John Leslie – a tribute

Dr John Duncan Leslie, as he became, was a student at the Grammar School from 1958 to 1965.  He won prizes in the Sixth Form for both History and Latin, and then an open exhibition in History to Peterhouse, Cambridge. Here his interest in central European history developed. He took his degree with First Class honours in 1968 and was awarded the College History prize and title of Scholar at Peterhouse in June 1968. Some readers will remember his father, Joe Leslie, J.P., who was chairman of the Governors of the Grammar School for many years in the 1950s and 1960s.

After this very promising start, John began research on Austria-Hungary’s eastern policy in the First World War, which involved a great deal of travel to archives in Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, where he uncovered neglected material, which enabled him to throw new light on the ideological and intellectual background to the policies of the Austrian Empire at the beginning of the First World War. The fact that he had an excellent command of German made his investigation of these sources possible, and later he was to use Polish archives to considerable effect, too. John took his Ph.D at Cambridge in 1975.  Indeed, he became a much-travelled historian, spending three years in Vienna, and two in Mainz, at the Institute for European History there, later returning in the long vacations of 1976, 1977 and 1978. He established effective working relationships with colleagues in Eastern Europe, visited Budapest, Cluj, Bucharest, Brno, Prague, Warsaw and Cracow, and was appointed the first non-German permanent member of the research staff of the Mainz Institute.

In October 1975 he returned to Britain to lecture in modern European history at Westfield College, London, where he illustrated the history of unfamiliar parts of Europe by using film.  He moved to Bristol University in January 1980, to be lecturer in modern European History, concentrating on Germany, East Central Europe, the Balkans and Russia. He saw his major contribution to the department at Bristol as developing a new type of history degree course which enabled good linguists among the students to take part of their course at the University of Giessen, concentrating on German history. This pioneering scheme operates under the Erasmus project of the E.U. John then found himself advising other university departments at Bristol on the establishment of similar degree courses.  He also organised a large number of guest lectures at Bristol, and was himself a guest lecturer at Giessen, Salzburg and Vienna, as well as at other English, Irish and Welsh universities. He delivered papers at conferences in Oxford, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Munich, Dublin and Barcelona, and spoke to school groups.

John’s time at Bristol was largely taken up with teaching, in a university which, as he put it, “maintains Oxbridge standards on a diminishing redbrick budget. “ The situation appeared to be getting him down, as he added that he had “immense reserves of absolutely original material to publish,” and some difficulty finding time to deal with this.  A tribute to John in a Bristol University publication refers to his last work appearing in a Vienna-published series (Wiener Beiträge), adding that it “has probably not yet received its due appreciation in the Anglo-Saxon world.” He was so highly regarded by fellow historians that one of them, Fritz Fellner, wrote, in Chapter One of Decisions for War, 1914, (UCL Press, 1995) “I should… like this presentation of the results of Leslie’s research to be seen as a tribute to a scholar whose work was cut short all too soon, whose broad concept of an account of Austro-Hungarian war aims and the history of the Polish question in the First World War was not completed, but who has made such a rich contribution to our knowledge of the history of these years…”

(If anyone want to know a little more of the details of the intellectual background to Austrian policy at this point, I am happy to supply them from my own notes of the above publication)

It is good to know that he occasionally found time to relax, and that his hobbies were playing the cello and the piano to a high standard, and restoring harmoniums. He also worked on the restoration of his Georgian flat in Bristol. Unfortunately his career and his life were cut short: he was forced by illness to retire early, in 1992, at the early age of 45, and died in January 1994, in his 47^th year. Those who remember him will recall a very cheerful personality, and the present writer can never forget being introduced to chamber music by John in his last year at Cambridge, while John was in his first. The fact that we were never to meet again is the source of much sadness: he was a very dear and valuable friend.