Instead he remained forthright, not afraid to disagree openly with possible opponents, and to speak with clarity, if not wry humour, against whatever he saw as the most damaging failings of the university and wider, socio-political world. Indeed, it is generosity towards the potential achievements of others, colleagues, friends and research workers of all ages, for which he will be remembered most of all: an unstinting giving of his time and interest.Throughout his richly committed intellectual life, its exigencies going far beyond the outstanding erudition of the pure scholar, Austin never succumbed to the temptations of the chameleon, wanting to be liked by all and sundry. And refusal of a kind could be said to be a central branch of his own incisive and independent intellect: refusal of pretentiousness, refusal of facile panaceas, religious or otherwise, refusals based in turn on a lucidly defended belief in traditional values of Art, which, over-suspicious as he may often have seemed to some of the alleged newness and orientation of much contemporary literary theory, could not have been further from a mere unthinking conservatism.But there is a second, not unrelated tree in Valry's poetry on which Austin wrote and lectured inspiringly: the palm-tree, symbolising the thinker enriched by the giving of his own hard-won gifts, rigour and tenderness harmoniously combined. As many as 150 innovative essays, critical editions, reviews and papers to learned societies none the less continued to appear, skilfully combined with the multiple tasks of university teaching and administration, not the least service on the Editorial Boards of international committees such as, the AIEF in Paris, of which he was elected President (1969-72), or, in Britain, the Society for French Studies, of which, in 1967, he became General Editor.One of the many Symbolist poems interpreted by Austin with his unique combination of personal discovery and attentiveness to the work of predecessors, was Valry's address to the so-called ``negative'' plane-tree, where the tossing tree seems to refuse the welter of wishful meanings and associations pinned to it by the beholding mind.

Born and brought up in Melbourne, Australia, and, like his three gifted brothers, quickly distinguishing himself academically, he proceeded from research in Paris on the early Symbolist critic Paul Bourget to a lectureship in the University of Melbourne, interrupted in 1942-45 by active service in the South Pacific (RANVR), and from there to posts in St Andrews, Cambridge (Jesus College) and Manchester, where he held the Chair of Modern French Literature (1956) returning to Cambridge in 1961, where he became Drapers Professor of French and Head of the French Department. Centring his own main research on three leading modern French poets of the critical imagination, Baudelaire, Mallarm and Valry, Austin typically set aside his own planned trilogy (the first volume, on Baudelaire, had appeared in 1956) in order to collaborate in the publication of Mallarm's Correspondence, begun jointly in 1959, but which, with the death of his co-editor, Henri Mondor, in 1962, he continued to publish single-handed: an immensely complex undertaking resulting in 11 meticulously annotated volumes indispensable to understanding the Symbolist epoch. Lloyd Austin was an internationally revered figure in the field of French Literature, who will be remembered both for his dedication to teaching (the encouragement of innovative research in particular) and for the important part he played in creating what might be called a ``Republic of Letters'', linking French studies in Britain, France, the United States and elsewhere. With the help of American scholars, he wrote them out again in a carefully unemotional, scientific style. In doing so, he dissected the heart of his tormentor and enabled posterity to judge the man who had inspired such idealistic patriotism, only to betray it.Li Zhisui, physician: born 1920: married (two sons); died Chicago 13 February 1995.. He jettisoned ambition to be a surgeon, ruined his family life and broke his wife's heart. In 1988 he managed to get to the United States where he recalled the events he had once recorded in a stack of diaries that he had been forced to burn. Increasingly Mao saw himself as a genius thwarted by lesser men and traitors and the resulting depressions could be cured only by decisions to take action which, given his lack of reliable information and the distortions of neurosis, plunged China into crisis after crisis.Nevertheless, and often against his conscience, Li served this monster faithfully, but at some cost.

He tended Mao's ills as Mao plotted the downfall of men such as the Defence Minister Peng Dehuai or President Liu Shaoqi, who died on the floor of a miserable cell, the chief victim among millions who suffered during the destructive orgies of Mao's Cultural Revolution.Li was horrified that China's great moderniser turned out to be as superstitious and scientifically ignorant as the Dowager Empress whose reign had also ensured that China failed to meet the challenges posed by the impact of the West.Rarely stirring from his huge bed, immersed in novels of ancient court intrigues and biographies of the ruthless emperors in China's history he was determined to emulate, Mao became increasingly isolated from the world. He did record his own unease at the feasting in the Zhongnanhai during the famine in which millions died in the "bitter years" that followed the collapse of the Great Leap Forward, the creation of the Communes and the massive waste of metal and fuel in the thousands of backyard furnaces which Mao had ordained.Li stood at Mao's elbow as he voiced neurotic suspicions of any colleague who was less than enthusiastic about his schemes or who hinted that Mao bore some responsibility for their failure. He suffered from insomnia during periods of inactivity, but slept well when engaged in plotting the downfall of colleagues.In his book, Li rarely moralised about his patient, recording how Mao's unrealistic belief that man's "spirit" could overcome all physical and economic impossibilities led to millions of deaths. He cleaned his teeth by swilling down Chinese tea and chewing up the leaves with his greenish, plaque-covered teeth. He swam frequently in the swimming pool attached to his Zhongnanhai pavilion but refused to take baths - "I wash myself in the bodies of my women," he said - and infected many of them with venereal disease, for which he refused treatment. They could have distributed the profits to members but that would have weakened the organisation.''Under building society legislation, only first-named mortgage and savings customers with at least £100 in their account at 31 December 1994 will qualify.But N&P said that legislation preventing second-named account holders from benefiting from members' rights was unfair.Full year pre-tax profits rose 10.9 per cent to £134m after a £22m reduction in provisions.