Barry Brown
Patrick Rees writes: Anyone who knew Barry Brown (obituary Nov 4) will be aware of his unorthodox, but wholly enthusiastic, approach to life.
As your obituary pointed out my father (Merlyn Rees) taught with Barry in Harrow. He would tell the story of entering one of Barry’s Richard III classes to find him standing on his desk at the front of the class acting out an important scene of the play by way of illustration.
Brown certainly did have some success in the profession as you say; he deserved it.
Dietrich von Bothmer
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J. A. (Peter) Cochrane writes: Dietrich von Bothmer (obituary Oct 31) did not simply “leave Oxford to travel in America” in 1939. Dietrich and I had rooms on the same staircase in Wadham College during the academic year 1938-39 and became close friends. One day in 1939 two men from the German Embassy came to the college and bluffed their way past the porter. I met them on the stair and told them that Dietrich was attending a lecture, whereupon they departed. When I reported their visit to the Warden, Maurice Bowra, he at once realised its implications and got hold of Dietrich. After I had helped him to pack his belongings in some haste, Maurice drove him to London airport and put him on a plane to the United States. I do not know whether Dietrich or Maurice paid for the ticket.
Dr Alan Johnston, Emeritus Reader in Classical Archaeology, UCL, writes: Your obituary did not specifically mention the episode of the Euphronios krater, the Athenian red-figured vase which von Bothmer secured at a record sum for the Metropolitan Museum in 1970, a purchase which was from the start controversial, and signalled the beginning of his isolation from large sectors of the archaeological world.
The vase will soon transfer to the ownership of the Italian state, having already been physically returned.
Sir Donald Logan
Sir John Guinness writes: I had the good fortune to be one of Donald Logan’s deputies during his last ambassadorial post at the Law of the Sea Conference, where he made an important personal contribution to the eventual success of that Conference (obituary Nov 5).
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As such in 2007 he sent me copies of the Sèvres agreement and related papers, which proved conclusively the collusion between the UK, France and Israel in 1956 and his fascinating covering memorandum. The original of the papers he sent to the Bodleian with a copy to Churchill College.
At his request I arranged for copies also to be deposited in the British Library and Cambridge University Library. They are well worth reading.