David A. Hill 1952-2017. In Memoriam.

All of those who knew David will have been deeply saddened by his untimely death on 23 October 2017. This is an attempt to bring together a variety of perspectives on the life and work of this truly remarkable person through contributions by some of his closest friends and colleagues.

Luke Prodromou

On September 7, 2017, just a few weeks before David A Hill passed away, I received an email from him in reply to one I had written to him the day before. His message contained this poem in Brummy ‘dialect’:

‘Ere we am – the owuld Brum Chums Brigade.
‘Ere we am again, loined oop on Parade.
‘Ere we am in Retsina and Greece,
‘Ere we am lookin’ fer a bit of loit soomer peace.
‘Ere’s we am sat round a Taverna toible,
Strooglin t’ remember things we’m not oible
T’ recall with ease ony more,
T’oonderstand what it was all for.
But ‘ere we am, and that’s the moin thing.
Still together – that’s what meks oos sing.

And in Standard English:

Here we are – the old Brum Chums Brigade
Here we are again, lined up on Parade
Here we are in Retsina and Greece,
Here we are looking for a bit of summer peace
Here we are sat around a Taverna table
Struggling to remember things we are not able
To recall with ease any more
To understand what it was all for.
But here we are, and that’s the main thing.
Still together – that’s what makes us sing.

The poem tells us important things about who David was. But first, some context: in my email, just one day before, I had written to David telling him that I was in my ‘country retreat’ in the beautiful mountains near Thessaloniki, where I live – I explained that I was with some old school-friends from Birmingham, friends I had kept in touch with for nearly half a century. David knew of my regular re-union with these ‘Brum Chums’, as he called them - we had often discussed the importance of keeping in touch with old friends and he had expressed a keen desire to visit me in this mountain village so we could walk, talk, listen to music and read poetry – as we went on our long walks in the beautiful countryside, he would teach me about birds and plants of which I was totally ignorant and he was so knowledgeable. A day in the country with David A Hill always made nature come alive.

Back to the poem and a little literary criticism: the poem captures some of David’s unique gifts: first of all, David A Hill was the embodiment of creativity: he simply overflowed with the stuff: in just one day, he had produced a lovely poem to celebrate this special occasion of a friends’ reunion and the joy of still being together in spite of the ravages of time. The poem also expresses his love of language in all its variety; with David, we shared a common upbringing in the West Midlands – he was from Walsall, just a few miles away from Birmingham, my hometown, and we enjoyed slipping into our vernacular when we were together. David was a passionate man and the preservation of local dialects was one of his passions.

In the same email, David quoted a poem by Liz Lochhead, the Scottish poet, ‘Bairnsangs’, written in Scots; the poem is about losing your vernacular when you get to school and David told me he ‘loved the poem for the brilliant way in which she puts the words on the paper as much as the topic, which I adore’. His enthusiasm for literature knew no bounds. Years before, David had invited Liz Lochhead to be a guest speaker at the Literature, Media and Cultural Studies SIG at the first IATEFL in Glasgow; David was a driving force behind the LMCS SIG which is just one reminder of his long-term commitment to IATEFL and humanistic language teaching.

In his previous email to me, he had replied to my request to identify a flower of which I was ignorant: oleander in this case. David was a passionate botanist with an international reputation and he would always reply to my endless queries about flowers patiently and good-humouredly. Apart from being a published poet (with four beautiful collections to his name – my favourite was The Judas Tree), and a distinguished botanist he was, also, a highly knowledgeable ornithologist, admired by his bird-watching peers. One reason he loved globe-trotting (wearing his ELT conference-speaker hat) was the opportunity it gave him to escape into the countryside and do a spot of birdwatching and botanical research which he recorded in a huge collection of beautiful photographs, meticulously classified.

But David was an insatiable seeker and possessor of knowledge on every subject under the sun. He was, for me, and other ordinary mortals in our profession, ‘Renaissance man’ (my nickname for him): as if applied linguistics, ELT, poetry, birdwatching and botany were not enough, David A Hill was also an expert on art nouveau architecture. On my first visit to Budapest many years ago, David had taken me on a walking tour of art nouveau buildings in Budapest; I could only infer and admire his expertise on art nouveau/art deco, but his enthusiasm for these beautiful buildings was beyond doubt. On my last visit to his adopted city, Budapest in July 2017, confirmation of his scholarship in the field of art history came as he showed me his recent articles on the art nouveau of Budapest which had recently appeared in the most prestigious specialist journals.

