Christopher Brumfit died on March 18 after a long and courageous battle with cancer. He had been a professor of education at the University of Southampton for just over twenty years, first in the School of Education and then in the School of Humanities. During that time he had helped to make that University an internationally known centre of excellence for the study of language in education, attracting both students and research funds at a rate that colleagues elsewhere could not match but only wonder at. This was achieved by a combination of intellectual vision and skilful management: Christopher Brumfit was very good both at thinking things through and getting things done.

He went as a grammar school boy to Brasenose College, Oxford where he read English language and literature and in 1963 ended up with indifferent degree - no hint here of a distinguished academic career in the offing. The following year he went to Tanzania and spent seven years teaching there. This experience seemed to serve as some kind of catalyst, for it was on his return that he began to make his mark. In 1972, he got a distinction on his MA in Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex. Two years later he was appointed lecturer in what was then the Department of English as a Foreign Language at the University of London Institute of Education. It was there that I met him for the first time.

We worked together on the development of post-graduate courses, and he was an inspiring colleague. Especially impressive to me was his way of seeing the wider epistemological implications of pedagogic work, no matter how practical. He had a way of revealing unsuspected relevance, of reconciling apparent contraries and this he did with intellectual relish. It suited him to think in this way. For it seemed to come naturally to him to combine what might to others seem to be opposing things. The pleasure he derived from watching a cricket match went along with the close statistical study of batting averages and bowling figures. His intense enthusiasm for Dostoevsky and other Russian writers went along with the studied accumulation of information about all things Russian. Objective fact for him enhanced the subjective experience, and to be systematic was part of the enjoyment.

His approach to applied linguistics and language education seemed to show the same kind of resolution of apparent disparities. He was both defender and critic of traditional values. Applied linguistics had to be theoretically rigorous but made relevant to the real world at the same time. Education imposed conventional constraints but these had also to provide for the individual freedom of unconventional self-expression. He supported established institutional order, and was indeed prominent as a member of the educational establishment - Head of Department, Dean of School, Director of Centre, Chairman of the British Council English Advisory Committee, Chairman of the British Association of Applied Linguistics, member of this committee, that committee, and of the Academy of the Social Sciences. But though a part of the establishment, he was apart from it as well, and held it to critical account. For him, the way to maintain values was to be critical of them. And this kind of appraisal applied to ideas and beliefs in general, old and new. It was not that he was resistant to change or unsympathetic to new ways of thinking. Quite the contrary. He was after all one of the prime movers of the communicative approach to language teaching in the early seventies. But for him it was not a matter of promoting a cause, but of arguing a case for it.

Christopher Brumfit's thinking was radical by being rigorous, creative by being critical. He had a way of shifting perspective to reveal things you had not noticed. He would often take you by surprise with an unusually acute observation in passing about some current fashionable notion, some recent trend or other. But then there would also be the mischievous remark with a twinkle in the eye, and tongue (quite literally) in cheek, the wry smile. For there was far more to Christopher Brumfit than intellect, impressive though that was. There was a lively sense of humour, and a sensitivity which enabled him to engage with other people, and a deep seated humanism that led to an active concern for freedom, equality, and the opportunity for individual self realization which he believed was ultimately the purpose of all ideas in applied linguistics and education to address.

Sadly we shall no longer see the twinkle in the eye, the tongue in cheek, the wry smile. But Christopher Brumfit's legacy remains in his writing and in his influence on his colleagues, and perhaps above all in his teaching: in the hundreds of ex- students all over the world he has inspired and guided to think for themselves, critically and creatively, about, as he put it himself, ' real-world problems in which language is a central issue.'

Henry Widdowson

Dr. Ute Römer
English Department
Leibniz University of Hanover
Königsworther Platz 1
30167 Hannover
Germany