Maurice Bowra
Encyclopedia
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English
classical scholar and academic, known for his wit
. He was Warden
of Wadham College, Oxford
, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford
from 1951 to 1954.
, China
to English parents. His father was Cecil Arthur Verner Bowra (1869–1947) of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. Bowra's father had been born in Ningpo, and his paternal grandfather Edward Charles Bowra
had also worked for the Chinese Customs, after serving in the Ever Victorious Army
under "Chinese Gordon". Soon after Bowra's birth his father was transferred to the treaty port of Newchwang, and the family lived there for the first five years of Bowra's life. During the Boxer Rebellion
, in the summer of 1900, Bowra was evacuated to Japan, along with his mother, older brother Edward, and other women and children of the European community. The family returned to England in 1903, travelling via Japan and the United States, and settling in the Kent
countryside. Bowra later claimed that he had been fluent in Mandarin, but forgot the language after returning to England. Bowra's parents went back to China in February 1905, leaving their children in the care of their paternal grandmother, who, having been widowed, lived with her second husband, a clergyman, in Putney
. During this time the boys received tuition from Ella Dell, sister of the writer Ethel M. Dell
. The boys also attended a preparatory school
in Putney, where, before the year was out, Maurice was coming top in all classes but arithmetic. During his time at this school Bowra began his classical education with lessons from Cecil Botting, a master at St Paul's School and father of the writer Antonia White
.
In 1909, the brothers journeyed across Europe and Russia by train to visit their parents in Mukden, where they visited the battlefield
and encountered Lord Kitchener. Their return journey was made in the company of their father and took them through Hong Kong
, Colombo
, Suez
, Naples
and Algiers
.
, where he began his studies in April 1910, his father returning to China a couple of weeks later. He did not enjoy such features of the school curriculum as outdoor games and OTC, but won a scholarship in the internal exams held in June 1911. It became clear that he had a particular aptitude for Classics
, for which the college laid a thorough grounding in Latin and Greek. During his final two years in the sixth form Bowra, becoming bored with his school work, acquired sufficient French to read Verlaine
and Baudelaire
, studied a bilingual edition of the Dante
's Divina Commedia and began to learn German. In 1916 he won a scholarship to New College, Oxford
.
Bowra was to maintain a connection with the school in later life, being instrumental in the appointment of Cecil Day-Lewis
as a master there and serving on its governing body from 1943 to 1965.
with a household employing thirty servants. In January Bowra's mother came to England, to visit her sons, who were both about to see active service in the army. In May, Bowra departed with his mother for China, travelling through Norway
, Sweden
, and Russia
. In Beijing Bowra visited the Great Wall of China
and the Ming Tombs, and witnessed the funeral ceremony of Yuan Shikai
.
Bowra departed Beijing in September, and on his way home spent three weeks in St Petersburg (then called Petrograd), as the guest of Robert Wilton
. During this time he attained a working knowledge of Russian
and attended opera performances in which Feodor Chaliapin
performed.
On returning to England Bowra trained with the OTC in Oxford, before being called up and sent to the Royal Army Cadet School in March 1917. Bowra served in the Royal Field Artillery
, on active service in France from September 1917. In 1917 he saw action at Passchendaele and Cambrai, and in 1918 participated in resistance to the Ludendorff Offensive and the following allied counter-offensive. During this time he continued to read widely, including such works as Thomas Hardy
's Moments of Vision, The Wild Swans at Coole
, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
, and Greek and Latin authors.
Bowra was left with a lifelong hatred of war and military strategists, to an extent that he seldom mentioned the war afterwards. Bowra later told Cyril Connolly
, "Whatever you hear about the war, remember it was far worse: inconceivably bloody – nobody who wasn't there can imagine what it was like." Anthony Powell
wrote that Bowra's wartime experiences "played a profound part in his thoughts and inner life", and records that when a cruise ship on which they were travelling held a ceremony to place a wreath in the sea as it passed the Dardanelles
, Bowra was so affected that he retired to his cabin. Following the Second World War he would be accommodating to returning servicemen who wished to study at Oxford, telling one applicant who was worried about his deficiency in Latin, "No matter, War Service counts as Latin."
in 1919, and took a first class in Honour Moderations
in 1920 and a first class in Literae Humaniores
in 1922.
