From Dr Philip Morgan

I first met Shona at CU Boulder when I held a visiting Fulbright post there and, to make up some of her requirements, she did a course with me on the medieval English gentry. She was a very scary student. She certainly scared me from the start since it was patently obvious that I couldn't teach her a thing. What made it worse was that she never let on how little she gained from me. She designed her own mini-project on gentry wills, produced a flawless paper (which I still have and use) and employed the time to teach herself more of the trade. She exemplified the difference between those who work as historians and those who have the minds of historians, interested in everything, always looking for connections, and desperate to visit the places about which they write because it is vital. A decade later I was in Missouri and she generously drove from Kansas City to Fulton and back in the day to give a student class on the Black Death. I did the same for her to Kansas City. She couldn't offer much of a dinner in the evening, she explained, since she had the children that night, and they were keen to go to the then newly fashionable Rainforest Cafe. So, we chatted happily about the middle ages for two or three hours, the children glowing with excitement and me with a smile on my face only slightly less broad. You never turned down the chance to be in her company. I saw her last at Leeds - on a staircase when she turned and waved since she was off to visit one of the sites of medieval Yorkshire. It was one I had been to lots and I didn't go, but I had never been in Shona's company, and I wish I had.