A man of many parts: a personal reminiscence of Warren Horton.(Biography)

There are many people who could write about Warren from their perspective and their knowledge of him, but I imagine that some constant themes might emerge and it is those themes I will try to identify.

Much of what appears here will be familiar to many readers, because if there was one overriding memory of him, it was his ability to make you feel the important recipient of some extremely rare or privileged information, when in your heart of hearts you knew that his familiar 'This is for your ears only' meant that more than a few others would have received the same information with the same directive!

For example, Warren used to refer to me often as 'his oldest and closest friend in libraries' but I suspect that does not make me unique. Certainly we were friends on and off for perhaps 35 years and very close friends on and off for a good many of those years.

Many of the best anecdotes about WMH were the ones he used to tell about himself. The most famous of course was his introduction to Canberra Grammar. As he told it, he was travelling by car with his parents from Sydney to Melbourne when they stopped off for a picnic in the grounds of this famous school. When his parents asked him if he liked it there he agreed that it was very pleasant--at which time he was told he was to be a boarder there and his case was summarily extracted from the boot of the car and deposited with him at the school.

What is particularly interesting about this story, as well as the poignancy of the tale itself, is the fact that he used to tell it about himself. Was it designed to make you feel sorry for him and was it a way of trying to explain what influenced his character development? Was it a true story or had it in true WMH fashion been embellished over the years of it being told?

Anyone who knew Warren well knew that, in polite parlance, he was economical with the truth on occasions. In fact he told whoppers, but the complex thing about it was his ability to get people to keep believing in him even when you knew that he was not…