Though an outstanding student, Bowra was very sociable, and his circle as an undergraduate included Cyril Radcliffe (with whom he shared lodgings), Roy Harrod
, Robert Boothby
, L. P. Hartley
, Lord David Cecil
, J. B. S. Haldane
, and Christopher Hollis
. Bowra also became a friend of Dadie Rylands
. The teachers who influenced him included Gilbert Murray
and Alic Smith
. The treatment he received from one of his tutors in philosophy, H. W. B. Joseph, was said by Isaiah Berlin
to have "undermined his faith in his own intellectual capacity."
, with the support of the Regius Professor of Greek, Gilbert Murray. When Murray vacated his chair in 1936, Bowra and others believed that Bowra himself was most likely to succeed his patron. Murray however, recommended E. R. Dodds as his successor, ostensibly rejecting Bowra for, "a certain lack of quality, precision, and reality in his scholarship as a whole". Some believed that the real reason was a whispering campaign over Bowra's "real or imagined homosexuality".
He became a Doctor of Letters
of the University of Oxford
in 1937.
Being passed over for the Regius Chair proved to be a cloud with a silver lining for Bowra. In 1938 the Wardenship
of Wadham fell vacant and Bowra was elected to the post, keeping it until 1970, when he was succeeded by Stuart Hampshire
. Bowra was supported in the election by his colleague Frederick Lindemann. Lindemann had initially opposed Bowra's election as a fellow of Wadham, proposing that a scientist should be preferred, but had warmed to Bowra because of his vociferous opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany and the policy of Appeasement
. The election was held on 5 October 1938, and coincided with the Oxford by-election campaign
, in which Bowra lent his support to the anti-Appeasement candidate, Sandy Lindsay.
During the Second World War Bowra served in the Oxford Home Guard. His friends were variously employed by the government, Isaiah Berlin
, for example, being posted to the Washington embassy, but Bowra was offered no war work. When Berlin canvassed to find Bowra a position, the file was sent back to him stamped 'unreliable'.
Bowra was Professor of Poetry 1946–51. He wrote of the election that, "The campaign was very enjoyable and C. S. Lewis
was outmanoeuvred so completely that he even failed in the end to be nominated and I walked over without opposition. Very gratifying to a vain man like myself."
He spent the academic year 1948–9 at Harvard
as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry
and gave the 1955 Andrew Lang lecture
. He delivered the 1957 Earl Grey Lecture in Newcastle on 'The Meaning of a Heroic Age' and the 1963 Taylorian Lecture
on 'Poetry and the First World War'. In 1966 he gave the Romanes Lecture
.
Bowra was at Harvard when the post of Vice-Chancellor fell unexpectedly vacant in 1948 on the sudden accidental death of William Stallybrass
. When the most senior head of house, J. R. H. Weaver, declined the post, Bowra could himself have succeeded to it. He chose to stay in America, and Dean Lowe filled the post until 1951, when Bowra served his three year term. His briskness as chair of the Hebdomadal Council
was legendary, the business of meetings that customarily occupied a whole afternoon being dispatched in as little as fifteen minutes. When T. S. R. Boase was indisposed by an eye problem in 1959, Bowra returned to the chair of the committee, privately quipping that "jokes about his 'beaux yeux' are not thought funny".
Bowra was President of the British Academy
1958–62. His tenure was marked by two achievements. Firstly, Bowra chaired a committee that produced the Report on Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which resulted in a grant for those purposes from HM Treasury
. The second was the establishment of the British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran
.
In his long career as an Oxford don, Bowra had contact with a considerable portion of the English literary world, either as students or as colleagues. The character of Mr Samgrass in Evelyn Waugh
's Brideshead Revisited
is said to be modelled on Bowra. Waugh attended Hertford College (1922–24), and so, was in no sense, Bowra's pupil; indeed they scarcely knew one another at that time, whereas Cyril Connolly
, Henry Green
and Anthony Powell
knew Bowra quite well when they were undergraduates. However, it was Waugh who marked his friend's election as Warden Of Wadham by presenting him with a Monkey-puzzle tree
for his garden.
