Wright, Vincent, 1937-1999

I am happy to live with my intellectual schizophrenia—to preach the need for comparative method, to practice timid comparison, to close my door on occasion in Nuffield and write history, and to profit from the networks of colleagues and friends created and consolidated by both politics and history

Here Vincent Wright was almost perfectly summed up by himself: cheerful over and above everything (we all remember his laughter, his infectious sense of humour, and his indomitable optimism); acutely self aware, and sober in his assessment of the intellectual demons which assailed him; modest, and without a trace of pompousness; gregariously sociable, and enjoying life to the full, while at the same time making the most of the opportunities which it afforded him. There was also a whiff of the religious—hence the reference to preaching. He had stopped believing a long time ago, and described himself as rabidly anticlerical; but he also readily confessed that his moral and philosophical outlook was forever steeped in a Catholic culture.