My friend and former colleague Gwendolyn Leick, who has died aged 71, was an author, academic and champion weightlifter. She helped to make Mesopotamian and near eastern history accessible to a general audience.
Gwendolyn was born in Oberaichwald, Austria, to Herta (nee Schescherul), a nurse and social worker, and Reginald Leick, a doctor. She grew up in Graz and attended Karl Frankens University (now the University of Graz) to study Assyriology to doctorate level. She also subscribed to the radical changes brought about by the 1960s. She travelled to London drawn, she said, by the British Museum and cosmopolitanism. And she married John Clifford, who she met there.
