It’s quite a long time since I was an undergraduate, and was first fascinated by the letters of Balthazar Gerbier. I planned to find out more about him, and more than fifteen years ago I started researching seriously, with a view to producing a biography. A busy life – including the Day Job –  has meant that although a couple of shelves of information, and several gigabytes of virtual storage, have been collected, the book is still a way off. But some of the stuff discovered along the way is interesting. Some of it even seems not to have been published before. And following a friend’s suggestion that I might take sections through Gerbier’s life, rather than follow a strict chronology, I decided to make a start by publishing in ‘blog’ form, with the addition of some more extended documents. This will hopefully mean I can add small sections as time permits, and perhaps have something of a conversation with any Readers who happen to share my  – and Gerbier’s – interests.
He had a long and complicated life, and there may be quite a lot to say about it….

Paula Woods, Plymouth, England. February 2012