A Personal Note

We met only briefly at Derry Jeffares' home in Leeds in 1964 on the evening of the day Chinua read his paper 'The Novelist as Teacher'. We met again at Nsukka in the month preceding the separation of Biafra. Geoffrey Hill, the British poet, had come to Ibadan for a term on leave from Leeds. Desmond Maxwell, Dean of Arts at lbadan at the time, very kindly let us have the Peugeot 404 Faculty wagon for our journey. We trekked to Benin and then to Nsukka on a two-day hop. On the west of the Niger it was easy enough: after Asaba/Ontisha one had a portent of things to come. We found Nsukka, then a wonder of a University, aglow with health and enquiry and forwardness, everything that should exist to serve the nation with disinterested enquiry, helpful comment on nationhood.