For all that they had in common, Bowra and George Alfred Kolkhorst
were avowed arch-enemies, though both were friends of John Betjeman
. Betjeman records his appreciation of Bowra in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells
; he evokes an evening spent dining with Bowra in a passage which concludes: "I wandered back to Magdalen, certain then,/ As now, that Maurice Bowra’s company / Taught me far more than all my tutors did."
Though not in any sense religious, Bowra signed the petition (in favour of the Tridentine
Catholic Mass) that became informally known as the Agatha Christie indult
and regularly attended the Church of England
services of his college chapel.
, lecturing on his work and nominating him repeatedly for the Nobel Prize in Literature
.
Though he was a friend and supporter of poets, and was respected as a critic, Bowra was never able to fulfil his wish to be accepted as a serious poet himself. His own output consisted of "sharp satires, in verse, on his friends (and sharper still on his enemies)". His friend and literary executor, John Sparrow, once commented that Bowra had cut himself off from posterity, "as his prose was unreadable and his verse was unprintable." This was set half-right by the publication in 2005 of New Bats in Old Belfries, a collection of satires on friends and enemies written between the 1920s and 1960s. Here is his parody
of John Betjeman
, who had become choked with emotion on being presented the Duff Cooper Prize
comprising a cheque for £150 and a copy of Duff Cooper's memoirs bound in leather, by Princess Margaret on 18 December 1958:
, Harold Nicolson
and Bowra himself as chairman. Duff Cooper's widow Lady Diana Cooper
observed that "Poor Betch was crying and too moved to find an apology for words." (Philip Ziegler
, Diana Cooper: The Biography of Lady Diana Cooper, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1981, p. 310.)
The Telegraph, echoing poet Cecil Day Lewis on the man himself, warned that the book, like strychnine
, was best taken in small doses.
. He used the term 'the Homintern
', and privately referred to his leading position in that, or 'The Immoral Front' or 'the 69th International'.
. He died of a sudden heart attack the following year, and was buried in Holywell Cemetery
, Oxford
.
degrees, he received honorary doctorates from the universities of Dublin
, Hull
, Wales
, Harvard
, Columbia, St Andrews
, Paris
and Aix.
Bowra was knighted in 1951, and was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1971. He was also a Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur
in France
, a Knight-Commander of the Royal Order of the Phoenix in Greece
, and recipient of the order "Pour le Mérite" in West Germany
.
In 1992, Wadham College named its new Bowra Building in his honour.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
classical scholar and academic, known for his wit
Wit
Wit is a form of intellectual humour, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks. Forms of wit include the quip and repartee.-Forms of wit:...
. He was Warden
Warden (college)
A warden is the head of some colleges and other educational institutions. This applies especially at some colleges and institutions at the University of Oxford:* All Souls College* Greyfriars* Keble College* Merton College* New College* Nuffield College...
of Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
from 1951 to 1954.
Birth and boyhood
He was born in JiujiangJiujiang
Jiujiang , formerly transliterated Kiukiang, is a prefecture-level city located on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi Province, China. It is the second-largest prefecture-level city in Jiangxi province, the largest one being Nanchang...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
to English parents. His father was Cecil Arthur Verner Bowra (1869–1947) of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. Bowra's father had been born in Ningpo, and his paternal grandfather Edward Charles Bowra
Edward Charles Bowra
Edward Charles MacIntosh Bowra was a British citizen serving in the Chinese Maritime Customs working for the government of the Qing dynasty...
had also worked for the Chinese Customs, after serving in the Ever Victorious Army
Ever Victorious Army
The Ever Victorious Army was the name given to an imperial army in late-19th–century China. The Ever Victorious Army fought for the Qing Dynasty against the rebels of the Nien and Taiping Rebellions....
under "Chinese Gordon". Soon after Bowra's birth his father was transferred to the treaty port of Newchwang, and the family lived there for the first five years of Bowra's life. During the Boxer Rebellion
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising by some historians or the Righteous Harmony Society Movement in northern China, was a proto-nationalist movement by the "Righteous Harmony Society" , or "Righteous Fists of Harmony" or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" , in China between...
