Max Dunbar

[first published on Max’s blog]

I was shocked and saddened to hear, on thumbing through my Facebook newsfeed while waiting for a bus, that Professor Norman Geras had died. I never met the man, although I was a fan of his writing for some years, and we corresponded a little—I was even honoured to be featured in one of his Normblog profiles. The retired professor emeritus of politics at the University of Manchester more or less kickstarted a wave of 2000s political blogging, and in his writing on 9/11, Iraq and terrorism provided an essential counterpoint to some of the crazier stuff in the mainstream media and in liberal social circles at the time and since. Norman’s writing, and that of others, had a direct impact on my own thinking about what was going on in the world, which underwent a slow but dramatic change as I read more and more and began to grow up a bit intellectually. But Norm was never purely a political writer, and wrote prolifically about literature, philosophy, travel, relationships, anything that crossed his wise and gentle mind.

Put it this way: he could make cricket sound interesting.

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