Section 6: Looking Back

6

Looking Back

Poor Bickerton: The Eccentric Life and Sad Death of an Aularian by Stephen Haddelsey

Portrait of John Bickerton, after Albin Burt. 1818 © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

On the evening of 8 October 1833, at the Crown and Sceptre public house in Westminster, an inquest opened into the death of John Bickerton of the ‘Five Chimneys’, Tothill Fields. Two days earlier, a policeman patrolling the Vauxhall Bridge Road had been approached by a party of gentlemen who asked that he disperse a crowd of ragamuffins who were disturbing the dying moments of an old man in a nearby house. Constable Burke found that the house was the ‘Five Chimneys’ – a building that had served as Westminster’s ‘pest house’ during the Great Plague. On entering, he had found the old man close to death and without so much as a blanket to cover him. Once alerted, concerned neighbours brought food and drink, and called for a surgeon. But it was too late, and Bickerton died the following afternoon. In many respects, there was nothing unusual about the death of the old man: without friends or family to support him, too ill and too weak to work, and invisible to the parish authorities, he had wasted away and expired like many others in the squalid hovels of early nineteenth-century London. However, to the surprise of many, the evidence indicated that Bickerton was in no way typical of such paupers. According to some witnesses, he was a ‘complete master’ of five or six languages; he had been educated at Oxford; and he owned properties in the capital, including the Five Chimneys itself. Moreover, among his few possessions, the police discovered a barrister’s gown and wig, and – most astonishing of all – correspondence between Bickerton and two serving Prime Ministers, the Duke of Portland and Lord Liverpool. Who, then, was this mysterious man, who had last been seen scrounging amongst rubbish for scraps to eat? Universityeducated, and with ample means, how had he fallen so low? Most puzzling of all, what could two leading statesmen have to do with the seemingly insane old miser? John Bickerton had been born on 26 April 1755 near Shrewsbury. By his own account, he had enjoyed “the privilege of a virtuous parentage… and education at Boarding and Grammar Schools.”1 A Presbyterian by birth, his Nonconformist upbringing did not prevent him from accepting the Thirty-nine Articles in order to matriculate at St Edmund Hall, on 6 July

1793, and to graduate as Bachelor of Arts in 1799. As for his academic attainments, a later acquaintance would assert that “he had very little knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages… and knew no modern language whatever, except his own”2 , but these claims seem dubious. Under the watchful eye of the conscientious Isaac Crouch, the Vice Principal, Teddy Hall had become a place of genuine learning; indeed, with “a novel character for erudition no less than seriousness”3 , it stood at the forefront of the battle against the academic somnolence that had prevailed at Oxford for most of the eighteenth century. Moreover, the Hall’s very low annual intake meant that few undergraduates could evade Crouch’s observation. So far as Bickerton’s post-university career is concerned, in 1879 the historian Gibbes Rigaud claimed not only that Bickerton had trained as a barrister, but that he had “practised with some success, but became eccentric and unfit for the profession”.4 This statement is supported by the records of the Middle Temple, which confirm that Bickerton had become a student member on 3 May 1804. As a student member he would have been expected to devote years to a kind of legal apprenticeship, studying under the tutelage of whichever barrister saw fit to patronise him. We know, though, that Bickerton never received his call to the Bar – or, if he did, he failed to answer it. In fact, the available evidence suggests that, having left Oxford, he saw enrolment at the Middle Temple as an opportunity to continue with his studies, enjoying untrammelled access to its substantial library. But Oxford continued to exert a pull on his imagination because, in 1808, he approached the Duke of Portland, Chancellor of the University and Prime Minister, in search of preferment. According to Bickerton’s own account, Portland offered him the Principalship of Hertford College, which he accepted.5 He then returned to Oxford to claim his prize – and it appears to have been from this point that his life began to unravel. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Hart Hall, as it was then known, had been renowned for its innovative approach to university education – but its decline had been precipitous in the latter part of the century, with student numbers dwindling to a handful by 1800. On the death of its last Principal in 1805, Portland, as Chancellor, had nominated his successor. But when his candidate declined the job, in accordance with the college’s statute the right to nominate the next head passed from the Chancellor to the Dean of Christ Church, Cyril Jackson – who, according to the historian of Hertford College, had “made up his mind to allow the College to die a natural death”.6

