Probably those of you who knew him will have already heard the sad news. His most recent blog entries didn’t give much cause for optimism, but I guess we all hoped he would pull through. I last saw him in Dublin in March, when  persuaded the hospital to let him out for the afternoon; and a month later he very kindly emailed me some pages from a military history book he was reading which mentioned some of my ancestors, though I narrowly missed him in Brussels in May. He’ll be sadly missed.