Nicol Spence

Obituary in Higher, royalholloway.ac.uk alumni magazine:

Professor Nicol Spence (1924-2015)

French department, Bedford College

University of London

 Nicol Spence, Professor of French Linguistics, was a distinguished researcher of medieval French. His interests were mainly in the field of linguistics and he published several books and many articles on these subjects. Nicol secured a place at Leeds University to study French and German after the war. In 1966, Nicol was appointed to a readership at Bedford College. He subsequently served as the head of department before taking early retirement in 1984. Nicol also spoke Spanish, Italian, German, and Luxembourgish, and had taught himself Dutch, Portuguese and Greek. He continued to research and publish into his eighties.

Also on my web search today I found the following on prabook.com, which claims to be a place where 'you can add biographies of your relatives, friends, people you admire, as well as your own biography.'  Who 'you' is in this case, I do not know. Omitting some of the mistakes, then –

Nicol Spence was born on July 29, 1924 in Harare, Zimbabwe, the son of William Spence and Marie Rose Tockert .

Education

• Bachelor in Modern Languages, University of Leeds, 1948
• Doctor of Philosophy in Romance Philology, University of London, 1955.

Career

• Assistant lecturer: Queen's University, Belfast, 1951-1954, lecturer 1955-1961, reader 1961-1966
• Assistant lecturer: Keele University College, Staffordshire, 1954-1955
• Reader: Bedford College, University of London, 1966-1979, professor of French linguistics, 1979-1984

Books

The Structures of French 

Runnymede Books (December 31, 1996), Paperback: 268 pages, ISBN-10: 1870725123, ISBN-13: 978-1870725125, 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches

Glossary of Jersey-French

Le francais contemporain: Etudes et discussions 

Other Works

• Author: A Glossary of Jersey French, 1960
• Narcissus: poéme du 12e siecle, 1964
• Essays in Linguistics, 1976
• Le Francais Contemporain, 1976
• A Brief History of Jèrriais, 1993

Contributor of numerous articles to professional journals

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P.S. Sorry, dad, for taking so long to post this on my blog. More to follow...