A light, a brilliant if quiet and unassuming light, has gone out - not that Liam de Paor has left us in the dark. No, he has lit up the present brightly, so brightly that the light will last for a long time into the future, just as a long-extinct star gives us light for a long time posthumously. We, particularly archaeologists, historians, politicians and lovers of literary criticism and comment, have all benefited from his work and inspiration to date, but have now lost all that which we looked forward to and which would have undoubtedly materialised and enlightened us had he been granted at least a full decade more than the biblical three score and ten.
For Liam was a true polymath, a man in the mould of those scholars (should one say gentleman scholars - or Renaissance scholars?), those rarae aves who shone so brightly in past centuries. An internationally renowned archaeologist, particularly expert in the Early Christian and later periods; a historian who produced books on early Irish history such as his outstanding book on St Patrick and also many books and incisive essays on recent and contemporary Ireland; a political commentator whose opinions and assessments of the differences between the nationalists and unionists of all Ireland were duly considered, respected and understood by all sides; a journalist whose columns were literary achievements and were considered of sufficiently high quality and relevance to be resurrected years later and reprinted in book form - two books, in fact; and a television personality and radio broadcaster well known in Ireland and Britain.
Yes, Liam was all that and much more. He was an accomplished artist and art-historian and an able architect who never bothered taking up a valuable scholarship to finish degree studies in the subject but whose postgraduate thesis in archaeology was a revolutionary exploration of 12th-century Romanesque architecture in Ireland. He was an archaeologist who not only carried out important, exemplary research excavations but also published seminal articles on high crosses and other ancient art-objects, and who, in 1958, with Maire, his first wife (died 1994), wrote what was for long the book on the archaeology of Early Christian Ireland. Furthermore, he was a linguist who was fluent in Irish, English and German, could also manage in French, had a reading knowledge of Italian and Spanish, and to whom Latin was no bother whatsoever.
And he was even more accomplished still. How many realised that in 1956 he won a National University of Ireland travelling studentship in archaeology; that he was for a time (1961 and 1962) executive secretary of the Royal Irish Academy and more recently was appointed a professor for and by the academy; that he had long ago (1945) worked as a cartoonist in the Harry Clarke stained glass studios; that he was employed by UNESCO as advisor on cultural properties in Nepal - during which time he walked across the country, traversing a goodly stretch of the Himalayas in the process; and that he was a lecturer in history in University College Dublin (1965-86) and a visiting professor in history in universities in Toronto, Pittsburg, New York and Boston? Indeed, Liam was always a much sought-after public lecturer for whom an invitation to lecture in Athenry or Ennis was treated with as much respect and appreciation as one to lecture in Germany, Britain, or America.
Never in any way superior about his vast and varied knowledge, Liam was always genuinely humble, a scholar whose quiet sense of humour and wry smile would subtly correct the mistaken statements of others without embarrassing anybody. Liam was a real friend and gentleman. His death is a sad loss to all his friends, acquaintances and admiring readers. Our sincerest condolences go to his wife Deirdre, to his daughter Aoife, to his five sons, and to his five grandchildren.
Duine macanta a b'ea Liam. I mBeatha Siorai, i measc na scolairi agus na cairde uile ata imithe roimhe, go raibh a anam dilis cairdiul. Agus is trua linna bhas.