Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Christian Renaut was kind enough to forward me his homage to the late Robin Allan.

[Robin is gone. For anyone who was lucky to have known him, it means that a humble, passionate, generous man has left us. I may not be one of the people who knew him best, but I had the opportunity to meet his wife and him, and even be invited at his home in England, although we hardly knew each other. I had always wanted to meet the man who had written such a wonderful book as «Disney and Europe.» I have never read anything so clever and informed. I know all the odds he had to overcome to work it out. Some of us have had to get over the same ordeals. But he never gave up and now we are privileged to be able to own this precious book on our shelves.

He was no greedy man, he was not full of himself, he only cared for putting forward what Walt Disney had done , not trying to blow his own horn. He could have made a lot of money selling all the cels he had been given when Disney cels were not worth much then, but he simply gave them to the library of his University as a kind of grateful gesture for the years he had spent there. Who would do that ?

He kept congratulating the others on their achievements and I tried many times to tell him that he was unmatched.

I’m thinking about his wife and family.

Bye Robin, and thanks a lot for being who you were.]

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