ABSTRACT
When John Vincent was elected to the Montague Burton Professorship of International Relations at the LSE in 1989, at the age of 46, he was at the peak of his powers. Two respected monographs, 2 the editorship of the leading British academic journal of international relations, 3 a host of important articles and chapters and a strong succession of graduate students at his previous institutions in the UK (Keele and Oxford), 4 plus a vibrant and well-known international profile, 5 had already made him a figure to be reckoned with in the field, but it was confidently expected that his most important work was still to come. Indeed, he was such a vital and popular figure in the still relatively small British international relations academic community that the news of his early and completely unexpected death in 1990 came as a profound shock. There was a very real sense of personal loss – the loss of an immensely attractive, charismatic and life-enhancing presence in the field – as well as the more abstract, but still very keenly felt, loss of a body of work that had been increasingly anticipated and which now would never be.
