My former doctoral supervisor Andrew Roberts, who has died aged 87, was one of a now almost-vanished cohort of scholars whose imagination was captured in the 1960s by the possibilities of studying African history.
Andrew spent much of the 60s as a researcher in Africa, including time at the University of Dar es Salaam – a noted centre for new work on African history – and the University of Zambia in Lusaka. In the early 70s he took up a post as lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies (now Soas University of London) and remained there until his retirement as a professor in 1998.
