Sir – Very welcome appreciation of Jon Stallworthy (Obituaries, December 4), which included mention of his “creative” walks across Port Meadow from Wolvercote to OUP headquarters and back.
Professor Stallworthy lived for much longer in Old Marston and was often visible on the network of footpaths which lead down to the Cherwell.
Like his friend and near neighbour in Old Marston, the great classicist and friend of poets, Eric Dodds, Jon Stallworthy played an active role in village life, most recently, in 2011, in the successful campaign to keep Old Marston Library open when Oxfordshire County Council was threatening greatly to reduce library provision across the county.
In addition to his rightly much-celebrated life of Wilfred Owen, Jon Stallworthy wrote a fine-grained and sensitive biography of Louis MacNeice, and so much more, not least (his) poems which transform us all.
Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington
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