J.G.A. Pocock 1924-2023
The historian J.G.A. Pocock has died at the age of 99. As Colin Kidd wrote in the LRB in 2008, Pocock ‘played a leading role … in the contextualist revolution’. He also had a distinctive style:
Whether on the page, at the lectern or – astounding when one hears him – in ad-libbed seminar discussion, Pocock communicates in lapidary paragraphs dense with aphorism and wit, literary and philosophical allusion, and copious historical learning drawn from all periods and continents. If he makes enormous demands of his audience, the effort is worthwhile, for he brings talents and perspectives to the discipline which nobody else possesses.
As well as the six volumes of Barbarism and Religion, and many other books about the history of political thought and about history as a kind of political thought, Pocock wrote a handful of pieces over the years for the London Review: on Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke and Aotearoa New Zealand.
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