ANTHONY ARIS

It is very difficult to talk about Anthony without mentioning his identical twin brother Michael as their lives were so closely intertwined, since their birth in Havana, Cuba, on 27th March 1946. Indeed at university they once swapped colleges and girlfriends without either realizing. When Anthony first went to Bhutan after Michael had left, the natives couldn’t understand why he cold shouldered them until it was explained that he wasn’t Michael, despite appearances. To which the rejoinder came ‘now we now that all Europeans look alike’. The twins interests too were identical, their passion for Tibet and the Himalayas.

I first met Anthony while Lucinda and I were getting married in 1969, Michael had already left to be tutor to the royal family of Bhutan – then a secret kingdom on the border with India and the only country where Tibetan culture could still bepracticed freely. Anthony left shortly after our wedding and worked in India as publisher for Hal Kuloy, at that time UNICEF representative for India, on a list of reprints about Tibet. On returning to London, he first worked for Dillons University bookshop and then for Kegan Paul, the oriental bookseller, in charge of their gallery of oriental art. This allowed full reign for Anthony’s artistic flair. While Michael was the scholar and linguist, Anthony was the entrepreneur with a talent for design and art, particularly for oriental art. When Kegan Paul closed Anthony joined our company, Aris & Phillips of Warminster and commissioned our series on Himalayan Studies.

While in Kathmandu, he had met a beautiful and bright anthropologist, Marie-Laure de Labriffe. I remember their wedding well when the English disgraced themselves by being late at her familiychateau at Rambouillet and even managed to miss most of the wedding ceremony itself. His marriage was his master stroke. As well as being a tower of strength for Anthony and his endeavours, Marie-Laure raised two charming children and still teaches at University College London. Throughout Anthony’s long and painful illness, she nursed him devotedly until he died at home surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

After their wedding in 1975, we mutually decided that our publishing interests were diverging and Anthony moved on to set up Serindia Publications. Over the next thirty years he published a series of beautiful and lavish books on the Himalayan region, often in conjunction with his brother Michael after the latter returned from Bhutan with his bride Aung San Suu Kyi. But that is another story.

Michael’s early death on their 53rd birthday in 1999 was a devastating blow for Anthony from which he never really recovered. To lose a sibling is always traumatic, but I cannot image how much of a blow it must be to lose an identical twin, part of oneself.

Anthony spent much of the remaining 15 years of his life, bringing his brother’s initiatives to fruition. He was able to complete Michael’s dream of a department of Tibetan Studies at Oxford University which is now established at Wolfson College. He arranged for Michaels extensive photographic archive of Bhutan and the microfilms of the monastic libraries to be lodged at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford where the material is now available to scholars on line. He died just before the first annual Aris memorial lecture on Tibetan Studies, now established in perpetuity and named after both brothers, He also had Michael’s extensive correspondence about with Suu archived and placed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where it is embargoed to some future date.

My last visit to Anthony, a few weeks ago in St John’s Hospice, found him surrounded by Tibetan monks as the Tibetan Centre was just round the corner. When asked about his beliefs I can only recount an anecdote which Paddy Ashdown tells. When a boy he went to Northern Ireland and was determined to avoid being caught in the religious sectarianism, so when he reported to school and was asked about his religion, he replied Buddhist. Ah came the reply but are you a Catholic Buddhist or a Protestant Buddhist? Anthony was clearly a Catholic Buddhist: his cremation was accompanied by Tibetan lamas chanting prayers for the dead and rebirth and his memorial service afterwards was at Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church in Kensington. After all, the Christian belief that the dead will rise at the last trump is not a million miles away from Buddhist reincarnation.

Part of Anthony´s ashes were scattered in the burn flowing into his beloved Loch Torridon where he had a croft for fifty years and part will go into the Stupa next to Michael’s at Kagyu Samye Ling, the Tibetan monastery in the Borders that they had both helped to found in their youth.

Anthony was a devoted family man. He had a wide his circle of friends whom he had collected on his many travels around the world. The regard with which he was held was shown by the number of people at his memorial service in the enormous church in London which was attended by hundreds of mourners. They say ‘do not speak ill of the dead’; it would be very difficult to speak ill of Anthony, even if one wished to do so.

After his long struggle with his painful illness may he rest in peace.

Adrian Phillips 14th November 2015