To achieve this end – which would enable the surrounding colleges to acquire Hertford’s land and buildings – all he needed to do was refrain from appointing a Principal, leaving the College to wither on the vine as its last students graduated. In these circumstances, Bickerton’s arrival on the scene, armed with the Chancellor’s introduction, was anything but welcome.

2 The Oxford Herald, quoted in ‘Counsellor Bickerton, Esq.’, in The Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1833, p.549. 3 See J.N.D. Kelly, St Edmund Hall: Almost Seven Hundred Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp.68-69. 4 Gibbes Rigaud, ‘Bickerton’, in Notes and Queries, 5th Series, volume 11, 1 March 1879, p.172. 5 Letter from John Bickerton to the Court of Claims regarding his right to Hertford College, 23 June 1820, National

Archives, reference C195/1/35. 6 Sidney Graves Hamilton, Hertford College (London: Robinson, 1903), p.94.

Operating, perhaps, on the principle that possession is nine-tenths of the law, Bickerton took up residence in the now largely abandoned Hertford College and proceeded to petition those he thought best able to facilitate his assumption of his new duties. He received very short shrift. In the first place, Portland’s right to nominate the Principal of Hertford College had expired. More important, though, was the fact that, by the time he arrived back in Oxford, Bickerton’s behaviour had become distinctly odd, with all commentators remarking on his increasingly eccentric habits. It hardly seems surprising, therefore, that his claims were dismissed – and even less surprising that he should attract the unwanted attention of some of the idle young men with which Oxford abounded. One such recalled an occasion when “a Jesus man” invited Bickerton to his rooms for supper. This humourist “then thought proper to anoint the head of Counsellor Bickerton with a quantity of grease, and then powdered it with the addition of flour, kicked him out, and shut the door.”7 Fortunately, not everyone exhibited such unkindness. James Shergold Boone, author of The Oxford Spy, treated him with generosity, noting that “Mr Bickerton is an original character, which, in most places, is of itself sufficient to cast upon a man the imputation of insanity”8. Nor was Boone the only Oxford contemporary to depict Bickerton with sensitivity. In 1818 A.R. Burt made a drawing of him, his portrait clearly being designed to engender sympathy, not derision. We don’t know when Bickerton left Hertford College, but, on 27 May 1820, Jackson’s Oxford Journal advertised the sale of “Capital Fine Old Oak and other Building Materials, now pulled down and in lots, On the premises, at Magdalen Hall, and Hertford College.” In other words, much of the medieval structure of Hertford College had been demolished, and Bickerton no longer had a home. Thereafter, following a stint living on a houseboat on the Isis, he returned to London, taking up residence at York Street, Westminster, and opening a short-lived school on Wych Street, before finally washing up in the Five Chimneys, emaciated, confused and dying. Though almost entirely forgotten today, during his lifetime, and for several decades afterwards, Bickerton remained a wellknown character of nineteenth century Oxford. He was written about in prose and verse during his lifetime, and his death resulted in a number of lengthy notices in the Gentleman’s Magazine and elsewhere. Why? What led so many to commemorate a man who, so far as we can tell, was neither particularly talented, influential, nor vocal? A man, moreover, about whom they knew practically nothing. His contemporaries described him variously as ‘poor’, ‘eccentric’, ‘singular’ and ‘unhappy’ but none sought to explain his oddness, being satisfied that the oddness itself made him worthy of observation. Today, we might wish to better understand Bickerton: to examine the influences and to chart the events that led a relatively privileged individual to starve to death in a slum. But the sad reality is that so much water has flowed beneath so many bridges, that many of the clues that might have formed the basis of that understanding have been lost. We know something of Bickerton’s birth, his parentage, and his education. We can

