NANCY LAMBTON Ann Katharine Swynford Lambton 1912–2008
NANCY LAMBTON Ann Katharine Swynford Lambton 1912–2008 ANN KATHARINE SWYNFORD LAMBTON was one of the few outstanding scholars of the Persian language and Persian history that Britain has produced since the subject developed within the wider academic discipline of oriental languages in the nineteenth century. Early in her career she established a reputation as the pre-eminent specialist in all matters Persian: language and grammar, history and political thought in the Islamic period, religion, current events and contemporary political analysis were all considered to lie within her expertise. For many both within and out- side the scholarly community she was the ultimate authority in all these specialisations. There have been few scholars who have so dominated their field for such a long period. For close on seven decades in an exceptionally long, active life she published her research with single-minded determina- tion, for a quarter of a century she held the senior chair in Persian in British universities, and throughout much of her adult life she was thought to be an informal advisor to politicians, diplomats, and oil company directors. Inevitably in a life that spanned some of the decisive events in Iran’s history from the Allied occupation and fall of Reza Shah in 1941, the Azarbaijan crisis in 1946, the coup d’état of 1953, the land reforms of the early 1960s, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, in all of which she was alleged to have played some part, myths and legends rapidly accumulated about her. Admired by many for her scholarly achievements, demonised by others for her political involvement, fictionalised in the post-revolutionary Iranian press as the eminence grise of British Intelligence, credited with single- handedly breaking up a German espionage operation in the Second World War, and briefly portrayed in a recent English novel—James Buchan’sA Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, XII, 235–273.
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