Nigel Henry

Nigel Henry was born in Dundee, Scotland, in December 1950. He had his secondary-school education at Harris Academy, Dundee, and thereafter studied Classics at the University of St. Andrews (1969-73) and the University of Oxford (1973-5). In April 1976 he took up the post of Lecturer in the Department of Classics of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, a position he holds to date. Not overly sociable, he has been described as a pathologically negative deviant, a useful label, in his opinion. He has failed marriages to his name and was told by his last wife that no woman could ever live with him. By his own admission, he prefers to live in a society where most people are the same colour. Mr. Henry firmly dismisses the suggestion that he might have ‘gone native’. He is naturally conservative in his mode of dress, and extremely so in his eating habits. Here is the man who stands barefoot at the edge of a gently flowing stream, unmoving and unmoved, full well aware that the stream must long survive him. Mr. Henry is a committed teacher and tea-totaller, though he confesses that, in respect of the latter, he sometimes lapses; his libellus (little/modest book) is an African book written by a foreigner.