UR TV CAST

The circus in France had begun to stagnate and he was determined to revive its magical charm. He succeeded very quickly in establishing a major touring show and, in an alliance with Bouglions, one of the biggest circus names, staged a massive circus in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris in 1976.One of France’s biggest and most respected circuses, the Circus Pinder, fell on hard times in 1971 and Richard rescued it from bankruptcy. In 1972 he emerged from his winter quarters with two massive circuses under his control, the Cirque Jean Richard and Cirque Pinder-Jean Richard. His enterprises flourished and at times during the 1970s he travelled with a third unit, Nouveau Cirque Jean Richard.In 1973, Richard suffered a terrible road accident and for weeks his life hung in the balance. He had been desperately tired and worried at that period, and this no doubt contributed to his near-fatal accident.

An arsonist had been trying to destroy his Cirque Pinder unit, with 10 attempts in the space of six weeks. It was even more of a shock to Richard when the pyromaniac was revealed to be one of the circus’s own staff, a groom attached to the elephant act of Costa Kruso.Despite his terrible injuries, Richard survived the accident, but his control of his businesses was never again as sharp In 1983, his circus empire collapsed in bankruptcy. He retired to Ermonenville, continuing to run La Mer du Sable there along with his son Jean-Pierre and daughter Elizabeth. The title of Cirque Pinder-Jean Richard was bought by a French investor, Gilbert Edelstein, and is flourishing again as one of France’s leading travelling circuses.D Nevil. Dmitriy Dmitrievich Obolensky (Dimitri Obolensky), historian: born Petrograd 1 April 1918 (Old Style 19 March 1918); Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge 1942-48, Honorary Fellow 1991-2001; Lecturer in Slavonic Studies, Cambridge University 1946-48; Reader in Russian and Balkan Medieval History, Oxford University 1949-61, Professor of Russian and Balkan History 1961-85 (Emeritus); Student, Christ Church, Oxford 1950-85 (Emeritus); FBA 1974; Kt 1984; married 1947 Elisabeth Lopukhin (marriage dissolved 1989); died Burford, Oxfordshire 23 December 2001. It was the resonance of his voice and precision of his speech which did it His singing, liturgical or profane, was memorable His English and French were cultured enough.

But to Soviet ears his Russian was simply electrifying: the living voice of the past, a reminder of a lost world. Obolensky was equally intrigued by the Russia that he had missed, and freely acknowledged its achievements.Such a complex man was a complex historian. As an academic, Obolensky began in 1946 with a Cambridge thesis on the Bogomils (1946), which may explain something. It is about medieval Balkan dualism, good and evil, and the identity of the fundamentalist and non- conformist followers of a hidden Bulgarian pop, or priest, which came to a show trial in Orthodox Byzantium in about the year 1110.In 1948 Obolensky dedicated the published book (The Bogomils: a study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism) to his mother, Countess Maria Shuvalov (1894-1973), and became a British subject This was a turning point.

A lesser move was from Trinity College, Cambridge, to Christ Church, Oxford, where some spotted that neat painters had made “Prof” out of “Prince” on Obolensky’s door by 1961.In Oxford, Obolensky’s measured lectures led to his most influential book, The Byzantine Commonwealth, first published in 1971 It is a classic. The title tells all: a touching reference to the liberal kingdom and commonwealth to which Obolensky had transferred his allegiance. How far could the lost state of Byzantium control its Slav successors? Where is good and evil; how in medieval terms can a totalitarian state implement its desires?Obolensky reported a discussion on such matters between senior Byzantinists and the Kremlin leadership in 1991 (when Gorbachev was unavoidably absent in the Crimea) It all ended in coffee cups. But in Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere in his commonwealth, Obolensky taught his students how to understand geography and texts, ideas and identity. Two of them, Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, were inspired to take one part of the matter on to The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200 (1996).Russianists know Obolensky best as editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Verse (1962) and its successors under various titles.