Dr. Henry Leeming, 1920-2004Author(s): Gerald StoneSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 493-494Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214127 .

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SEER, Vol. 83, No. 3, uly 2005

Dr Henry Leeming

I 920-2004

HENRY (HARRY) LEEMING, who had a distinguished career as Lecturer, and then Reader, in Comparative Slavonic Philology at the School of Slavonic Studies in the University of London at a time when his subject was held in high esteem there, died at home in London on Christmas Day 2004. The eldest child of Thomas Leeming and Mary Ellen Leeming (nee Dunne), he was born on 6 January I920 in Manchester, where he was also educated at St Bede's Grammar School. His aspirations to study classics at the University of Manchester were realized by means of a scholarship from Manchester City Council stipulating that he first work for a year as an assistant in a Manchester school. He matriculated in I939 and, despite the outbreak of war in September that year, completed his first year of study. In August 1940

he was called up and after training was assigned to the Royal Engineers on bomb-disposal work in London. In summer I942, having been transferred to a unit dealing with rail transport, he was posted to Egypt. He sailed on the Queen Mary, which was carrying supplies and troop reinforcements in preparation for the Battle of El Alamein. In summer I943 he was transferred to Baghdad, where he attended a course in teaching English and later that year he became a liaison officer and teacher of English with the Polish Second Corps. This was not his first involvement with the Slavonic languages, for he had learned a little Russian from one of the masters at St Bede's. Even so, Leeming's time with the Polish Army in the Middle East and Italy was a crucial factor in his development.

In December I 946, after demobilization, he returned to Manchester, where he completed his classics degree in I949, specializing in Indo- European philology. His Slavonic interests (and a scholarship) now drew him to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, where in I 952 he took a second BA, this time in Russian, specializing in Comparative Slavonic Philology. He embarked on a PhD, supervised by Professor W. K. Matthews, and in 1955 he was appointed to the staff of the School as lecturer. Two years later, in connection with his research, he made his first visit to Poland, where among the many Slavists he met was Monika Didiakin, his future wife. His thesis on Polish-Latin loan-words in pre-Petrine Russian was approved for the degree of PhD in I 96 I, but it was not until 1976 that part of the material assembled for the thesis was published as Rola j,zyka polskiego w rozwoju leksyki rosygskiej do roku I1696: wyrazy pochodzenia

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494 DR HENRY LEEMING

lacin'skiego i roman'skiego (Wroclaw, I976). Owing largely to the years spent on war service and in taking a second BA, but partly to his uncompromising insistence on getting things right, the fruits of Leeming's research began to appear relatively late. However, from his first articles, published in the I96os, the originality and rigour of his approach were evident. His interests were centred on historical lexicology and a collection of his contributions to this field was published as Historical and Comparative Lexicology of the Slavonic Languages (Krakow, 200 i). He also had a literary side, which was expressed in his many translations, mainly from Slovene.

In i985 at the age of sixty-five he reluctantly retired. In retirement, however, he blossomed and was not without honour in the countries whose languages he studied. He was a corresponding member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU) from I985 and of the Polish Academy of Arts (PAU) from i 99 i. In I 996 his overall achievement was acknowledged by the Festschrift Collectanea Slavica, published in Krakow and containing a bibliography of his works up to that time (I 62 items, pp. I I-24).

Leeming was an inspiring teacher. In his hands, what seemed to be linguistic vagaries turned out to be capable of rational interpretation; but he had a tentative, semi-Socratic style of argument, preferring his pupils to draw their own conclusions. It is thus fitting that his last book (H. Leeming and K. Leeming [eds], Josephus' Jewish War and its Slavonic Version, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003), written in collaboration with his daughter Kate, purports not to answer the question whether the Slavonic version's divergences from the Greek reflect the lost Aramaic original, but merely to make it possible for readers to form their own judgement.

Hertford College, Oxford GERALD STONE

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