Obituary: Gerald Harriss

Gerald Harriss, who died on November 2nd, 2014 aged 89, was one of the most distinguished English medievalists of his generation. A pupil of the great Oxford historian, K.B. McFarlane, whom he was to succeed at Magdalen and whose letters he was to edit, Harriss was an eloquent interpreter of the workings of English late-medieval political society, illuminating not only its institutional aspects but also the characters of its leading actors, notably Cardinal Beaufort, whose biography he wrote. In 2005, when well into retirement, he published Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461, his volume in the Oxford History of England series, a magisterial survey that ranges with equal authority not only over politics and diplomacy but also over areas well outside Harriss’ field of research, such as trade and peasant living standards. 

As a doctoral supervisor, Harriss was as successful as his mentor McFarlane, training a generation of research students, many of whom now occupy academic or academic-related posts. As an undergraduate tutor Harriss was incisive, conscientious, a good listener and always quietly encouraging. Oxford students, who in their third year studied ‘The Reign of King Henry V’ with him and his colleague, Maurice Keen, owe to him their training in the arcane but still invaluable art of gobbet writing. Gerald Harriss was an historian of supreme distinction, a dedicated teacher and a good and generous human being.