Tribute: Sir Tom Stoppard

Deeply saddened to hear of the death of Sir Tom Stoppard, author of that dazzling, joyous, heartbreaking cocktail of wit and wisdom, Arcadia.* It changed my life when I first read it as a teenager, and it was Thomasina who inspired me to learn Latin.

I feel that a quote from the play is appropriate here. The speech is in response to Thomasina as she grieves for the Library of Alexandria, but feels apt for this occasion too:

'Like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.'

*and much more, but it is this for which I, like so many others, know him best.