Vale Inga Clendinnen

Photos by: Tina Haynes

We were all very saddened by the news of the passing of one of our old friends and clients, Inga Clendinnen, in early September. She was a wonderful person to meet, full of intellect and charm. For her eulogy, the American historian, William Taylor, described Inga as an anthropologist, a public intellectual, a writer, a poet in prose, a Mesoamericanist and a student of the Holocaust and Australia. A cultural historian without portfolio. I think this describes her very well. Inga was very much part of a shrinking number of public intellectuals who are open to accepting other people’s views. She was able to make history relevant and interesting by injecting a human side to otherwise fairly mundane narratives. Inga commenced her career as an academic historian. In 1991 she published her extraordinary study Aztecs. She also wrote on subjects ranging from Nazi Germany in her book, Reading the Holocaust (1998), to Australian Aboriginals and Settlers, Dancing with Strangers (2003), as well as her memoir Tiger’s Eye (2000) which combines autobiography with flashes of fiction. She will be missed by her family, friends and fellow academics and historians to whom we send our sincere condolences.