In matters intellectual, I have been lucky enough to have known three exceptional individuals. Enright sits uneasily among them because he always made such efforts to appear ordinary; but his publications speak for themselves. It is a coincidence that the second person happened to be a colleague of Enright's in Singapore before coming to Kent. Frank Cioffi was a six-foot-four American who could never pass for ordinary and who had an astonishing grip on his audience whenever he lectured. He would shamble into the lecture hall, explain very clearly a philosophical issue that interested him and then keep everyone both intrigued and entertained (he could be very funny) with his explorations of it. The whole performance appeared to be extemporised, although it had always been carefully thought through beforehand. I can remember eagerly waiting for him to appear in one of the lecture theatres in Kent that would have been packed to the rafters, had it had any. There was a perceptible moan of disappointment when the philosophy professor of the day came in to announce that there had been an alteration in the programme which meant that he would be giving the lecture instead of Cioffi. He then made the mistake of saying that anyone who wanted to leave was free to do so. Although he was not a favourite among his colleagues, those of us who were also members of staff felt a professional duty to stay put; but the crowds of students had no such scruples and melted away like snow in warm sunshine.

Cioffi eventually moved from Kent to a chair in Essex but he returned to Canterbury after his retirement so that I was able to get to know him very well. He had achieved a modicum of public fame as a pioneer in what proved to be an effective dismantling of the theoretical framework of Freud's writings. His objections to the key concepts were not on the usual Popperian grounds. Recognising that there was a world of discussion where the criteria appropriate to scientific discourse were not appropriate, he showed that this too had its accepted rules and Freud could often be found breaking them.