trace some of his movements after he graduated, and, thanks to the surviving records we have some inkling of his motivations. Burt’s portrait also gives us a good idea of what he looked like. But in the absence of all but one letter of Bickerton’s, and without any account written by someone who knew him intimately, we are left, like the majority of his contemporaries, gawping – albeit somewhat less complacently (we hope) – at the wreckage of a man. Is it then Bickerton’s oddity that makes him still worthy of consideration nearly two centuries after his death? In part, the honest answer must be ‘yes’. The descriptions of his life, death and peculiarities catch our attention, just as the man himself caught the attention of his contemporaries. But there is more to it than that. By tracing Bickerton’s footsteps from rural Shropshire to Oxford, from Oxford to the Inns of Court, and, ultimately, to the squalid ruins of a derelict plague hospital, it is possible to see something of late Georgian and Regency England, albeit through a glass darkly. We might almost think of Bickerton as we think of some of the minor characters in the novels of Dickens: it is their very abnormality, their marked deviation from the accepted norms of behaviour that make them not only fascinating but also an essential part of our perception of the wider world they – and he – inhabited. Through the pursuit of such misfits, we gain access to parts of a world that might otherwise remain entirely invisible to us. Dr Stephen Haddelsey FRGS, FRHistS, is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia and an historian specialising in the history of Antarctic exploration. He is the author of Poor Bickerton: The Life and Death of an Oxford Eccentric (Kilgobbin Press, 2021). The illustrated hardback is priced at £25.00 (including postage), and copies may be obtained from the author by emailing sphaddelsey@ yahoo.co.uk. The book is reviewed on p.157.

The Duke Of Edinburgh: A Parting to Remember by James Whitbourn

St Edmund Hall’s Director of Music and BBC producer, Dr James Whitbourn, was appointed producer at St George’s Chapel Windsor for the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral on Saturday 17 April 2021. He shares his account of how he brought together the many different elements to broadcast the service to all BBC radio networks. A Pathé newsreel of 1958 shows a spirited Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh—a year or two younger than Prince William is today— commanding with his presence a packed Front Quad of St Edmund Hall before purposefully striding off down Queen’s Lane. He had come to deliver the Hall’s

Royal Charter, granted the previous year, and to look over plans for the College’s ambitious programme of expansion. When shown by the College the newlypainted and immaculately-decorated room occupied by the organ scholar of the day (Michael Cansdale, 1956, Jurisprudence, now a St Edmund Fellow) the Duke astutely rejected its authenticity as ‘a typical undergraduate room’ and instead of admiring it as planned, engaged in conversation with the occupant on matters that interested him more. Sixtythree years later, his direct, no-nonsense approach found its final expression as his coffin was driven down the castle Ward on a green Land Rover, rather than a gun carriage, to its final resting place. Because of my own longstanding relationship with the BBC, I was appointed producer at St George’s Chapel Windsor that day, responsible for the broadcast of the funeral service to all the BBC radio networks, working alongside my television colleagues and with a substantial radio team. We came together with all those from the chapel and castle who were called upon to bring together and fulfil the event in all its aspects, including liturgical, ceremonial and, of course, musical—the small choir, organists, brass players and pipers. Although I had produced broadcasts of two previous royal funerals and several royal weddings, this was an event like no other. The role of a producer of such events has similarities with the work of a composer: in both cases, much of our work has to be done in advance of the event itself. When working on a commissioned musical work, I always try to imagine myself sitting in the audience at the first performance. I try to anticipate the atmosphere and the movements of performers. Similarly, BBC Events producers try to imagine the scenes, the feelings, the power and the intricacies of an event which has not yet happened, and we plan for it so that others can experience the event authentically as it unfolds. The broadcast of the event itself is a time of intense concentration when each of the players focuses solely on their own part. The embarrassing announcement of the incorrect Oscar winner in 2017, when a busily-tweeting official had handed over the wrong envelope to the announcer, stands as a salutary warning to anyone who attempts simultaneously to experience an event and make it happen for others. My role was to help make it happen for others, working with a highlyskilled team of commentators, engineers and production colleagues, giving direction when needed and trusting in the abilities of others when that was all that was required. The days before the event, in contrast, are experiential, and it is those times I have always treasured most, especially silent moments in Westminster Abbey or St George’s Chapel, when these buildings stand in expectant readiness. I love those periods of quiet and dedicated attention to detail, often casually observed. Normally, I try to imagine what the place will be like the following day, packed with human energy and breath. The Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, though, uniquely lacked this contrast with preceding days. Even on the day itself, the chapel was almost empty and continued to house its lofty atmosphere in stillness. Those who were in the chapel wore face coverings and spoke little. The sounds were few, subtle but always telling. Radio is a less literal medium than its younger cousin, television, and its canvas is a combination of sonic actuality and poetic description, minimally used. With this information alone, the brain can assemble images

