When I was asked to say something today about Anthony, I suddenly had no idea what to say.
What to say to a group of people who had each known Anthony. Who each had their own vivid
and distinct experience of him. And also because Anthony did so many things.

He was the publisher producing books on Tibetan, Himalayan and Central Asian art and culture
of extraordinary scholarship and craftsmanship.

He was the tireless campaigner supporting so many initiatives to further Tibetan and Himalayan
Studies – not least of which the Trust set up at Oxford in his brother Michael’s name – and for
causes for freedom and human rights, particularly those in Burma.

And in recent years he was the intrepid researcher and archivist. Digging out and organising his
brother Michael’s papers and those of his sister-in-law Aung San Suu Kyi. Or even turfing out the
forgotten and dusty cupboards full of 100 years in the life of an industry and community in his
mother-in-law’s house in the east of France.

He was the much beloved husband, father, grandfather, uncle, brother, brother-in-law and the
great-hearted friend to so many.

And that is just to name a few of the things Anthony got up to.

But it was really how Anthony did these things – it was the flair he brought to them that made his
impact so powerful and enduring. He was like Charles Dickens’s Spirit of Christmas Present – a
kind of enormous, booming and even a little bit frightening embodiment of bounteous good
humour, intelligence and dynamism.

Whatever Anthony did – he was intensely interested in doing it. And he translated that interest
into action. And that interest was always infectious to all who came into contact with it.

I was searching for a few lines to close with and remembered that we once, many years ago threw
a party, and the invitations for it bore the title Where the bee sucks so suck I (stolen from the song
of another spirit – Ariel – at the end of The Tempest). Anthony was particularly struck by it and
turned up as the very spirit of Prospero’s magical servant of the air – though not – I should add –
in that character’s usual costume (though I’m sure Anthony would have been equal to it). And of
course what was probably a rather dull party became much, much brighter.

I’ll read you the closing lines of that song because they evoke for me how Anthony led his life.
And also where I believe Anthony is now:

After summer merrily
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough

—Donald Dinwiddie, October 2015