Forwarded from alt.obituaries
>From The Times
August 30, 2007
Martin Moynihan
Diplomat and talented linguist who translated C. S. Lewis's Latin
letters and entertained heads of state with his own verse
Martin Moynihan was a diplomat for more than 30 years, mostly in the
Commonwealth during the turbulent postwar era. He was in India during
partition and in Kuala Lumpur during the birth of modern Malaysia.
Moynihan also had a lifelong interest in literature and was tutored at
Oxford by C. S. Lewis, whose letters in Latin to the Italian priest
and saint, Giovanni Calabria, he translated and edited.
He was an accomplished linguist, learning local languages during his
many diplomatic postings and composing verses in Malay to Tunku Abdul
Rhaman, the veteran Malaysian Prime Minister, in Sesotho to King
Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho and in Mandarin to Lee Kuan Yew, the
Singapore Prime Minister.
In the mid1980s Barbara Reynolds, the writer and translator, was
conducting research at Wheaton College, Illinois, when she came across
a collection of letters in Latin from C. S. Lewis to a correspondent
in Italy. Reynolds knew Moynihan and his interest in Lewis and helped
him to obtain permission to translate the letters. He published the
resulting work as The Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis (1987) and Letters:
C. S. Lewis and Don Giovanni Calabria (1988).
The letters began in 1947 when Calabria, who was later canonised by
Pope John Paul II, wrote to Lewis after reading an Italian translation
of The Screwtape Letters (1942) with its correspondence between a
senior devil and his nephew about how to turn a Christian away from
God.
Subjects covered by Lewis and Calabria, who wrote in Latin because his
English was poor and he knew that the other man was a Classics
scholar, included hope for an improvement in Church unity amid the
chaos of postwar Europe and the damage caused by Christian divisions.
The letters continued until Calabria's death in 1954.
Martin John Moynihan was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1916, the
eldest of seven children, and educated at Birkenhead School, where he
excelled in athletics and rugby. While at Birkenhead his interest in
literature developed and he was introduced to philosophy. When the
family moved to North London, Moynihan gained a scholarship to
Magdalen College, Oxford, a year early.
He gained a degree in PPE and became friends with C. S. Lewis who
tutored him for a year on a paper about 19th-century literature.
Moynihan then travelled around Europe, ending up in Germany, where he
taught English.
He joined the India Office, was posted to Delhi and on the outbreak of
war joined the Indian Army. He served in the Punjab Frontier Force in
the Northwest Frontier and Burma until the end of the war.
In 1946 Moynihan rejoined the India Office and helped to oversee
partition and independence. He was then posted to Karachi, Madras and
Bombay before a brief spell in London.
He then became part of the new Commonwealth office and was sent to
Peshawar as Deputy High Commissioner in 1954, followed by postings in
the same role to Lahore in 1956, Kuala Lumpur in 1961 and Port of
Spain, Trinidad, three years later.
After the merger of the Commonwealth and Foreign offices he was
appointed Consul General in Philadelphia in 1966 and four years later
was posted to Liberia as Ambassador and then High Commissioner in
Lesotho from 1973-76.
On his retirement from the diplomatic service, he became the
administration officer for the Kennedy Memorial Trust, which enables
British post-graduate students to study at Harvard and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He was an associate member in Southern African Studies of Clare Hall,
Cambridge, 1977-78, and was actively involved in the Hakluyt Society,
which publishes scholarly editions of historical travel literature,
serving on its council from 1976 to 1990.He was appointed CMG in
1972.
Moynihan was a published poet, first with The Strangers(1946), a
collection on the musings of three friends on their futures at the
beginning of the Second World War, South of Fort Hertz (1956), a
narrative poem on the Burma campaigns, and Europe Videos in Verse
(1999), a collection of short travel poems.
Moynihan was a cheerful and knowledgeable companion who was also
highly principled and lived by a code based on the Christian ethic.
His faith was very important to him and towards the end of his life he
began to feel out of step with the prevalent liberal view of
morality.
His wife, Monica, whom he married in 1946, died in 2003. He is
survived by their son and daughter.
Martin Moynihan, CMG, MC, diplomat, was born on February 17, 1916. He
died on July 28, 2007, aged 91
--
Steve Hayes
Web:
http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
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