that are as rich and powerful as those on screen, sometimes even more so. The tolling bell, the echoing footsteps on the stone floor, the military command: these are all emotive sounds that can call on our full attention. They tell a story that is authentic and uncluttered and which barely acknowledges the newly-painted walls or the immaculate decoration. Emerging from the event afterwards, the chapel exudes a new atmosphere of stillness, quite different from that which had been there before. The Duke of Edinburgh’s final journey had been witnessed firsthand only by those inside the castle walls. It is a privilege to be able to be the eyes of others who look on or listen in and to help create the images that will remain in the national and international memory. James Whitbourn, Director of Music

As Three Aularians Walked Out One Summer Morning by Patric Sankey-Barker

Aghast, we stood and watched the bus disappearing down the road to Bonifaccio with our rucksacks, passports and airline tickets on board. Just at that moment, a beaten up little Citroen drew up at the service station where the bus had stopped for a ten-minute coffee break. Quick as a flash, Rose said to the driver in his colloquial French: ‘That chap’s gone off with all our kit, follow him?’ We all piled into the car, Rose and Shaw scrambling into the back seat amongst a lot of fruit and veg, and set off down the middle of the very busy main road. It was a hopeless chase, but the driver, steering the car with his elbows while on his mobile, was able to contact the bus company and get the bus stopped at the next town. That was the beginning, and might have been the end, of our walk on the GR20 trail across Corsica in 2010. The three of us – Michael Rose (1960, Philosophy), Michael Shaw (1959, History) and I, Patric Sankey-Barker (1960, Modern Languages) - had done two treks before: from the Bristol Channel to the English Channel and then coast to coast from North to South Wales. With advancing years, our treks became more ambitious: the AV2 trekking route in the Dolomites and then, casting around for something else, the GR11 - 818km from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean along the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. This we started in 2016 and reached the Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean in 2019, walking for between 10 and 15 days each year, ending

each section at a road or rail link and starting again the next year where we had finished the previous year. The GR11 (La Senda) starts on the Atlantic coast north of Irun just over the border from Hendaye in France, where Hitler and Franco met in 1940. On the first stage of our trek, we climbed up through the foothills of the Pyrenees, reaching some 11 days later the ski resort of Candanchu where the high mountains really begin. Foothills might give the impression of easy walking, but there are plenty of steep climbs and descents in the western Pyrenees. From Candanchu to the Refugi de Conangles in Catalonia near the road linking Huesca and Toulouse was another 11 days. This took us through the extraordinary geology of the Ordesa National Park. On the next stage, we continued through the high Pyrenees passing through Andorra and reaching Puigcerda back in Catalonia. From Puigcerda our route reached its highest point at Puigmal before dropping down towards the Mediterranean. Although the alpine scenery of the high Pyrenees is stupendous, the lower sections are also of great interest. There is more variety, and you meet more of the local people. No one admitted to being Spanish: they were Basque, Navarran, Aragones, Aranes, Andorran, or Catalan, often with their own language. Faced with the task of writing about this great trek, I feel like the man who bought a tapestry which was too large for the room where he wanted to hang it. I will therefore cut a few pieces from the tapestry and recount some of our many experiences. 1. Burguete