But David’s enthusiasm for the arts wasn’t merely that of an intelligent observer and analyst: apart from being a practising (and published) poet he was also a singer of blues and English folk songs and had published a book for teachers on the use of traditional folk songs in the classroom. . I loved his voice, which I first heard at a Pilgrims summer school early on in our career as ELT trainers and then I would hear that warm lyrical voice again over the years at professional conferences. The last time I heard him sing was in Tbilisi, Georgia in October 2016 where we had gone to perform our Shakespeare show, All the World’s a Stage, to mark the 400 years since the death of our greatest poet and playwright. Not only did he reprise his marvellous performance of Peter Quince from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which we had performed at the Birmingham IATEFL Conference, but he revived his hilarious Juliet to my Romeo...The show in Tbilisi ended with David singing, unaccompanied, Feste’s farewell song from Twelfth Night:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

Goodbye, sweet David.
Your Brummy chum, Luke

Susan Holden

I did not know David as well as (presumably) many of the other people who are writing here. However, I did know him for a long time.

We first met over 30 years ago. I was editor of MET magazine then, based in Venice, and used to visit teachers’ groups - driving miles around Italy in a red Panda car - to find out about their interests, encourage them to write articles and (I imagine) to solicit subscriptions. I visited Trento for the first time, and was delighted to meet a Director of Studies who liked the magazine but in addition - which was unusual - seemed eager to talk about other areas as well. I heard fascinating things about the Trentino, its flora and fauna, and its complex cultural heritage. I remember driving away thinking: how refreshing!

Our next meetings were a few years later, when David was in Milan and I was involved in publishing the papers from the annual British Council Italy conferences (Bologna, Milano, Sorrento). It was always invigorating to be able to catch up each year on both personal and professional life, and to be reminded that he continued to have wide and impressive interests outside the ‘narrow’ ELT world, often expressed with caustic humour.

Towards the end of the cycle of conferences, we worked together briefly on editing one year’s papers and I was impressed with his critical eye and professionalism. I had hoped to work with him on a course book project for Latin America, but that fell through due to publishing company politics. Although this meant a sudden loss of projected income, David reacted professionally and, again, with sardonic humour (I was relieved that he did receive some compensation).

Since then, we met sporadically over the years, usually in Hungary (including at the first IATEFL-Hungary conference at Kecskemet) or at the annual UK IATEFL event. The abiding memory of these meetings and conversations over the last twenty years is one of pleasure at meeting again, and enjoyment (especially during a conference) of being sure to talk about a refreshingly wide range of topics, from nature to books to architecture. Always with that sharp sense of humour.

The last time we met was in Budapest in October 2015, at the IATEFL-Hungary conference. A couple of chats, a bit of catching-up gossip … and the feeling that here was a person who left one feeling enthused about things. I miss this - thanks, David.

Mario Rinvolucri

I have known David as a poet, a botanist, an ornithologist, a learner and speaker of many languages, particularly Serbian and Italian, as an EFL colleague and as a trainer of teachers.

David joined the 1980ies surge of people who, inspired by Maley & Duff and CUP, began producing the some 300-400 teacher resource books we have available to us today. Later he also wrote coursebook materials for national markets, which is less unsatisfactory than writing them for the Earth and the planets.

At different times David belonged to various UK EFL tribes, the Pilgrims Canterbury Hilltop lot, the Norwich NILE team and the British Council Italy people. I knew him best in Canterbury through the summers of the 80's.

Massively well-read across many fields, a real "language" person with passion for what he taught, rock-like dependable, loyal in friendship and obstinate as a mule.

To my mind David lived up to the motto of one Italian noble family: FRANGAR NON FLECTAR or I CAN BE BROKEN BUT NOT BENT.

Hania Kryszewska, editor of HLT, once quoted to me a Polish poet writes that, faced with the total obliteration of death, we should cling more fiercely to those still all around us.

Colleagues, technical opponents and readers of HLT, I cling to you!

Brian Tomlinson,

It’s very sad to know that David is no longer with us. David was a good friend, colleague and partner. We haven’t seen much of each other recently (the occasional chat at IATEFL conferences) but I’ll miss him very much nevertheless.

