Jonathan Riley-Smith was a distinguished historian, perhaps the most eminent contemporary historian of the Crusades, but of all his achievements, not the least was the way he died.
It wouldn’t be true to say of him that nothing in life became him like the leaving of it, but in the last three years of his life since being diagnosed with terminal cancer he put his mind to the business of dying in a way that was quite remarkable.
I had known him since I returned to Cambridge in the late 1990s to do a PhD and attended his seminar on the First Crusade, which was great fun. Indeed, I can thank him for my PhD in that he was one of my two examiners – and a cheerful, hospitable and interested one at that.
