Professor Alfred Felix Landon Beeston 'Freddie' (1911-1995)

Freddie being presented as a member of the Society of Alexander Csoma De Koros in Budapest, 1993.

Towards the end of his life, Freddie visited Hungary a number of times for conferences, including the Colloquium on Arabic Lexicology and Lexicography in 1993, where he was made a member of the Society of Alexander Csoma De Koros. When an Oxford colleague asked him what language he spoke on these visits, he replied with a grin 'Why, Hungarian, of course!' and though the smile suggested he was joking, those present in Budapest confirmed that indeed he spoke it well. Although Freddie had a practical command of a more than usually wide range of modern languages, his prime interest in languages was in their structure and the different methods they employed to express meaning. Thus, for instance in his previously unpublished 'Thoughts on the Passive' (in A.F.L. Beeston at the Arabian Seminar, and other papers . Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005), he compares 'passive constructions' in English, French, Arabic and Welsh.

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