I first met David, as many people did, when he was organising the British Council Bologna Conference. This was in 1994 and I was a presenter in Bologna with Hitomi Masuhara. David was a very welcoming and helpful host at the Conference and then a very supportive Editor of the proceedings of the Conference. Since then I’ve spent quite a lot of time both professionally and socially with David in, for example, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norwich, Singapore and Slovenia. He’s presented at MATSDA conferences which I’ve organised in many different places, he’s written chapters for books I’ve edited, we’ve co-authored chapters, we’ve worked together at NILE in Norwich and we’ve co-authored with Hitomi Masuhara a series of coursebooks for Singaporean secondary schools. Always I’ve enjoyed working with him and I’ve enjoyed his company too.

I respect people who are passionate and certainly David was a passionate man. He was a passionate ornithologist and supporter of wild life and we shared passions for literature (especially for Roger McGough), for football (he was as passionate about Walsall and Wolves as I was passionate about Liverpool), for real ale (before he gave up drinking) and above all for the blues. I have memories of him delivering highly original and innovative papers but when I think of David what I see first is him playing guitar blues at a conference in Slovenia, him getting excited with Hitomi and me whilst watching a blues band perform in the Crazy Elephant in Singapore and, most vivid of all, him pushing my 90 year old mother in her wheelchair to a blues bar in Budapest.

He always intended to visit us here in Southport to witness the annual migration of hundreds of thousands of birds who congregate over the beach here before flying off to warmer climes. They’re flying past my window now in a spectacular V formation making what I like to think is commemorative noise. I hope he’d be pleased to know that whenever the birds fly over me I’ll remember him. And I know he’d be delighted that on the day he passed away Wolves were top of the league.

David will be missed by IATEFL as a hard-working and imaginative leader of the Literature SIG, by the hundreds and thousands of learners who’ve enjoyed his extensive readers and his coursebooks, by those who’ve listened to his countless presentations at conferences and by the colleagues he’s worked with all over Europe. He’ll be missed by me as a good friend. And, of course, he’ll be missed most of all by his family in Budapest.

Andrew Wright

In his last couple of weeks David and I talked about the idea of summarising our lives in 100 objects. He liked the idea and later told me he had chosen his 100 but couldn’t write them down because of his bed-ridden state.

We can only speculate about the 100 he chose. Here are some of the ones I would choose about him:

Language Teaching: tens of thousands of people knew him as a highly informed and creative language teacher trainer and book writer. Perhaps he chose his book, ‘Visual Impact’ published by Longman? Perhaps he chose examples of the many groups of teachers he worked with?

Art Nouveau: David was an international authority on Art Nouveau and was very proud indeed to be invited as a speaker to international conferences and to be a respected member of a very different field of study. Perhaps his latest article published just a month ago?

Botany: several times I went on a country walk with David and gasped. He saw so many things I didn’t see, he identified and named them in English and in Latin. He rejoiced and delighted in unusual plants and fumed over the invasion of non-indigenous species. For his 100

Objects perhaps he chose the crocus he discovered in Serbia and was the botanist who decided on its Latin name?

Insects: the 650 different species of moth which he caught on his balcony in Buda using a bright light and a bed sheet, photographed, identified and released. Which of the moths might he have chosen?

Birds: of course he could identify birds by their visual appearance but he could also recognise them by their various sounds. And when he went to a country new to him he learned to identify birds he didn’t know from ornithological websites in those countries….would he have included some of the wonderful birds he saw and heard in Istanbul, Buenos Aires or in Singapore in his 100 Objects?

Poetry: David wrote and published four books of poetry. Here is one of his poems from Judas Tree:

I have heard the call of summer,
Even while the winter lingers
Lounging hungry, grey, against the sun,
In the sudden sibilance
Of a robin’s song
That countenances spring,
Amidst the bitten twigs of trees.

Music: he was a good guitar player and singer and he was very proud of some of his guitars. Perhaps he chose one of them to represent the world of music he loved do much?

Childhood: One photograph came to my mind which I would include. It was taken of David when he was a child and shows him fishing with what might be a bent stick and a pin on a string…there is his quiet focus and concentration, there is the bright water, there are the tall rushes and trees on the other bank and a passing bird. Of all the pictures of David this is my favourite one. A boy deeply curious about nature and life around him, deeply focussed and to become deeply informed and richly talented.

