Tribute to Professor Michael Costeloe

I first met Michael Costeloe in the formal setting of my undergraduate viva in June 1972. He was external examiner for Spanish at UCL at the age of 33, a sign of the respect in which he was already held in the academic community. I don't recollect very much about that occasion. In those days, one had to sit before the entire panel of examiners and answer questions about the exams! Nor did I envisage at that stage entering the academic profession, much less that I would end up working at Bristol, and with Michael. I began my appointment at Bristol in 1978, and Michael, who by that time was Reader, took me to the roof garden of Senate House and showed me the city's skyline, pointing out the areas where I might seek  accommodation. He was a friendly and hospitable man, and made me feel at home from the start. In those days, the Department was housed in three villas at 83,87 and 89 Woodland Road. The Professor and secretaries were housed in the first, but at the lunch hour, we the inhabitants of 87 and 89 would invariably take our sandwiches over to Mike's office, where we would discuss anything from scholarship to decorating. In 1981, Mike took the Chair of Hispanic Studies and the Department moved up the road to 15 Woodland Road. Most of my memories of Mike are understandably from the period in which he was Professor and Head of Department, between 1981 and 1993, when he gave up the HoD-ship to become Dean of Arts. He led our Department through extremely difficult times during the 1980s, but he did so without any of his colleagues feeling threatened, harrassed or bullied. He led by example, managing to combine heavy administrative responsibilities with a scholarly output that was truly impressive. Mike hadn't studied Portuguese as part of his degree, but, as a Latin Americanist in particular, he recognised its importance, and the need for it to be supported at a departmental and an institutional level. It was largely through his leadership that we were awarded a Gulbenkian-funded visiting fellowship in Portuguese, which enabled me to invite and work with a number of Portuguese scholars for a term over a period of six years. One of the first of these fellows was a pioneer in Lusophone African Studies at Lisbon University, Manuel Ferreira. Mike knew little about this subject, but he did manage to establish very soon that Ferreira could play table tennis, so he organised a table tennis competition for our guest at the Kingsdown Sports Centre. It was a typically supportive, but unobtrusive way of integrating our visitor into the life of the Department. He later enabled me to make research visits to both Angola and Mozambique when he realised my interest was veering towards Lusophone African Studies, in days when travel grants weren't particularly easy to get hold of, but when HoDs still had strategic funds at their disposal. Mike was a man who was generous with his time, always listened and offered advice, liked a good story and could usually trump you with an even better one, and was extremely loyal to his colleagues in their efforts.

I saw Mike from time to time after he retired, but perhaps my most vivid memory is of a chance meeting on a transatlantic flight. In October 2008, I was on my way to a conference at Yale. Sitting on the tarmac at Bristol Airport, my wife Celeste nudged me suddenly and said 'isn't that Michael and Eleanor?' Sure enough, there they were a few rows in front. He was on his way to do research on a British entrepreneur who had had interests in Mexico in the 19^th century. He filled me in on the details, later in the flight, 35000 feet over the North Atlantic, and again in the baggage hall at Newark. He was his usual self: full of stories about his subject, about his detective work up in the North of England, about what he hoped to find in New York and Cincinatti. Mike sharing his enthusiasm, his inquistiveness, making us want to follow him, Mike at his best!

David Brookshaw

September 2011

Tribute written for Michael's funeral by Professor Will Fowler, Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of St Andrews.