Brinsley taught and made history

THE EDITOR: Professor Emeritus Brinsley Samaroo really lived and breathed history. From the history of the Presbyterian Church to Adrian Cola Rienzi and even his 2015 Price of Conscience, the latter helping to reveal his own political dilemma.

An outstanding conversationalist, full of political and ethnic anecdotes, Brinsley will have you laughing while educating you. He was everybody's intellectual.

I found myself quite fortunate when I first arrived to teach at The UWI, to meet and mix with academics like Brinsley, Selwyn Ryan, John La Guerre, Eric St Cyr, Roy Thomas, Winston Dookeran, etc. These represented the best UWI offered at the time.

It's a very sad loss when inspiring professionals like Brinsley pass on.

He exhibited the remarkable skill of combining his academic knowledge into the political domain, and in very interesting ways.

Never afraid of confronting old, comfortable ideas about our diaspora, unionism, religion, constitutional reform, he has left UWI colleagues and students a precious treasure of books and seminal papers. And this is one of the many reasons he will be so sadly missed.

RAMESH DEOSARAN

Professor Emeritus