When I talked to him about his chosen 100 Objects I asked him about this photograph and he told me he had indeed chosen it.

Family: And which objects did he choose to represent the immensity of Ildiko and Angelika in his life? Perhaps one of the mandalas which Ildiko painted on silk or perhaps one of Angelika’s many paintings which gave him such joy?

David will live on in the many people he has enriched by his companionship in all of these very different fields.

I know that many people feel bereft, like me, at our great loss.

Chris Lima

David and I were never close friends. I know what kind of music he liked, but this is common knowledge. I don’t know whether he preferred tea to coffee or which political views he espoused. However, we shared something very special: both his daughter and my son were born on 31 January and this created a tender and very special link between us. Yet, it was during the many years in which we worked together in the IATEFL Literature SIG Committee that the bonds of our friendship were forged. David was nothing if not a thoughtful, respectful, supportive, and open minded colleague who motivated us all to work for the things we believe to be important in English language education. When this treacherous illness came to him, he trusted me to take over the coordination of the SIG when I had little to commend me to carry out such a demanding and important role but my enthusiasm and hard work. I will be forever thankful for the trust he deposited in me. I will miss him dearly. May his courage and positive approach to life in these last difficult years serve as an inspiration and help us continue working for the things in which we believe. Rest in peace, dear friend!

Robert Hill

One day in 1988 I was at a conference in Santa Margherita Ligure, in Northeast Italy, about introducing foreign languages in primary schools, where most of the participants were Italian. In one of the breaks, while I happened to be sitting alone, a beaming figure who I had seen around the conference but didn’t know marched over to my table, sat down and announced theatrically, “You are under arrest by the British Council!” David was, indeed, the English Language Officer for the British Council in Northern Italy at the time (but without powers of arrest) and that quirky, whimsical, irreverent introduction marked the beginning of our friendship (though we share the same surname, we are not related).

After that, our paths crossed continually throughout the 1990s in Italy. David was involved in organising the British Council National Conference – apparently the biggest ELT conference in Europe at the time – and in selecting, editing and publishing papers from it. Amazingly, I never saw him show any stress while doing this; in fact, he almost always wore a smile.

But it was in the smaller events that we saw more of each other.

There was an Italian IATEFL branch at that time, organised and headed by David. Thanks to him, we all met yearly at the British Council premises in Milan, with a rich schedule of sessions every time (it was difficult to say no to David!) and a very convivial Saturday dinner together. One Saturday evening after dinner in the trattoria, David read out the results of the football matches in which the home team of each of us men at the conference was playing that Saturday afternoon. Now, I am not particularly interested in Plymouth Argyle (I’m from Plymouth) but the fact that David had looked up where all of us males there were born and brought up, tuned into the scratchy, unreliable shortwave (in those days) World Service to listen to the football results, wrote them down and in a mock dramatic voice announced them to us all is an example of how David always tried – in many and varied and inventive ways – to make professional relationships individual and personal.

David ran courses for state school teachers at the British Council in Milan in the first weeks of September, and in the 1990s I always taught one of these (it was difficult to say no to David!) from a Monday to a Friday. Every evening David invited me and whoever else was teaching a course to dinner at his place, or we all went out to dinner together. One evening three of us – David, myself, another – went to a local trattoria of David’s which advertised ‘as much as you can and drink for 35,000 Lire each’. Our dinner was, shall we say, expansive, and when it came to settling the bill, the apologetic owner said with evident embarrassment “In the circumstances, do you mind awfully if I ask you for 40,000 Lire each?” David had an appetite for all the good things in life…

Then the British Council and David parted company, and he went to live in Budapest, although he always came to stay with me when he came to assess CELTA and DELTA courses in Italy. (And our dinners continued to be expansive...)

Latterly, David was the coordinator of the IATEFL Literature SIG, and at his invitation I usually gave sessions at the PCE event and on the SIG Day (it was difficult to say no to David!). By this time we were old friends, but I noticed that with everyone David wanted – and got – that individual, personal relationship which soared above the merely professional rapport.

I wish he was still with us to show us how to be like that: we’ll miss him.

