On Wednesday this week, family, friends, and colleagues from academia paid their respects to a remarkable man. It will not have been lost on any of them that the funeral at the Church of St John the Divine in Sale was held on the 33rd anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The man being remembered had lived 58 of his 87 years in Brooklands. But he played a role on a global stage - helping to thaw the Cold War.
Professor Richard Pollock's expertise was his grasp and deep understanding of the Russian language. It was a skill which, for a while, made the world a safer place in the 1980s and 1990s.