, in the summer of 1900, Bowra was evacuated to Japan, along with his mother, older brother Edward, and other women and children of the European community. The family returned to England in 1903, travelling via Japan and the United States, and settling in the Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
countryside. Bowra later claimed that he had been fluent in Mandarin, but forgot the language after returning to England. Bowra's parents went back to China in February 1905, leaving their children in the care of their paternal grandmother, who, having been widowed, lived with her second husband, a clergyman, in Putney
Putney
Putney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. During this time the boys received tuition from Ella Dell, sister of the writer Ethel M. Dell
Ethel M. Dell
Ethel May Dell or Ethel Mary Dell was an English writer of popular romance novels.-Overview:Ethel Dell's married name is recorded as Ethel Mary Savage. She was born in Streatham, a suburb of London. Her father was a clerk in the City of London and she had an older sister and brother. Her family...
. The boys also attended a preparatory school
Preparatory school (UK)
In English language usage in the former British Empire, the present-day Commonwealth, a preparatory school is an independent school preparing children up to the age of eleven or thirteen for entry into fee-paying, secondary independent schools, some of which are known as public schools...
in Putney, where, before the year was out, Maurice was coming top in all classes but arithmetic. During his time at this school Bowra began his classical education with lessons from Cecil Botting, a master at St Paul's School and father of the writer Antonia White
Antonia White
Antonia White was a British writer.-Early life:White was born as Eirine Botting to parents Cecil and Christine Botting. She later took her mother's maiden name, White. Her father taught Greek and Latin at St. Paul’s School...
.
In 1909, the brothers journeyed across Europe and Russia by train to visit their parents in Mukden, where they visited the battlefield
Battle of Mukden
One of the largest land battles to be fought before World War I, the , the last major land battle of the Russo-Japanese War, was fought from 20 February to 10 March 1905 between Japan and Russia near Mukden in Manchuria...
and encountered Lord Kitchener. Their return journey was made in the company of their father and took them through Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
, Suez
Suez
Suez is a seaport city in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez , near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sokhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities...
, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
and Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
.
Cheltenham College
Bowra then boarded at Cheltenham CollegeCheltenham College
Cheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...
, where he began his studies in April 1910, his father returning to China a couple of weeks later. He did not enjoy such features of the school curriculum as outdoor games and OTC, but won a scholarship in the internal exams held in June 1911. It became clear that he had a particular aptitude for Classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
, for which the college laid a thorough grounding in Latin and Greek. During his final two years in the sixth form Bowra, becoming bored with his school work, acquired sufficient French to read Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
and Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, studied a bilingual edition of the Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's Divina Commedia and began to learn German. In 1916 he won a scholarship to New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
.
Bowra was to maintain a connection with the school in later life, being instrumental in the appointment of Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis CBE was an Irish poet and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake...
as a master there and serving on its governing body from 1943 to 1965.
World War I
By the time Bowra left Cheltenham College, his father was Chief Secretary of the Customs Service, residing in BeijingBeijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
with a household employing thirty servants. In January Bowra's mother came to England, to visit her sons, who were both about to see active service in the army. In May, Bowra departed with his mother for China, travelling through Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. In Beijing Bowra visited the Great Wall of China
Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...
and the Ming Tombs, and witnessed the funeral ceremony of Yuan Shikai
Yuan Shikai
Yuan Shikai was an important Chinese general and politician famous for his influence during the late Qing Dynasty, his role in the events leading up to the abdication of the last Qing Emperor of China, his autocratic rule as the second President of the Republic of China , and his short-lived...
.
Bowra departed Beijing in September, and on his way home spent three weeks in St Petersburg (then called Petrograd), as the guest of Robert Wilton
Robert Wilton
Robert Archibald Wilton was a British journalist.Wilton, who was born in Cringleford, Norfolk, was the son of a British mining engineer employed in Russia. In 1889 he joined the European staff of the New York Herald, remaining with that newspaper for fourteen years, and corresponding on both...
. During this time he attained a working knowledge of Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and attended opera performances in which Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.During the first phase...
performed.
On returning to England Bowra trained with the OTC in Oxford, before being called up and sent to the Royal Army Cadet School in March 1917. Bowra served in the Royal Field Artillery
Royal Field Artillery
The Royal Field Artillery of the British Army provided artillery support for the British Army. It came into being when the Royal Artillery was divided on 1 July 1899, it was reamalgamated back into the Royal Artillery in 1924....
