LARKIN, Maurice (John Milner) 1932-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born August 12, 1932, in Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, England; died February 29, 2004, in North Berwick, East Lothian, England. Historian, educator, and author. A former professor at Edinburgh University, Larkin was a popular teacher and considered by many an authority of modern French history. After serving in the Royal Army Education Corps as a lieutenant, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned a B.A. in 1954, and an M.A. and Ph.D. concurrently in 1958. That year, he joined the University of Glasgow faculty, first as an assistant lecturer and then as a lecturer in modern history. When the University of Kent was founded, he was one of its first staff members. Larkin was a lecturer from 1965 to 1968, a senior lecturer for the next seven years, and then the Richard Pares professor of history from 1976 until 1999, when he retired as professor emeritus. Made a fellow of the Royal History Society in 1986, Larkin was the author of several history books, many of which are still considered standard sources for their subjects, a favorite topic being the relationship between church and state. Among his publications are Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The Separation Issue in France (1974), France since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936-1986 (1988), and Religion, Politics, and Preferment in France since 1890: La Belle Epoque and Its Legacy (1995). At the time of his death, Larkin was in the middle of a new book about politics and Catholicism in Europe after World War II.

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Independent (London, England), March 16, 2004, p. 32.