Shelagh Rixon

Some friends leave gifts beyond the memories of times shared. To David, I realise that I owe many interests and bits of understanding and knowledge that help to make things better in this vale of sporadically-punctuated gloom. Certainly, a more educated appreciation of bird life is down to him, though his enthusiasm for long treks and lying down in uncomfortable damp places were always beyond my comprehension. He also provided me with an induction to alternative comedy before it was even fashionable and instilled the realisation that most cities and towns would have something of aesthetic interest somewhere, especially if one was with David. I still haven’t made it to Walsall and the art gallery that he loved so much, but this is clearly a journey that must be undertaken soon. He didn’t do so well with instilling a shared devotion to crocuses, though I could well see that this was my fault for not trying hard enough. I have never met anyone with such diverse interests so energetically, sincerely and thoroughly pursued. Not only that, but it seems that he published and made contributions to many of the fields that he engaged with that were significant and scholarly. Languid he was not.

One of the most entertaining couple of months of my life began in September 1985 (I think) when David, newly arrived at the British Council in Milan, found himself at the beginning of the often tortuous search for a permanent home in that difficult-to-penetrate city. I was well dug in, sitting in a dysfunctional but sizeable tax-payer-funded establishment and so it was natural that he should come to stay in one of the spare rooms until he found his haven. Apart from our frequent joint trips into the basement area to turn the electricity on again, September/October that year was a time of much conversation. David was fresh from a post as a Lector in Kosovo and so had much to tell at that moment in history. It turned out, too, that we knew many people in common and ears must have been burning worldwide during the evening hours after work when we normally shared food, much wine and huge amounts of gossip. It was then that Alexei Sayle and Victoria Wood came into my life via David’s cassette collection. On about Day Two, he halted beside the open balcony door and assumed the alert but frozen stance of the seasoned non-frightener of birds. It seemed we just might have had a Peking Robin outside. The rather dull communal garden from then on became an intriguing potential avian hang-out to me, thanks to David, as day by day his knowledge of all things bird unfurled. I still have somewhere his sketch of a lesser spotted fly-catcher, another previously unnoticed Milan resident. His ability to capture the essence of a thing in a simple drawing was stupendous.

After he found his home, we remained in close touch – hard not to when one works in the same building – but he morphed from entertaining guest to trusted ally whose ability to see when things both private and professional were worth getting het up about and when they were not was bracing if not always comfortable. This, I respected and relied upon mightily.

From the late 1980s onwards, our lives took different directions geographically and otherwise. However, David was always a friend whom I could tune into within seconds during rarish sightings. A bellow by either of us of ‘Garage Doors!’ (An Alexei Sayle trope that he particularly liked) would always recall autumn evenings in Via Frua, Milano. He still conjured up birds, too. In a snowy Kecskemet, at the very first Hungarian IATEFL meeting, rare Cross-Bills appeared, scoffing berries in the trees, as he crossed the square.

Of David’s contribution to the profession, the articles he wrote, the books he wrote, in particular the several key roles he played within IATEFL, other people will have much more to write about than I do. I also sadly did not know his family in Hungary, though I know how devoted he was to them. I will remember him selfishly as a dear friend who knew about stuff and who talked about stuff that it was worth bothering about, who got things done, who made me laugh and could also be hugely kind and constructive when needed. ‘Much missed’ doesn’t begin to say it.

Péter Medgyes

The first time I met David was at the first conference of IATEFL-Hungary in 1991. I’d never met him before and was highly impressed by his plenary under the title ‘Lesson planning and coursebook adaptation’. Afterwards, he became a regular speaker at our conferences and gave a total of 29 presentations, a record number no one has surpassed to date. Quantity is one thing, quality is quite another. Had he not been a very popular speaker, he wouldn’t have been invited to our conferences year after year.

While he travelled extensively in the region and beyond, his home base was in Hungary after he married Ildikó and his daughter Angelika was born. David was an outstanding model of what expats can do: enriching the local culture with their own. His album, with co-musician Andy Rouse, ‘Traditional folk songs: 15 folk songs from Britain and Ireland’ was an immediate hit in ELT classrooms, but I also listen to the songs at home when I’m feeling blue. Similarly entertaining are David’s graded readers, which show what a gifted fiction writer he was. At the same time, he himself was an avid reader ready to share his impressions about the books he’d just read, invariably ending his reviews in the IATEFL Newsletter ‘Voices’ with ‘Happy reading!’