, on active service in France from September 1917. In 1917 he saw action at Passchendaele and Cambrai, and in 1918 participated in resistance to the Ludendorff Offensive and the following allied counter-offensive. During this time he continued to read widely, including such works as Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
's Moments of Vision, The Wild Swans at Coole
The Wild Swans at Coole
The Wild Swans at Coole is a collection of poems by William Butler Yeats, first published in 1917. It is also the name of a poem in that collection...
, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked the beginning of...
, and Greek and Latin authors.
Bowra was left with a lifelong hatred of war and military strategists, to an extent that he seldom mentioned the war afterwards. Bowra later told Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
, "Whatever you hear about the war, remember it was far worse: inconceivably bloody – nobody who wasn't there can imagine what it was like." Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
wrote that Bowra's wartime experiences "played a profound part in his thoughts and inner life", and records that when a cruise ship on which they were travelling held a ceremony to place a wreath in the sea as it passed the Dardanelles
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...
, Bowra was so affected that he retired to his cabin. Following the Second World War he would be accommodating to returning servicemen who wished to study at Oxford, telling one applicant who was worried about his deficiency in Latin, "No matter, War Service counts as Latin."
New College, Oxford
Bowra went up to New College, OxfordNew College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
in 1919, and took a first class in Honour Moderations
Honour Moderations
Honour Moderations are a first set of examinations at Oxford University in England during the first part of the degree course for some courses ....
in 1920 and a first class in Literae Humaniores
Literae Humaniores
Literae Humaniores is the name given to an undergraduate course focused on Classics at Oxford and some other universities.The Latin name means literally "more humane letters", but is perhaps better rendered as "Advanced Studies", since humaniores has the sense of "more refined" or "more learned",...
in 1922.
Though an outstanding student, Bowra was very sociable, and his circle as an undergraduate included Cyril Radcliffe (with whom he shared lodgings), Roy Harrod
Roy Harrod
Sir Henry Roy Forbes Harrod was an English economist. He is best known for his biography of John Maynard Keynes and the development of the Harrod–Domar model, which he and Evsey Domar developed independently...
, Robert Boothby
Robert Boothby
Robert John Graham Boothby, Baron Boothby, KBE was a controversial British Conservative politician.-Early life:...
, L. P. Hartley
L. P. Hartley
Leslie Poles Hartley was a British writer, known for novels and short stories. His best-known work is The Go-Between , which was made into a 1970 film, directed by Joseph Losey with a star cast, in an adaptation by Harold Pinter...
, Lord David Cecil
Lord David Cecil
Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil, CH , was a British biographer, historian and academic. He held the style of 'Lord' by courtesy, as a younger son of a marquess.-Early life and studies:...
, J. B. S. Haldane
J. B. S. Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS , known as Jack , was a British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist. A staunch Marxist, he was critical of Britain's role in the Suez Crisis, and chose to leave Oxford and moved to India and became an Indian citizen...
, and Christopher Hollis
Christopher Hollis
Maurice Christopher Hollis, known as Christopher Hollis was a British schoolmaster, university teacher, author and Conservative politician.-Life:...
. Bowra also became a friend of Dadie Rylands
Dadie Rylands
George Humphrey Wolferstan Rylands CH CBE , known as Dadie Rylands, was a British literary scholar and theatre director. Educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, he was a Fellow of King's from 1927 until his death.As well as being one of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars, he...
. The teachers who influenced him included Gilbert Murray
Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...
and Alic Smith
Alic Halford Smith
Alic Halford Smith was a British philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University.Alic Smith was educated at Dulwich College in south London and New College, Oxford. He began his career at the Scottish Office . Subsequently, he was a Fellow at New College, where he was tutor in philosophy ,...
. The treatment he received from one of his tutors in philosophy, H. W. B. Joseph, was said by Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
to have "undermined his faith in his own intellectual capacity."
Academic career
In 1922, he was elected a Fellow of Wadham College, OxfordWadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
, with the support of the Regius Professor of Greek, Gilbert Murray. When Murray vacated his chair in 1936, Bowra and others believed that Bowra himself was most likely to succeed his patron. Murray however, recommended E. R. Dodds as his successor, ostensibly rejecting Bowra for, "a certain lack of quality, precision, and reality in his scholarship as a whole". Some believed that the real reason was a whispering campaign over Bowra's "real or imagined homosexuality".
