A tribute to Sir Anthony Kenny

James Rivington, 11 August 2026:

Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 1974, Sir Anthony Kenny played a major role in the Academy’s life – both as an individual academic, and as a champion for the values and good health of the disciplines the Academy represents.

As an individual academic, Sir Anthony contributed to the intellectual life of the Academy, delivering the 1969 Dawes Hicks Lecture on Philosophy on ‘Mental Health in Plato’s Republic’, and the 1986 Master-Mind Lecture on ‘Wyclif’; and in 1992 he provided some reflections on ‘Victorian Values’.

Sir Anthony became President of the British Academy in 1989, at a critical moment for research funding in the humanities. For 25 years, the British Academy had increasingly been taking on the role of a de facto Humanities Research Council, but there were growing concerns that this was not the best way of maximising public funding for humanities research, and that it wasn’t in the best interests of the Academy either. In 1990 an Academy working party set up by Sir Anthony made the case for the establishment of a proper Humanities Research Council – an argument endorsed by a further joint British Academy/ESRC report in 1992. Alas, government was not persuaded. Therefore, at his final AGM as President in 1993, Sir Anthony persuaded the Academy to set up its own arms-length Humanities Research Board to run most of its publicly resourced research funding schemes. That important first step would ultimately lead by the end of the decade to the establishment of a separate Arts and Humanities Research Board.

More generally, Sir Anthony expressed concerns about the health of scholarly life in the UK. In his 1993 Presidential Address, as he looked back on his term of office, he deprecated ‘the constant thrust to introduce into the academic community the values and structures of commercial competition’. The appropriate funding of UK higher education was an issue that Sir Anthony would remain actively engaged with in future years.

As one of the six Presidents who were alive at the time of the Academy’s centenary in 2002, Sir Anthony was included in Stuart Pearson Wright’s intriguing group portrait, Gallus gallus with Presidents.

Professor Susan J Smith, President of the British Academy, said:

"On behalf of the Fellows of the British Academy, it is a privilege to pay tribute to the long, inspiring life of Sir Anthony Kenney and to mourn his death.

As well as his brilliant scholarship (a word he preferred over ‘research’), he showed exceptional leadership during his time as our 23rd President, as the British Academy adjusted to a round of far-reaching changes in higher education funding.

Throughout, Sir Anthony was energetic in engaging with government, active in supporting the Universities and an uncompromising champion for the humanities. He will be greatly missed and fondly remembered."

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