However, David’s sphere of interests extended far beyond the relatively narrow confines of ELT. In addition to being a great musician and a poet with four published anthologies to his name, he was a dedicated bird-watcher, too. Regarding this, allow me to share with you an anecdote.

For nearly ten years, I lived with my family in a small village some fifty kilometres from Budapest. Beautiful hills all around. On one occasion, David came to visit us. As we were sitting in the veranda, he suddenly hushed us. ‘What’s up?’ I whispered. ‘That was a nightingale,’ he said, and then asked: ‘How often do you walk in the nearby forests?’ ‘Rarely,’ I admitted. ‘You know what?’ he continued, ‘I’ll teach you how to recognise birds. Just the basics, all right? Let’s go!’ he said and stood up. ‘Not now, David,’ I said. ‘What if I phoned you next week and then fix a time?’ Next week became the week after and then I completely forgot to call him.

Nowadays I’m often woken up by the twitter of birds at dawn, but I still can’t tell which bird is which. It looks as if I’ve missed the opportunity to learn from David and now it’s too late. However, I’m sure that by now he is as knowledgeable about the birds in Heaven as he was about those here on Earth.

Simon Greenall.

I first worked with David in 1987 on Mount Igman, above Sarajevo, between wars. We were on a teacher training course arranged by the British Council.

David and I bonded quickly, it may have been the excellent regional wine, but I was relieved that I was very much on message with David’s greater experience in teacher training. He tried to introduce me to one of his great passions, botany, but most of the former Olympic ski slopes had still not been cleared of mines. This didn’t pose a problem for David as he could share his other passion of bird watching.

Later, David moved to Milan, where he looked after the enormous BC Italy conferences in Milan, Bologna and Sorrento, which at the time were the biggest events this side of the Atlantic. He was passionate about their success and rigorous about how to achieve it. After one post-conference party at the end of a Milan conference, I found him by his bed on the floor, in tears of exhaustion. I think it may have been the excellent regional wine, but much of David’s life was dedicated to making sure people felt positive about him.

David wasn’t a saint. We became distanced for a while and he wasn’t welcome in our home in Oxford. But I continued to pass him work on the China course for which I have been co-editor in chief for the past seventeen years. I think training was David’s forte, not writing.

I heard David was ill from some idle and unacceptable gossip sourced from IATEFL and I got back in contact with him. I went to see him Budapest in 2014 where he told me of his many difficulties and discomforts. Later, I received his buddy support when I, in turn, had my own cancer diagnosed, although I couldn’t keep up with his rants about Big Pharma and the alternative medicine he sought ... and spent money on ... to tackle his own illness. I felt very upset and confused that I wasn’t taking enough similar measures to deal with my own illness. But we remained in touch, with messages every few days.

David was extremely erudite, well informed on his personal passions and added a great deal to our finite science of ELT. I wish only that he had been more confident about his gifts, as he would have been an easier person for everyone to deal with.

Forgive the cliche but David and I were on a journey together, and I’m sad that there is no return ticket. I’ll miss him.

Alan Maley

“Crocus rujanensis, a new species of crocus, identified by Randjelovic and Hill” …And that Hill was David A Hill. There can’t be many ELT professionals who have also discovered new plant species. And not only that: David also distinguished himself in the study of wild orchids, moths and birds. And latterly, he became a recognised authority on Art Nouveau, publishing many articles and lecturing at international conferences. He was also a published poet, a talented linguist, a sensitive singer of folk songs and blues guitarist …and a keen photographer and artist.

Clearly, David was multiply talented. He had a consuming passion for the wonders of this world we inhabit, and a zest for life that led him to explore many and varied aspects of it. He was a charismatic speaker and generously shared his prodigious knowledge and his enthusiasms with teachers in many countries over his long career.

David was not to everyone’s taste however, which is probably the fate of most larger than life characters. Some were put off by his seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of any subject you cared to mention, which was sometimes misconstrued as one-upmanship. And his trenchant views, sometimes expressed without cosmetic top-dressing sometimes caused offence. He was not always sensitive to the limits to plain speaking. I myself never had a serious argument with him but I could see how some others might have been bruised by his forthright manner.

