In praise of Henry Chadwick

When I was young, and politically ambitious, I was very excited by the fabled "double" achieved by William Hague at Oxford, who as successively president of the Conservative Association and the Oxford Union. It hadn't been done since when I went up and wasn't done again until a friend of mine completed it in 2003. However, as it didn't really turn out well for Hague, and - let's be honest - it's not that interesting, it occurred to me there were more impressive and greater double achievements. As I get older, I find myself instead excited by those individuals who display polymathic abilities: Jonathan Sumption, who combines a highly successful practice as a QC with an academic career that is equally stellar.

However, when I read last week that Henry Chadwick had died, an older feeling of veneration for a single - career double kicked in. Chadwick is rare in having held the Regius professorship in Divinity at Oxford then Cambridge, as well as head of house at both Oxford (Christ Church) and Cambridge (Peterhouse); in effect, a double double in his chosen career. It was once said, that 'The Anglican church may not have a Pope, but it does have Henry Chadwick."

He was an astonishing scholar as well. I won't dwell here on his publications and contribution to patristics and late antiquity. By the time I got to Oxford he was in his late 70s, though still publishing and giving the occasional seminar, which were still enormously fascinating. However, I want to record here my personal thanks for one of his shorter and less weighty tomes. Having avoided the early church throughout my undergraduate history career, I read his Pelican history of the early church in 2001. Written in 1967, it is fresh, illuminating and remains brilliant. And it changed my academic life, beginning the process that brought me historically earlier into late antiquity and the early councils. Everyone should read it - it's also short.

His death has been noted by those in his field, just as he was garlanded with honours in his life; the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote his Guardian obituary, from which the quotation above comes, but he passes largely unknown to the great mass of the population. A great shame; for we shall not see his like again.