THE LATE Trinity College Professor RB McDowell “was first and foremost a scholar” and believed in addressing history to the educated world, the Provost of Trinity College, Dr Patrick Prendergast, said yesterday.
He was speaking in an address at the funeral service for Prof McDowell at the crematorium chapel, Mount Jerome, in Dublin. No other historian has painted the Anglo-Irish world of the 18th and 19th century as well as McDowell, and “no one has described it with such elegance and such style”, Dr Prendergast said.
Leading historian, author and Trinity College Dublin academic Robert Brendan McDowell died on August 28th at the age of 97.
Canon Adrian Empey, who conducted the service, recalled that when he himself entered Trinity College in 1960 Prof McDowell “was already a legend”.
For those privileged to study history, “RB shaped that conversation with past generations in a way that was at once amusing, spellbinding, intellectually engaging, and unforgettable. Very briefly, he introduced us to that foreign country from which many of us, myself included, never returned.”
Chief mourners were Prof McDowell’s cousins Harry McDowell, Louise McDowell, Dr Henrietta Ewart and Margo Gordon. The attendance included former president Mary Robinson and her husband Nick, former provost of Trinity College Dr John Hegarty and his wife Neasa, Senator Seán Barrett, Prof David McConnell and Prof John Dillon.
