Having escaped from the burdens of a Vice-Chancellor in 1961, Butterfield could look forward in principle to a decade of further productive work since he would not be required to retire from the Regius Chair until 1968 and he could retain the Mastership of Peterhouse until the Easter term of 1971. He might reasonably have expected not only to fill those ten years with scholarly achievement but to go on with his projects deep into retirement as so many of his contemporaries and acquaintances were to do. His perpetual smoking and lack of exercise hardly promised the longevity of a Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), who held his chair at Chicago until the age of seventy-nine, or the astonishing Hans Gadamer (1900–2002), who continued working as his ninth decade edged towards his tenth. These driven intellectuals, seemingly indestructible, provided no model for one whose life moved in very different channels.