Professor Dennis Ward

Published on Tuesday 29 April 2008 21:29

Professor emeritus of Russian studies at Edinburgh University

Born: 1 February, 1924, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Died: 5 April, 2008, in Edinburgh, aged 84.

PROFESSOR Dennis Ward was the professor emeritus of Russian studies at Edinburgh University as well as an accomplished and exhibited artist.

The son of Clifford Ward, a Yorkshire steelworker, and Doris Duke, he was educated at Rotherham Grammar School, after which he went up to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1942, to read German and Russian. As with so many of his generation, the war took him away from his studies after one year.

Commissioned into the York and Lancaster Regiment, he found his knowledge of Russian thoroughly tested at the end of the war, when he ended up in Berlin, where he interpreted for the Allied Control Commission and came into regular contact with his Russian opposite numbers. Fluent in German and Russian, he was appointed liaison officer to the Soviet military mission in the British zone.

Demobbed in 1947, Dennis returned to Cambridge, graduating with 1st class honours in Russian and comparative philology. In 1949 he arrived in Edinburgh as the university's first ever lecturer in Russian, and so began a distinguished academic career of almost 40 years. During the 1950s and especially the 1960s, when a big growth in Russian studies took place, the Russian department under Dennis Ward expanded to seven members of staff and in 1963 he became the first, and so far the only professor of Russian at Edinburgh.

During the earlier part of his professorship he produced many articles and reviews and two seminal works, The Russian Language Today (1965) and The Phonetics of Russian (1969). He also devised and presented a Russian course for the BBC and was an early advocate of what used to be called "language laboratories", taking a lead in starting the Language Learning Centre at Edinburgh University and spending part of 1967 at Essex University, directing its Contemporary Russian Language project.

Dennis was a specialist in early epic Slavonic poetry, and translated the 12th-century poem The Lay of the Host of Igor.

Over the years, however, his professional focus gradually changed. He had always been interested in art and he began to explore the relationship between visual and literary representation. He also introduced an honours course on Russian art history and in 1982 accepted an invitation to lecture on Russian art at Grinnell College, Iowa. He had a large collection of slides which made his lectures in art most interesting and relevant.

By 1985, the good times for universities were over, "rationalisation" (ie, cuts) were in the air and, in the twilight years just before perestroika, the outlook for Russian seemed unfavourable. Dennis took early retirement, but continued for some years to pursue his professional interests and to speak up for Russian studies. Indeed, throughout the 1980s he was very active on the editorial board of Scottish Slavonic Review, an important multicultural journal of that period.

An indication of his broad and eclectic contribution to Russian studies is Words and Images, a book of essays in his honour published in 1989. Ten years later, at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Russian department, he addressed a large gathering of colleagues and ex-students whose esteem and affection for him were manifest.

Dennis was an artist from an early age, and after his retirement, in 1985, he diverted much of his energies to his art and had a solo exhibition in Middleham, Yorkshire, in 1994 – entitled The Sound of Ancient Voices, incorporating images of ancient worlds and mysterious Scottish standing stones. His work also regularly appeared at the annual Society of Scottish Artists exhibition at the Scottish Academy.

He was chairman of the Edinburgh Printmakers for several years in the late 1990s – and became especially interested in the techniques of etching as well as being a competent and enthusiastic printmaker during this period.

He never stopped seeking new ideas, or learning new things and he taught himself Chinese, and a little Dutch.

A devoted family man, Dennis derived great pleasure from the antics and achievements of his three children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. In early years, the whole family loved visiting Holy Island in Northumberland and in later years he enjoyed annual trips to Orkney with younger son Adam. He loved the archaeological treasures there – and both islands inspired much of his artwork. The adult careers of his three children reflected in many ways the things he taught them and his wide interests: in people, their rights and needs, in science, technology, the environment and nature.

He was especially delighted when, in 2007, his eldest son, John, became the second Professor Ward in the family with his appointment to the chair of molecular microbiology at University College London.

It was a testament to his determination that he survived in relatively rude health for more than two years after a major stroke in 2006, and still kept sketching and drawing during most of this period.

He is survived by his wife, Robin – a childhood sweetheart to whom he was married for more than 61 years, his sister, Muriel, and children, Ann, John and Adam.