Burguete is a small town lying on the junction of the GR11 and the Camino de Compostella. We arrived there on a hot afternoon on the fourth day of the first stage and collapsed into the first bar we came to. After quenching our thirst with cold Estrellas, we set off up the main street to find our hotel, the Hostal de Burguete, where Hemingway had once stayed. As there was some time till supper, and the saturnine patron was less than welcoming, we wandered back down the main street and entered the garden of another rather smarter hotel. A man dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans came to sit at a table near us and started typing on a small laptop. After a time he came over, gestured that he couldn’t speak and pointed to the screen of his laptop. On this he had remarked on our Oxford accents and asked where we came from. It transpired that he was doing the Camino and had taken an oath of silence for three months. He was a Canadian, a lay reader and a chat show host on a Canadian radio station with a bent towards religion, but had been having doubts about his faith. There followed a long conversation, in which we spoke and he replied on his laptop often posing searching questions about religious belief. The next morning, we set off down the high street amidst a large crowd of pilgrims, until the ways parted and we were on our own again. Although our trek was never intended to be a pilgrimage, over the course of the years I think we began to feel a bit like pilgrims. We often crossed pilgrims’ routes, and were deeply impressed by the wonderful pilgrimage church of St Sernin in Toulouse. 2. Ordesa and Monte Perdido

The Ordesa National Park is an enormously deep canyon gouged out by the Ordesa river exposing the strata contorted by the tectonic upheaval that formed the Pyrenees. With massive crags rearing above, the path follows the river

up the valley and then comes out in a wide open area closed at the far end by a sheer wall of rock. A steep path leads up to the Refugio de Goriz. When we arrived at the refuge it was almost empty, but by supper time the place was filling up and, as it was a Friday, people kept on arriving right into the small hours, having left work in Barcelona and elsewhere and climbed up from the valley lighting their way with head torches. The next day was the best and worst day of the entire trek. We had decided to follow the old higher route of the GR11, skirting the south flank of Monte Perdido. This was enormously rewarding with extraordinary views to the south over a remote canyon and into the hazy distance of Spain. An exposed path above a deep valley took us to an awkward corner, where there was still snow and ice. Once past that, we ambled on down to the col where the descent to the Refugio de Pineto began. Three and a half hours later, after a horrendous descent, we reached the valley below and dragged ourselves to the refuge. Outside there were a few disconsolate Andorran walkers, who solemnly handed us a note, which said that the refuge was closed: the guardian had gone to the dentist with toothache. At that point, when our spirits were at their lowest ebb, Rose got out his stove and started a brew-up – a concoction of tea with rum and condensed milk. All went better from then on: a replacement guardian arrived, we were let into the refuge and later enjoyed an excellent supper.

3. Puigmal

Puigmal means ‘evil peak’ in Catalan, and at 2911 metres it was the highest point of our trek. We reached it on our fourth and last stage. With the help of a lift from the gardener at the family-run hotel where we had spent the night, we set out to conquer the evil peak. Even with this leg up, it was a long steep climb ending with a scramble over rough scree for the last few hundred feet, but memorable for spotting a group of chamois and for the snow still lying at the top after the heavy fall which we had seen from the train on the way up from Toulouse two days before. The descent to Nuria was also steep and taxing. The next morning, Michael Rose’s son, Edward (1989, History) – who had joined us for the last stage – told us we were mad to be carrying so much weight. He heroically volunteered to relieve us of a lot of our baggage, making a complicated journey by bus and train, carrying three backpacks to our stop for the next night. Perhaps, as we neared the end of our trek, the evil peak was telling us something about our advancing years.

