Jeremy and I were colleagues at IDS for 16 years from 1981-1997, though he was there before me, and after. He was exceptional in many ways.
Jeremy was adventurous, seasoned and experienced. There was something about him of Wilfred Thesiger, T. E. Lawrence or Gertrude Bell: a love of and familiarity with little-known places, preferably dry ones, combined with the ability to get to know, engage with, and learn from people who lived in such places. Most of his work was in East and West Africa, but I remember the excitement in IDS when it became possible, or maybe just easier, in the early 1990s, to visit Mongolia. Jeremy was one of the first out of the traps, along with Mike Faber and Robin Mearns. The explorer in him was close to the surface.
But Jeremy was no mere traveller. His research and policy work was rigorous, authoritative – and useful. He helped us understand the social institutions of pastoral communities and the way they managed land at a landscape level: the tragedy of the commons was largely a myth. He thought deeply about food scarcity and famine, both its causes and solutions. I remember him arguing for fodder aid early in a drought, to keep livestock alive, rather than food aid at the end of the cycle, when it was too late to preserve livelihoods. We worked together, with others, on food security, and the interlocking insecurities of food, environment, and conflict. Not many of us at IDS could claim articles on zoology as our first publication – was it on flamingos? – but Jeremy added many others on the lives and livelihoods of poor people in poor countries. Just look him up on Google Scholar.
Jeremy was an excellent teacher as well, as we saw on our rural development and food security short courses: not everyone could be both academically informed and comprehensible. Jeremy was both. There were many teachable moments, too. I remember once giving a seminar at IDS on my new enthusiasm for post-modernism. Jeremy leaned forward in the discussion and observed that ‘only one or two people in this room understand post-modernism, and I fear that Simon is not one of them’. True, probably, but he said it so nicely that there was no rancour between us.
Beyond work, Jeremy had an admirably large hinterland. There’s an account somewhere of Jeremy driving up to the Moorehead country home in Italy, wooing Caroline, raffish and possibly unreliable in his open-topped sports car. But he loved Italy. Didn’t he and Caroline write a travel guide to Rome for American Express? I remember him telling me that the clientele required detailed information about where to have hand-made silk shirts ordered, and how to organize a helicopter fly-over of the Coliseum. It was easy to believe that that had once been Jeremy’s life! Once, Jeremy and I were both working in Rome. We had dinner together, sitting at a table outside, I think near the Pantheon. Jeremy charmed the proprietress and teased out specialities and delicacies not on the printed menu.
He was always charming. Cathy and I stayed at his country home in Wales and were given a tour of the Renaissance garden, the whale-shaped lake, the folly and the open-air theatre. This was in the very early days of his relationship with Camilla. Both the garden and the relationship blossomed.
And then, finally, fishing. When it comes to Arthur Ransome, most of us get no further than Swallows and Amazons. But Jeremy pursued Ransome’s history of a relationship with (and marriage to) Trotsky’s secretary, and his love of fishing, visited all the sites Ransome had written about for the Guardian, and wrote a book, Arthur Ransome on Fishing.
There is always a risk that universities and research institutes are so driven by financial targets and research rankings that joy is squeezed out and life constrained. Jeremy’s life provides evidence that workpoints need not dominate. There is probably a research paper to be written about that. Certainly, for those of us lucky enough to have known Jeremy and to have worked with him, there is another teachable moment to remember.
Simon Maxwell, IDS Emeritus Fellow.
