To understand the past is to cease to live in it

Éamon Phoenix, who died on November 13, was a scholar, a gentleman, a teacher, writer and journalist but above all he was a gentleman and ever so humble.

I remember him coming into The Irish News Office in Belfast. The man was as timid as a mouse. He was always encouraging and said it with a pleasant smile.

In a 2014 newspaper interview he recalled two pieces of advice that had served him well. One was from his mother, who said education is easily carried and the second was from Derry-born historian FSL Lyons, who wrote at the outbreak of the Troubles that ‘to understand the past is to cease to live in it’.

He paid great heed to that wisdom.