Obituary: Mr James Hardyman

It is my sad duty to report the death of James Hardyman on Sunday 1 October 1995, after a long fight against Parkinson's Disease.
James Trenchard Hardyman was born in 1918 in Madagascar, the son of a London Missionary Society missionary. He read Theology at Oxford and was himself appointed a missionary to Madagascar in 1944, the same year in which he married Marjorie Tucker. He retired from missionary service in Madagascar in 1974 and returned to England where he acted as the LMS archivist until 1991, among other things preparing the archives for deposit in SOAS Library. He was also, for twelve years, the archivist for the Conference of British Missionary Societies.
James Hardyman collected books and other materials relating to Madagascar throughout his life, from the age of eleven. He might well be called the "unofficial archivist" of Madagascar. In 1991 he and his wife donated this by now substantial and unique personal library to SOAS Library, thus firmly establishing the School as the centre for Malagasy research in the world.
The Library had hoped to complete the cataloguing of the Collection and to prepare a printed catalogue during Mr. Hardyman's lifetime but, sadly, this was not to be.