Scholarship and the gypsy struggle - T. A Acton

This work has been assembled in honour of the 70th birthday of the doyen of committed Romani linguistics in Britain, Donald Kenrick. It includes a critical biographical study of his work by Thomas Acton; theories on the emergence of Romani itself by Ian Hancock; Peter Bakker on the origins of English Romani; and Anthony Grant takes an unsentimental look at the prospects for survival of minority languages in Britain.;Grattan Puxon illuminates the birth of the World Romani Congress, while Gunilla Lundgren shows how far Romani scholarship has come since the days of the Swedish Gypsylorist, the "blond banditt" Arthur Thesleff. Elena Marushiakova, Vesselin Popov and Milena Hubschmannova take a politicized approach to folklore, while Valdemar Kalinin takes Kenrick gently to task for underestimating the Romani contribution to the Russian spirit.;The pivotal episode of the 20th century Romani history is the porraimos, the Nazi genocide of Roma. Susan Tebbutt looks at its impact on just one artist, while Herbert Heuss locates it in German society and history.;All these and other papers are areas where Donald Kenrick has been a key thinker, encourager and networker.