He became a Doctor of Letters
Doctor of Letters
Doctor of Letters is a university academic degree, often a higher doctorate which is frequently awarded as an honorary degree in recognition of outstanding scholarship or other merits.-Commonwealth:...
of the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in 1937.
Being passed over for the Regius Chair proved to be a cloud with a silver lining for Bowra. In 1938 the Wardenship
Warden (college)
A warden is the head of some colleges and other educational institutions. This applies especially at some colleges and institutions at the University of Oxford:* All Souls College* Greyfriars* Keble College* Merton College* New College* Nuffield College...
of Wadham fell vacant and Bowra was elected to the post, keeping it until 1970, when he was succeeded by Stuart Hampshire
Stuart Hampshire
Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire was an Oxford University philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.Hampshire was educated at Repton School and at...
. Bowra was supported in the election by his colleague Frederick Lindemann. Lindemann had initially opposed Bowra's election as a fellow of Wadham, proposing that a scientist should be preferred, but had warmed to Bowra because of his vociferous opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany and the policy of Appeasement
Appeasement
The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
. The election was held on 5 October 1938, and coincided with the Oxford by-election campaign
Oxford by-election, 1938
The Oxford by-election, 1938 was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Oxford, held on October 27, 1938. The by-election was triggered when Robert Croft Bourne, the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament died on August 7, 1938...
, in which Bowra lent his support to the anti-Appeasement candidate, Sandy Lindsay.
During the Second World War Bowra served in the Oxford Home Guard. His friends were variously employed by the government, Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
, for example, being posted to the Washington embassy, but Bowra was offered no war work. When Berlin canvassed to find Bowra a position, the file was sent back to him stamped 'unreliable'.
Bowra was Professor of Poetry 1946–51. He wrote of the election that, "The campaign was very enjoyable and C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
was outmanoeuvred so completely that he even failed in the end to be nominated and I walked over without opposition. Very gratifying to a vain man like myself."
He spent the academic year 1948–9 at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting,...
and gave the 1955 Andrew Lang lecture
Andrew Lang lecture
The Andrew Lang Lecture series is held at the University of St. Andrews. The lectures are named for Andrew Lang. The most famous lecture in this series is that given by J. R. R...
. He delivered the 1957 Earl Grey Lecture in Newcastle on 'The Meaning of a Heroic Age' and the 1963 Taylorian Lecture
Taylor Institution
The Taylor Institution comprises the buildings in Oxford which harbour the libraries dedicated to the study of the European Languages at Oxford University. It also includes lecture rooms used by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford...
on 'Poetry and the First World War'. In 1966 he gave the Romanes Lecture
Romanes Lecture
The Romanes Lecture is a prestigious free public lecture given annually at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, England.The lecture series was founded by, and named after, the biologist George Romanes, and has been running since 1892. Over the years, many notable figures from the Arts and Sciences have...
.
Bowra was at Harvard when the post of Vice-Chancellor fell unexpectedly vacant in 1948 on the sudden accidental death of William Stallybrass
William Stallybrass
William Teulon Swan Stallybrass was a barrister, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford from 1936, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1947, just before his death....
. When the most senior head of house, J. R. H. Weaver, declined the post, Bowra could himself have succeeded to it. He chose to stay in America, and Dean Lowe filled the post until 1951, when Bowra served his three year term. His briskness as chair of the Hebdomadal Council
Hebdomadal Council
The Hebdomadal Council was the chief executive body for the University of Oxford from its establishment in 1854 until its replacement, in the Michaelmas term of 2000, by the new University Council...
was legendary, the business of meetings that customarily occupied a whole afternoon being dispatched in as little as fifteen minutes. When T. S. R. Boase was indisposed by an eye problem in 1959, Bowra returned to the chair of the committee, privately quipping that "jokes about his 'beaux yeux' are not thought funny".
Bowra was President of the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
1958–62. His tenure was marked by two achievements. Firstly, Bowra chaired a committee that produced the Report on Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which resulted in a grant for those purposes from HM Treasury
HM Treasury
HM Treasury, in full Her Majesty's Treasury, informally The Treasury, is the United Kingdom government department responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy...
. The second was the establishment of the British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
.
