Peter Ryan MM, who was born in Melbourne on September 4, 1923, died in Melbourne on December 13, 2015. He wrote his column in the back pages of Quadrant from March 1994 to October 2015.   ______________________   Robert Murray   Peter Ryan’s Life (I)   Peter Ryan, who Quadrant readers knew as their favourite acerbic essayist for more than twenty years, was one of the last of the post-war generation of Melbourne intelligentsia. One of his grandfathers was an Irish Catholic suburban tailor and the other a Methodist lay preacher. His father Emmett (“Ted”) Ryan, an oil company clerk…