Bill Martin 1927-2024

Munizha Ahmad-CookeNews 1 Comment

We were saddened to hear that Bill Martin, a longtime Friend of the Trust, passed away on on 17 February 2024 at the age of 96. Bill and and his wife, Sandra Mason, have been regular attendees of Trust events for many years. They also acted as Friends Coordinators for us in a voluntary capacity for ten years until 2018, organising Friends events and building support for the Trust’s work.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was a particular passion of Bill’s. He was an avid collector of different editions and he and Sandra authored the landmark study The Art of Omar Khayyam: Illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat, published in 2007. Sandra has recently written more about this enthusiasm for the poem on the blog she and Bill founded.

Bill and Sandra also gave us the Omar Khayyam rose we have in our garden ‘to commemorate the anniversaries of 2009’, including the birth on 31 March 1809 of Edward FitzGerald. The photo above shows Bill planting the rose at our Annual Garden Party in 2011.

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