In his long career as an Oxford don, Bowra had contact with a considerable portion of the English literary world, either as students or as colleagues. The character of Mr Samgrass in Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
's Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
is said to be modelled on Bowra. Waugh attended Hertford College (1922–24), and so, was in no sense, Bowra's pupil; indeed they scarcely knew one another at that time, whereas Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
, Henry Green
Henry Green
Henry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke , an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.- Biography :Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family...
and Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
knew Bowra quite well when they were undergraduates. However, it was Waugh who marked his friend's election as Warden Of Wadham by presenting him with a Monkey-puzzle tree
Araucaria araucana
Araucaria araucana is an evergreen tree growing to tall with a trunk diameter. The tree is native to central and southern Chile, western Argentina and south Brazil. Araucaria araucana is the hardiest species in the conifer genus Araucaria...
for his garden.
For all that they had in common, Bowra and George Alfred Kolkhorst
George Alfred Kolkhorst
George Alfred Kolkhorst was an Oxford don.Kolkhorst was a member of Exeter College, Oxford. He was appointed University Lecturer in Spanish in 1921 and Reader in Spanish in 1931, holding office until his death in 1958...
were avowed arch-enemies, though both were friends of John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
. Betjeman records his appreciation of Bowra in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells
Summoned by Bells
Summoned by Bells, the blank verse autobiography by John Betjeman, describes his life from his early memories of a middle class home in Edwardian Hampstead, London, to his premature departure from Magdalen College, Oxford....
; he evokes an evening spent dining with Bowra in a passage which concludes: "I wandered back to Magdalen, certain then,/ As now, that Maurice Bowra’s company / Taught me far more than all my tutors did."
Though not in any sense religious, Bowra signed the petition (in favour of the Tridentine
Tridentine Mass
The Tridentine Mass is the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962. It was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969...
Catholic Mass) that became informally known as the Agatha Christie indult
Agatha Christie indult
The "Agatha Christie indult" is a nickname applied to the permission granted in 1971 by Pope Paul VI for the use of the Tridentine Mass in England and Wales...
and regularly attended the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
services of his college chapel.
Poetry
Bowra had learnt the value of poetry during his experiences of the First World War, and Cyril Connolly wrote that, "He saw human life as a tragedy in which great poets were the heroes who fought back and tried to give life a meaning". Bowra was an important champion of Boris PasternakBoris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
, lecturing on his work and nominating him repeatedly for the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
.
Though he was a friend and supporter of poets, and was respected as a critic, Bowra was never able to fulfil his wish to be accepted as a serious poet himself. His own output consisted of "sharp satires, in verse, on his friends (and sharper still on his enemies)". His friend and literary executor, John Sparrow, once commented that Bowra had cut himself off from posterity, "as his prose was unreadable and his verse was unprintable." This was set half-right by the publication in 2005 of New Bats in Old Belfries, a collection of satires on friends and enemies written between the 1920s and 1960s. Here is his parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
, who had become choked with emotion on being presented the Duff Cooper Prize
Duff Cooper Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and acclaimed author. The prize was first awarded...
comprising a cheque for £150 and a copy of Duff Cooper's memoirs bound in leather, by Princess Margaret on 18 December 1958:
Green with lust and sick with shyness,The judges on that occasion had been Lord David Cecil
Let me lick your lacquered toes.
Gosh, oh gosh, your Royal Highness,
Put your finger up my nose,
Pin my teeth upon your dress,
Plant my head with watercress.
Only you can make me happy.
Tuck me tight beneath your arm.
Wrap me in a woollen nappy;
Let me wet it till it's warm.
In a plush and plated pram
Wheel me round St James's, Ma'am.
Let your sleek and soft galoshes
Slide and slither on my skin.
Swaddle me in mackintoshes
Till I lose my sense of sin.
Lightly plant your plimsolled heel
Where my privy parts congeal.
Lord David Cecil
Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil, CH , was a British biographer, historian and academic. He held the style of 'Lord' by courtesy, as a younger son of a marquess.-Early life and studies:...
, Harold Nicolson
Harold Nicolson
Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West, their unusual relationship being described in their son's book, Portrait of a Marriage.-Early life:Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the younger son of...
and Bowra himself as chairman. Duff Cooper's widow Lady Diana Cooper
Lady Diana Cooper
Lady Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich was an English socialite and actress.-Birth and youth:Born Lady Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Manners, she was officially the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the former Violet Lindsay, but Lady Diana's real father was widely supposed...
observed that "Poor Betch was crying and too moved to find an apology for words." (Philip Ziegler
Philip Ziegler
-Background:Born in Ringwood, Ziegler was educated at St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, and went with the school when it merged with Summer Fields School, Oxford. He was afterwards at Eton College and New College, Oxford...
