David Prince (31 Oct 1954 - 9 Jan 2024)

In loving memory of David Prince who sadly passed away on 9th January 2024

David Robert Prince

David Robert Prince (known as D.P. to many of his friends) has died peacefully at home in Silsden, North Yorkshire, on 9 January 2024 at the age of 69.
Although born in Surrey on 31 October 1954, David was a Yorkshire man through and through. An only son, he was brought up in Silsden by his mother Shirley and his grandparents, who proudly instilled in David their own passionate sense of place and belonging. So it was that the distinctive landscape and heritage of the North York Moors provided the subject matter for his academic studies – BEd in Psychology at Durham and his PhD at Hull – through which he honed his understanding as to how and why people perceive the landscape around them. In later years David would be known for his ability to be concise and scintillating in his prose but this was not always the case. After reviewing the first draft of his thesis, David’s PhD supervisor Professor Jay Appleton asked him if he read Greek. On David’s perplexed “No”, Jay placed the draft in front of David saying “Well don’t write it then”!
David moved to London, taking up a position at the British Museum at which time he co-edited the Manual of Curatorship: A Guide to Museum Practice with John Thompson and set up his heritage consultancy, Prince Research Consultants (PRC), in 1983, which focused on the strategic development of museums and archaeological and heritage sites.
He married and divorced twice before meeting Caroline Humby-Teck with whom he shared his love of theatre, fishing, the English landscape, the Classics, Shakespeare and, not least, the significance of museum collections, until her untimely death in 2001.
David then invested his energies in the consultancy Prince Research, building the team of associates and consultants over the years. The PRC ethos was inclusive, holistic, thorough and fun. With DP at the helm, PRC delivered significant projects in the UK and overseas, the legacy of which will survive through them and those of us who were lucky enough to be part of them.
Through his longstanding personal and professional connection with the late Tim Schadla-Hall, David was a regular and popular guest lecturer at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology. Positively challenging the minds of those doing the MAs in Public Archaeology, and Museum Studies, David also took on the role of PhD supervisor for several UCL students. This contribution to the education of the next generation of inspiring practitioners and thinkers was rewarded by his being recognised as Visiting Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences. Students at several other academic institutions also benefitted from David’s energetic and assured approach to his role of visiting lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham and Göteborg.
More recently, David worked with the United Nations on a number of initiatives in the Middle East and Albania and partnered with long-time colleague Simon Pearce to form Prince & Pearce (P+P) in 2010, with whom he was working on a number of heritage and museums projects in the UK and a major landscape heritage project in Oman. While his musical leanings remained firmly rooted in the rock and folk of the 70s, David exhibited a visionary sensibility to the impact of current affairs on heritage and the continuing influence of heritage on contemporary society. This is captured brilliantly in the recent articles that he co-wrote with P+P associates professors Daniel Laven, and Richard Hodges, which are concerned with the role of heritage and museums in this age of AI, climate change and mass tourism.
In 2022, David was appointed Special Advisor to the UN on Albania: a role of which he was immensely proud – perhaps most proud – over any other of his great achievements to date.
This obituary would not in any way reflect the man if there were no reference to David’s passion for sport – particularly rugby, cricket and football – which was infectious. His loyalty to Man United, Wasps and England never wavered despite being tested, many times!
A talented raconteur with an encyclopaedic mind, David was a dynamic social being and he will be sorely missed by his extended and eclectic group of friends. Generous with his time and intellect, David was, until the day he died, a beloved friend, mentor, and mate.

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At David's Funeral, I read this piece written by David, with minor edits by me. A few people asked me to share it, but I do not have names and contacts. I hope some will see it here, Matt Ward.

What will happen to my photographs?

Earendel (or the ‘Morning Star’) is the farthest, and hence the oldest, star observed from Earth. Born 13 billion years ago, just 900 million years after the Big Bang, it is now some 28 billion light years away as it takes its place in a fast-expanding and never-ending universe.
Recognising this puts everything into context.
When hominids became human is a matter of debate. It doesn't matter whether it was 3, 2, or 1 million years ago or later. When modern humans emerged around 200,000 years ago, Earendel was still shining, albeit imperceptibly fainter.
Now, 200,000 years later, the world's population has reached 8 billion, but much more significantly, the world's population has tripled in my lifetime. (from 2.7 billion in 1954 to over 8 billion today) as post-WW2 medicine has accelerated its achievements in all spheres.
Or you could say, it took the entire planet’s 4.5 billion years of evolution to somehow, almost miraculously, produce 2.7 billion humans by 1954. It has taken just sixty-nine years to get to 8 billion.
8 billion people all wanting, or at least aspiring to, iPhones, computers, electric cars, and air conditioning, spurred on by a frenzy of “you can make it” promos from those who have ‘made it’ as they produce social media content for their millions of followers.
And it is, literally, everywhere. From Russia to China, Nigeria to Peru, Morocco to Mexico, everybody aspires to achieve a lifestyle promulgated by Dior, Ferrari and Rolex and to live in the best apartments and holiday in the best locations. Whether you like it or not (and many say they don’t) the US model of capitalism now rules the world. Ask the Saudi Royal family, the Maktoum’s of Dubai, the Russian oligarchs, the despotic leaders in China or Indonesia and the like.
So … in this frenzy for betterment, what will be the force of change in this woke-mediated, counterculture, inclusive world?
Nothing.

Which brings me back to my photographs.
 I am an only son.
 My mother was an only daughter.
 I have no children.
 The entire DNA evolutionary chain spanning some 4.5 billion years that made me will die with me.
But what will happen to my photographs?
Nearly all of them are not of me. They are the images of people that I have loved and that have loved me.
They are of my mother, grandmother, grandfather, great-grandmother, great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother, two wives, one long-term lover and very dear friends. Nearly all of them are now dead.
Every photograph captures the time it was created. The landscapes, the places, the smiles, the parties, the holidays.
But they are all entirely personal to me. All those images. Black and white for a hundred years, colour for the next fifty, and now digital.
When I can no longer see them, their meaning will dissolve. There will be no context. All the underlying hope, ambition, pride and love they exhibit will evaporate.
No map reading under a tree in Malta with my mum and grandfather, no admiring a barbel on the banks of the Avon or sea lions in the Galápagos with Caroline, no heading off to Machu Pichu or the Nile with Linda, no playing guitar with Lesley. No more context for my grandfather’s WW2 Signals portrait or his wife’s sadness when he was called up. No more meaning for my great-great-grandmother cuddling her daughter. None for her husband’s casual pipe smoking.
And maybe that’s all for the good.
Imagine the trillions of photographs and digital images that now exist and all those meta-trillions that will exist as the years roll by, preserved for all time in an unbounded multiverse populated by images of foreign meals, days by the pool, faces smiling, sometimes through gritted teeth, and endless pictures of cats doing things by just being alive.
There may well come a time when there is so much digital information about the past that trying to understand it becomes impossible. Suppose that point is reached. In that case, the study of history itself will become irrelevant because all that will matter will be the never-ending search for an A.I.-led, hedonistic utopia.
In 100 years from now, this utopia, if it exists, may need to be entirely digital as Earth’s resources will either have been denuded to the point of no return or most of us will be underwater. No one will remember me.
And that it all as it should be. Every generation has a way of trying to keep the past alive. These were traditionally by stories, dances, and paintings. Now, they are by photographs, posts, tweets and social media.
With each generation, the past grows fainter. Like Earendel, imperceptibly so.