I got to know him in Milan some 30 years ago and was immediately impressed by his professional and organisational abilities. We stayed in intermittent touch. It was following a jointly presented Pre-Conference Event for the LitSIG at the 2014 IATEFL Conference in Harrogate that we became closer. We co-researched and presented a day of activities based on World War One. David was impressively well-informed, as usual and we worked closely for a year on the project. It was at the conference that I realised David was already a very sick man. But in typical style, he insisted on carrying everything through without making his discomfort apparent. The following year he joined Andrew Wright and myself in a performance at Hungary IATEFL’s 25th anniversary conference. (We had all three been at the inaugural conference in Kecskemet). David sang folk songs, Andrew told stories and I read poems. Again, he put on a brave front and few in the audience can have known how sick he was.

One of my last memories of him was when he took Andrew Wright, his daughter Alex and myself on a guided tour of the many beautiful Art Nouveau buildings in Pest one Sunday morning. As usual, he was a fund of information and anecdote, his wholehearted enthusiasm, was expressed in typically pungent language, especially when he was describing work he disapproved of. We could forget, temporarily, that he was a very sick man – his sheer dynamism put any negative thoughts firmly in the background.

The profession has lost a significant figure. They don’t make them like that anymore. We have lost a dear friend. He will be greatly missed.

Let me close by quoting the final part of one of his recent poems. David had lived in Serbia, Kosovo and Italy – but finally settled in Hungary, where he found happiness in his family. The poem is a celebration of returning home after a journey.

What you do…
You read the turning year
in the almost cloudless sky.

Mark Andrews

In the pretty Buda hills, 340 metres above sea level and 200 metres above the Danube there is a hospice on the fourth floor of a building that was built as a sanatorium in 1898.

I went there with a few songs on my laptop, including songs by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Bonnie Raitt. The first was Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis”. David had played it at our 25th IATEFL-Hungary conference two years ago. He played it partly because he loves the song and partly because it was 25 years old, like our conference. David loved the blues, he played in a band in Budapest for a while and often took me to blues concerts. He even gave me a guitar lesson last year.

When I played David some of his favourite songs he was drifting in and out of consciousness but when he heard the first few notes of “Walking in Memphis” he looked up at me and smiled. He closed his eyes soon afterwards. It was good to be a DJ for him that day.

I’d known David from conferences throughout the nineties but only really got to know him better when he came to live in Budapest in 1998. And after he told me about his illness at the Harrogate IATEFL conference in 2014, we got to know each other even better. He coped better than I ever dreamt he would and over this last year he enjoyed telling me about his visits to Barcelona, Glasgow and Greece where he continued to enjoy his passions for botany, birds and art nouveau architecture.

I actually thought, at one stage that, he might cure himself. In fact, I have drawn a lot of inspiration from the way he has lived in the last four years. Many of our conversations, which I will always remember, were about reassessing the way we had lived our ELT lives and our priorities in life. There is, after all, an aspect of the life of the itinerant teacher trainer which can be too much about feeding the ego, and particularly the male ego, at the expense of our deeper family relationships. It was David’s openness in talking about these things that I came to really value, as well as David’s generosity with his time, his advice and his daughter Angelika’s children’s books and wooden blocks, which he passed on to our son Ronan.

We both come from the Black Country, David from Walsall and me from Wolverhampton, and we were born within ten miles of each other. This was another big part of our friendship and we both enjoyed following the fortunes of Wolverhampton Wanderers, sometimes watching matches together in Budapest.

We also shared a big love of the former Yugoslavia, where David lived and worked for six years and where I have been going for nearly 40 years. We both lived there, we both went to ELTA, HUPE, ELTAM and IATEFL Slovenia conferences. We enjoyed the food, the wine - the Vranac, the Plavac Mali, the sea, the art nouveau in Subotica, the monasteries of Southern Serbia and the lovely Venetian towns of the Adriatic. David knew so much about Italian architecture after living there for 12 years.

The one thing we didn’t do was swim together, as David wasn’t keen on immersing himself in water, although I always thought he might have an enhanced experience of the wonderful colours and floral decorations at the Gellert baths if he actually got into them. It wasn’t to be though, he was stubborn with that.

Right up to the end he was still interested in looking at the programme of our last IATEFL-Hungary conference and commented that there were a lot of new people he didn’t know. I already miss telling him about my recent trip to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland and will miss him being just four stops away on the 56 tram.

God bless David and thanks for everything.

Alan Maley