Tuesday, December 30, 2025
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Apart from members of my own family, Dennis is the person I knew the longest. I first met him when we were 11 years old and both in the first year of secondary school in South London. We retained the friendship over the intervening 55 years, despite the fact that for most of that time we lived on separate continents, keeping in contact once or twice a year by post and latterly by Skype and Zoom, and sometimes visiting each other. Conversations were sometimes about politics and current affairs (mostly, though not always, seeing eye to eye) but more often about ideas, culture, a particular literary or philosophical work or author. I will miss those conversations dearly and valued Dennis's erudition and insight enormously. We were talking about him visiting here again at some point and I resent the fact that capricious nature has robbed us of that possibility. Rest peacefully old friend. Vita enim mortuorum in memoria vivorum est posita.