Dr Ron Truman died in hospital on Tuesday 24 March 2026 following complications from a fall, following a period of increasing frailty.

Dr Truman was elected to a Studentship at Christ Church, a Lecturership at Brasenose, and a University Lecturership in 1963, the year in which he completed his DPhil on the idea of the Prince in the Latin and vernacular writings of 16th-century theorists. He had read French and Spanish at St Edmund Hall (1954-1957) and had held a Lectureship at Birkbeck from 1959. An extremely committed tutor and supervisor, focusing on the Golden Age, he also took his share of administrative duties, including as Junior, then Senior Censor in Christ Church (1967-1972) and Chair of the Modern Languages Faculty Board (1979-1981). He retired in 2001, but continued his research, joining a distinguished group of neo-Latinists at the University of Leuven and the editorial board of Humanistica Lovaniensia. Alongside ground-breaking articles on Calderón and Lazarillo de Tormes, a regular flow of articles in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History and the Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, Ron’s 1979 edition of Felipe de la Torre's Institución de un rey christiano and his 1999 magnum opus, Spanish Treatises on Government, Society and Religion in the Time of Philip II: The 'de regimine principum' and Associated Traditions assure his place as a major intellectual historian of Western Europe. 

 The memorial service for Dr Truman will take place on 30 January 2027 (2pm) in the Cathedral.