Bill readings was in the process of making final revisions to this book when he died in the crash of American Eagle flight 4184 on October 31, 1994. [...] To insist on talk as a part of the very fabric of this book is perhaps a step toward acknowledging the singularity of a voice, a place, and a time which would not exist apart from the University
-- Diane Elam, 'Foreword' in Readings, Bill. 1996. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. vii. My emphasis.
I have forborne to name the individuals who have influenced this book [...]. I will, however, take the risk of mentioning by name the person who first made me aware that the University could be a place to think: Ann Wordsworth. She taught me about something that Oxford called "Critical Theory" and she did so on a short-term contract, teaching in a hut in the garden of one of the brick mansions of North Oxford. I dedicate this book to her.
-- Readings, Bill. 1996. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. x. My emphasis.
Ann taught in a long wooden shed attached to a house in Crick Road, an environment that seemed steeped in radical thought.
-- Jackie Hall, Obituary
What better place than here, what better time than now?