Francis Rath), and the volume is not as well- known as it deserves to be. Like his first book, this was illustrated throughout by his trade-mark pen and ink drawings; similarly, the choice of subject matter was to an extent driven by his limited budget. In the 1970s, Arabic, Semitic and Asiatic coins tended to be cheaper to collect than English, or even classical Greek coins, and Plant often began writing about coins in his own collection.


On a clergy stipend, Plant only spent on coins what his royalties and identification fees


earned him. His notebooks often recorded not only the type, metal, weight and condition of coins he had bought, but where he had acquired them and the price he paid. Frugality, patience, and skill in identifying coins meant he picked up bargains. In a long biographical piece on him for The Celator in 2010, Mark Fox quotes Father’s recollection of finding an unpromising bronze coin in a dealer’s box that, after a bit of cleaning, turned out to be a rare Judæan coin over-stamped X by the tenth Roman legion during the occupation that followed the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70. This was just the kind of thing that interested him; a small piece of history in the palm of his hand.


In 1979 Seaby published his Greek Coin Types and Their Identification, which took the unique


approach to listing pages of line-drawn illustrations of human figures, gods, half-human mythological creatures, animals, birds and inanimate objects as a quick and easy way to identify them. (A Cambridge classics doctoral student told me that, armed with this guide, he had outperformed all-comers in identifying coins during a prestigious coin identification course at the British School in Athens). A similar approach was taken in his guides to Roman Base Metal Coins (2000) and Roman Silver Coins (2005), both of which proved popular and became standard tools for identification for collector and specialist alike. Once, seeking to buy a few Indian coins from a shop in Cochin, I saw my Father’s books behind the counter, and on producing proof of my identity to the sceptical dealer, negotiated a pleasing discount when I told him who the coins were for.


The last substantial book my Father wrote was A Numismatic


Journey Through the Bible (2007), which originated as a series of illustrated talks for church groups. Other books exist about early Judæan coinage, or about the coins used in Judæa during the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Plant’s book dealt with all that, but also used coins from other periods and places that he could connect to biblical events and characters. His Coin Lexicon and Coin Classroom articles for Coin News in recent years proved to be an especially fruitful late vehicle for his interests. These allowed him to roam freely from ancient to modern, and from Western to Eastern coins, to explain words like Mæander and phalanx. Here, the full scope of his linguistic, historical and numismatic knowledge was harnessed to his quirky humour and imagination.


My Father always thought that clergy without a hobby tended to be over earnest and a bit too intense


for their own good. Coin collecting and writing nearly always played second or third fiddle to his long and faithful Christian ministry, served in the West Midlands, London and Yorkshire, and to his family – wife Ann, sons Peter and Stephen and his five grandchildren. But his hobby kept him sane; through it he made friends around the world with whom he enjoyed emailed conversations, especially as his physical world contracted. His unconventional writing will be missed by many, as will his extensive knowledge, his winsome charm and his defining modesty.


Stephen J. Plant


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