Raymond Carr, the great historian of modern Spain, has died at the ripe old age of 96. There will be lots of respectful obituaries like this one in the Guardian. I wonder, though, if they will capture the racy essence of the man. I’ve lost count of the number of people who knew him in Oxford, all of whom tell barely-credible stories of his various adventures, one involving coming upon him working as a waiter in a Swedish cafe, where he had come in pursuit of a woman.

He was also the model for the academic in Joseph Losey’s film Accident, in which Dirk Bogarde played a charismatic Oxford don.