Coatsworth) in 1980. In all of these he deploys his

palaeographical, codicological and art-historical skills, and they will be his enduring monument. The increasing adminis - trative burdens that fell on university teachers in the 1980s (impatience with which hastened his early retirement) was responsible for his 1977 Lyell Lectures on the insular system of scripts not being published in toto. Only parts have appeared, in Die Ircn und Europa in frit/ten Mittelalter (1982) and.Irland und Europa (1984). It is also to be regretted that he did not publish the fruits of his thinking on the knottv