Monday, 26 March 2012

Eminent Acronyms: P B Waite on R B Bennett

In Search of R.B. Bennett



Roderick Benns at Fireside Publishing tells us (here) that P B Waite has a new biography coming out of R B Bennett (with McGill-Queen's UP). I had somehow missed this entirely.

Waite is a superb historian and a subtle, elegant writer. He must be of a rather fine vintage himself. I still remember getting my first office as a Masters student at Dalhousie University in the mid 90s. There were boxes on the floor, shoved to the sides of the room, seemingly forgotten and abandoned - certainly not cared for by anybody who was in the history department at the time.

I couldn't help but peek to see what they were and I found that many seemed to be old manuscripts of Waite's who had long since retired from Dal. It seemed a shame then, and does even more so now, to think of the boxes as being left untended.

Little did I know that the man was still there and would, many years later, come out with a new book. There can be a long, long life after 'retirement.'



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