In Memoriam: Barbara Finney

She was appointed Joint Honorary Secretary for Branches in 1997, a role in which she championed local classics communities across England and Wales, sourcing grants and support, and helping branches to flourish. She contributed a chapter to the volume of the CA’s history in 2003 on the Branches and remained in her role until 2019, continuing as a trustee of the Association until March this year.

In 2023, Barbara was appointed a Vice President of the Association as a distinguished member.

Barbara (r) with LSA Branch Chair Katrina Kelly and writer Caroline Lawrence, celebrating a Branch Competition in 2018

Barbara’s close friend, the author Lindsey Davis, has written a fuller celebration of Barbara’s life and work here:

It’s a really great sorrow to be remembering Barbara after she has passed away. Amazingly, I have known her for sixty-five years. We went to the same school, King Edwards High School in Birmingham; she may have been Head Girl and certainly she won the Creak Memorial Prize which is awarded to the student who “by their character and general worth has best served the school”. I would never have spoken to her then; there was too great a gulf between shy first-years fresh from infant school and those majestic near-women who were on the verge of university. It’s telling that I have retained a mental image of her all this time: the faintly formal style alongside the sense of a keen intelligence always taking an interest. When I grew up I realised there was, too, that twinkle in the eye, as a rueful Brummie was privately deploring some daft aspect of the world, while considering ways to sort it out.

I would meet her again during my stint as President of the CA, when she became one of my personal friends, friendships being a reason to keep coming back even for people like me who are not classicists. The gulf had gone. Barbara’s welcome drew me in. We were to spend many a morning at conferences, arriving at coffee break, looking out the most offbeat panels, gossiping, and picking over the faults of any plenary speaker who had not met our standards. (Quite a few of those!) We had a little group of cronies, now sadly depleted but including my old KE Latin teacher Elys Varney. It became traditional that at conference dinners while Barbara was doing duty on top table, we would have her dear sweet husband Jack with us until Barbara came to claim him – at which point we would ply her with drink.

It was always well earned. Just as we can imagine that in her role as a vicar’s wife she did not simply ‘do the flowers’, I saw on CA Council both her love of her subject and her determination to further it. She was sane; she was practical; this was a no-nonsense woman who pulled her weight. Barbara knew that organisations need to be run, and run well, by people with energy and sense, people who don’t just accept suggestions but who follow them up, and indeed, people who remember that the same thing under discussion has happened before… This kind of recall is useful not just to avoid repeating disasters but it gives cohesion, which is especially useful in something like the CA where members will naturally come and go frequently as their courses or jobs in classics come and go. Her chief contribution was trying to bring people in through local branches. We need to gather up the classics community and also to attract the wider public. I am now working with my local branch and know how well her stable of branches are established and, crucially, funded. I had been looking forwards to telling her how it feels from the other side, and to congratulate her on her own achievement. It wouldn’t have been solemn; we’d have been sharing jokes and practical wisdom, because that was Barbara.

She will be missed. This is so often said of people, but in her case it’s the simple truth.