, Diana Cooper: The Biography of Lady Diana Cooper, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1981, p. 310.)
The Telegraph, echoing poet Cecil Day Lewis on the man himself, warned that the book, like strychnine
Strychnine
Strychnine is a highly toxic , colorless crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion...
, was best taken in small doses.
Sexuality
As an undergraduate in 1920s Oxford, Bowra was fashionably homosexual, and was known to cruise for sexCruising for sex
Cruising for sex, or cruising is the act of walking or driving about a locality in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one-time variety...
. He used the term 'the Homintern
Homintern
Homintern was an early term for a supposed conspiracy of gay elites who allegedly controlled the art world. The word is a play on Comintern. What was termed the "homintern" in the mid-twentieth century is now more often described as a "Gay Mafia"....
', and privately referred to his leading position in that, or 'The Immoral Front' or 'the 69th International'.
Retirement and death
Bowra retired in 1970, but continued to live in rooms in the college, which were granted to him in exchange for a house he owned. He became an honorary fellow of Wadham and was awarded, honoris causa, the degree of Doctor of Civil LawDoctor of Civil Law
Doctor of Civil Law is a degree offered by some universities, such as the University of Oxford, instead of the more common Doctor of Laws degrees....
. He died of a sudden heart attack the following year, and was buried in Holywell Cemetery
Holywell Cemetery
Holywell Cemetery is next to St Cross Church in Oxford, England. The cemetery is behind the church in St Cross Road, north of Longwall Street.-History:...
, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
.
Honours
In addition to his OxfordUniversity of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
degrees, he received honorary doctorates from the universities of Dublin
University of Dublin
The University of Dublin , corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin , located in Dublin, Ireland, was effectively founded when in 1592 Queen Elizabeth I issued a charter for Trinity College, Dublin, as "the mother of a university" – this date making it...
, Hull
University of Hull
The University of Hull, known informally as Hull University, is an English university, founded in 1927, located in Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire...
, Wales
University of Wales
The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...
, Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Columbia, St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
, Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
and Aix.
Bowra was knighted in 1951, and was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1971. He was also a Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, a Knight-Commander of the Royal Order of the Phoenix in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, and recipient of the order "Pour le Mérite" in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
.
In 1992, Wadham College named its new Bowra Building in his honour.
Quotations
- "Buggers can't be choosers." (explaining his engagement, later called off, to a "plain" girl, Audrey Beecham, niece of the conductor)
- "I am a man more dined against than dining." (parodying King LearKing LearKing Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
's 'more sinned against than sinning') - "BuggeryBuggeryThe British English term buggery is very close in meaning to the term sodomy, and is often used interchangeably in law and popular speech. It may be, also, a specific common law offence, encompassing both sodomy and bestiality.-In law:...
was invented to fill that awkward hour between evensongEvening Prayer (Anglican)Evening Prayer is a liturgy in use in the Anglican Communion and celebrated in the late afternoon or evening...
and cocktails" or was "useful for filling that awkward time between tea and cocktails." - "I expect to pass through this world but once and therefore if there is anybody I want to kick in the crotch I had better kick them in the crotch now, for I do not expect to pass this way again."
- "With one or two exceptions, colleges expect their players of games to be reasonably literate."
- "Splendid couple-—slept with both of them", (on hearing of the engagement of a well-known literary pair).
- "Though like Our Lord and Socrates he does not publish much, he thinks and says a great deal and has had an enormous influence on our times." (writing about Isaiah BerlinIsaiah BerlinSir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
) - "I don't know about you, gentlemen, but in Oxford I, at least, am known by my face." (Allegedly after being caught skinny-dipping in the River CherwellRiver CherwellThe River Cherwell is a river which flows through the Midlands of England. It is a major tributary of the River Thames.The general course of the River Cherwell is north to south and the 'straight-line' distance from its source to the Thames is about...
and placing his hands over his face rather than his privates)
External links
- C. M. Bowra, The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy - 1946 Byron Foundation Lecture