It seems odd to describe the death of a man of 82 years as untimely. Yet the fact that Ken Minogue died on a plane returning from a conference in the Galapagos Islands where he had delivered an admired address, preparing to promote the latest translation of his new book, and ‘in mid-sentence’ (as Peter Coleman wrote here in a graceful tribute last week) suggests that the deceased still had a great deal of life in him.