H A R B E R died on 31st August 1966 at the Westminster Hospital, London, after a major operation which had at first seemed successful. He was 5 7. Latterly he was known to readers oiBritishBirds chiefly as the Honorary Secretary of the Rarities Committee, a task which he accepted early in 1963, and for his periodic controversies on ornithological topics that interested him. The former he regarded as serious work; controversy, something of a relaxation. Denzil Harber had suffered from asthma since infancy and as a consequence his formal education was spasmodic. He was, however, taught how to learn, and how to plan courses of study for himself, by a master of unusual ability. In this way he taught himself elementary Russian, amongst other subjects. After a childhood spent mostly in Sussex, he returned to London and became a student at the London School of Economics with a British Museum Library ticket, but no settled prospects, until in 1931 he was offered the post of interpreter to a Canadian journalist going on an extended tour of Russia. He was attracted by this chance as much to perfect his Russian as because he had meanwhile become a left wing polemicist. Three months in Russia so disillusioned him, however, that thoughts of settling there permanently were dispelled and he returned to England. He then decided to follow a political career, but this did not yield him the modest income even he could have managed on, so he became an