Keeping up with the Joneses

… or, more precisely, the Duncan-Joneses.

With the regularity in which people, ideas, situations intersect in my readings and observations, I have often been taken aback. That, perhaps, the blessing – or the curse – of being widely informed! Regrettably; not deeply, rather tending to the shallow.

A case in point:

In David Edmonds’ book about the Vienna Circle that I have written on in the previous post, there is an examination of the difficulties many of its members had as they sought refuge from the Nazi terror that was taking over much of the Continent. Therein quoted were some fragments of correspondence between Karl Popper and Austin Duncan-Jones, Professor of Philosophy at Birmingham [pp 240-242 in the German edition read by me], in which the former was invited there as a guest lecturer.

The Shakespearean scholar, Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones, died in October. This I noted with sadness, not because I know her work – for which I am sorry because her ‘hatchet job’ on William S. – his character that is – sounds terrific and original – but because I know her to be the mother of Emily Wilson – and that means an awful lot.

The point is: I wondered about the name. And, lo and behold, the first mentioned Prof. Duncan-Jones is the father of the second said.

And all this means? Professors of Philosophy beget those of Literature beget those of Classics? Perhaps. Or that an academic career in the UK has, or once had, an awful lot to do with family and class? I don’t know. Mostly, just a very interesting generational chain of circumstance and one from which, in this familial instance, very many have benefited – and continue to.

The death of Prof. Duncan-Jones was reported upon by some of the more culturally attentive British media and noted by me in a Twitter thread (begun by Bee Wilson and retweeted by Emily), and The New York Times has now run an obituary.