Lisa French writes: It is perhaps lucky for me that I did not realise quite how distinguished in his own field Professor Martin Robertson (obituary, January 31) had become when I started reading for a PhD with him at University College London in the mid-1950s.
To me he was an old family friend who had been one of the group of Cambridge classical scholars who ended up in various guises in Cairo during the war. There they had done much to entertain and sustain one another, my father among them.
For all that the subject of my thesis was Bronze Age terracotta figurines about which he knew little, Martin was a marvellous supervisor. Our meetings every three weeks were a delight; he helped with chasing obscure periodicals and all those other demoralising details. It was his impending transfer to Oxford that spurred me through the last stages rather than change supervisors.
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Our obituary of the Rev Professor Peter Ackroyd (February 15) said that he is survived by all his children from his first marriage. In fact, his second daughter, Jenny, a distinguished vascular surgeon, predeceased her father last September. We apologise for our error.
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