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James Vavasour Hammond F/Mc Married Dorothy May F/Mc | ||||||||
| Nicholas Geoffrey Lempriere Hammond [CFT #3823] Born: 1907 Died: 2001 |
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| b Ayr, Scotland d Cambridge Warrior, sportsman, schoolmaster, long-distance walker - N G L Hammond looked (and was) anything but the stereotype of the scholar. But this man of tireless enthusiasms devoted most of his long life to the study of Greek history, and it was for this that he saved his greatest passion. In later years, his many friends noticed the impatience with which he waited for a conversation to turn to Greek topics. His numerous books covered a range extending from Balkan prehistory to Greece in the 1940s, and many of them found a wide readership. Robust and square-shouldered in build, of inexhaustible mental and physical energy, Nick Hammond shone in each of the roles which fate conjured up for him. He came of a clerical family and began his career conventionally enough, winning classical and sporting distinction at Fettes College and as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius, Cambridge (where he was President of the University Hockey Club and Treasurer of the Union). But soon after graduating, he began to carve his own path with the first of his many (and later famous) explorations on foot in northern Greece and Albania, undertaken at literally breathtaking speed, and soon written up in a precocious article. In 1930 he was offered, at the tender age of 22, his first academic appointment at the neighbouring college, Clare, beginning an association that was to last more than 70 years. He would reminisce amusingly about the daunting experience of joining a small, close, all-male communinty averaging twice his age. Six years later, he was appointed to a university lectureship as well, and a predictable career seemed to stretch out in front of him, as a promising if unusually high-spirited Greek historian, with a special enthusiasm for archaeology. Then, in 1938, the War Office made its approach to university teachers to enquire about special qualifications that might prove useful in the event of war. Seldom did this search come up with such a fruitful response as from Nick Hammond: he offered fluent Greek, passable Albanian, and a minute topographical knowledge of northern Greece - the very attributes that would be in high demand in a few years' time. First, however, he had to participate in the forlorn retreat of the Allied forces from Greece and then from Crete, and later in the training of surviving units, including Greek and Zionist contingents (Moshe Dayan led one of the latter), in the use of explosives, in Palestine, Syria and Cyprus. His whole-hearted adoption of this new persona is well expressed in the nickname, 'Captain Gun-cotton' (Vamvakopyrides) which the Greeks gave him. Hammond had to wait until February 1943 to achieve the full potential of his assignment, when he was parachuted into occupied Greece to join the few British officers already there. There ensued 18 months of quite exceptional hardship and danger, punctuated by malaria, explosions, engagements and long night-marches. Hammond's military reputation rose high indeed - he was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel and, for his last three months, acted as commander of the Allied Military Mission in Greece - but, at least as often, the situation called for political skills. The Communists of ELAS, the best-organised nucleus of Greek resistance, harboured long-term designs for political control of the country once the war had ended; military operations were frequently directed at rival Greek units rather than the Germans and Italians. Only straight talk and a hard line in negotiation could keep them in effective co-operation with the Allies. This was where Hammond - much less sympathetic to Communism than some of his British colleagues - again excelled, if often at the cost of friction with the strategists of Headquarters Middle East. Airlifted out at the end of his mission, he was decorated with the DSO. Peacetime saw him return for a second spell at Clare, where he became Senior Tutor and successfully advocated some important and lasting changes for the college. Then came an unexpected break: he left to become Headmaster of Clifton College, where his rare combination of qualities was especially welcome; and, when he returned to academic life in 1962, it was as H O Wills Professor of Greek at the nearby Bristol University. Here he remained until his retirement in 1973; but the form which that 'retirement' took was to serve as Visiting Professor, successively over the years 1973-92, at an incredible total of 16 universities and research institutes, in the United States, Greece, Australia and New Zealand. Several of these later awarded him homorary doctorates. Meanwhile, he had re-established his home base at Cambridge, where Clare had elected him to an honorary Fellowship in 1974. Hammond published more than a dozen books in his own right, and edited such prestigious works of reference as the new editions of 'The Cambridge Ancient History' (volumes 1-4, 1970-88) and 'The Oxford Classical Dictionary' (1970). His best work is to be found where his flair for topography and landscape had fullest rein, as in the monograph 'Epirus' (1967) and the three-volume 'A History of Macedonia' (1972-88), written jointly with his friends Guy Griggith and Frank Walbank. It was in Greece that his reputation stood at its very highest: the wartime exploits, rewarded with the Order of the Phoenix in 1946 and narrated long afterwards in his 'Venture into Greece' (1983), were later to be paired with his passion for ancient Macedon, where book titles such as 'The Miracle that was Macedonia' (1991) and 'The Genius of Alexander the Great' (1997) gave a hint of why, when politics of a new kind again impinged, his status there remained almost iconic. An unfailingly genial and kindly man, he was fittingly celebrated by a lunch held in his honour at Clare, just four weeks before his sudden death, and attended by pupils and admirers ranging from the class of 1930 to that of 2000: the crisp, apposite speech of the honourand will be long remembered. His marriage to Margaret Townley in 1938 was destined to last serenely beyond its diamond anniversary; it was a cruel blow when one of his five children, the distinguished Early Christian scholar Caroline Bammel, predeceased him. Copyright Anthony Snodgrass The Independent, 28th March 2001 |
1: Caroline Hammond H | |||||||
| 1 Child | ||||||||
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