4. Cap de Creus

During the last few days of our trek, the pace became more leisurely. We spent a whole rainy day by the sea in Llanca – glad for once not to be walking, particularly after the previous day’s walk in the heat, much of it on tarmac. Our wives joined us the next day in a lovely rented house in the village of Vall de Creus a few kilometres from Llanca, having flown to Girona and hired a car. We still had 15 kilometres to go. After another day of rest, we finally headed for the cape, reaching it late in the morning of 24 September 2019. A celebratory lunch followed in Cadaques. We didn’t visit the house where Dali had lived. The real world of the Pyrenees had provided amply for body and soul. Patric Sankey-Barker (1960, Modern Languages)

On the Joys of Being a College Tutor by John Knight

I was a Tutorial Fellow of the Hall from 1967 until 2006. Tutoring can become repetitive and boring over the years but the challenge of engaging with bright young minds provides an antidote. As do some amusing occasions. For instance: My room in College (1.1) was immediately below an undergraduate room. Normally, it proved to be no problem at all. With one exception. During a tutorial we heard a resounding noise: thud, thud, thud… and again, thud, thud, thud… and on and on. Eventually, I ran upstairs, all ready to complain. The undergraduate opened the door: “Come in, come in. I’m just practising my juggling.” Long ago, I tutored the son of a foreign potentate. He enjoyed his time at the Hall, perhaps too much so. One evening he attended a party in Brasenose and left in his expensive car. When it crashed into a college wall, another of my pupils, a man of considerable initiative if not diligence, accurately or not took responsibility for being the driver. International incident averted! At end-of-term collections, it was possible to say of the princeling’s friend: “Mr X. will never get into All Souls, whichever route he tries.” Not long after I was elected, I was proud of a pupil who got a well-deserved first; the world was his oyster. After graduating he was trying to decide whether to join the diplomatic service or stay on and become a development economist. I was conducting research in Ghana for part of that summer. I sent him two postcards. One showed a newly-built concrete monstrosity in the capital. I wrote: “If you become a diplomat you will waste your time sipping cocktails in a place like this. But…” The later postcard, showing a family hoeing its shamba, continued: “But, if you become a development economist, you will be able to help people like this.” That should settle it, I thought. And indeed it did. He reminded me of our correspondence when he attended my retirement celebration, having just retired as HM ambassador to a major developing country. Professor John Knight, Emeritus Fellow

A Good Year To Be Online By Tom Crawford

The first year in my new position as an ‘Early Career Teaching and Outreach Fellow’ at the Hall has been a rollercoaster ride to say the least. From the highs of reaching over two million people with a video filmed in the College grounds, to the cancellation of almost every in-person event, it would be fair to say a lot has happened over the past nine months… October saw the release of a video entitled ‘How Hard is it to get into Oxford University’ with YouTube star Mike Boyd sitting the Maths entrance exam in the Old Dining Hall. The video demonstrates how anyone can learn the skills required to succeed at Maths, and tries to demystify the Oxford experience. With over two million views to date, the College hopefully has more than a few new prospective

students all over the world. You can watch the video for yourself here: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=_deqsuKIf_o Michaelmas was a difficult time in terms of in-person events, with most being cancelled or moved online due to everchanging restrictions. However, I did manage to visit a couple of schools with the highlight being a visit to Hockerill Anglo-European College where over 300 students enjoyed a lecture on the ‘Million-Dollar Millennium Problems’. You can watch an online version of the lecture recorded with the Royal Institution here: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=f251NkeDVB8 I also worked with ‘Maths Week Ireland’ during October with my lecture on ‘The Maths of Sport’ being streamed live to over 100 schools across the Republic of Ireland. November saw the start of admissions season, and working with the Undergraduate Admissions Office at the University, I hosted several mock interview sessions with applicants ahead of the real thing in December. Hilary term was of course all online with the majority of students remaining at home due to the national lockdown. Outreach events followed the same format, including the Royal Institution weekend Maths Masterclasses, and several science festivals at which I was an invited speaker. One particular event that stands out for me was with STAR Academy at the NASA Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The passion and enthusiasm that the students – all of whom came from an assortment of disadvantaged backgrounds – displayed for learning STEM was a real breath of fresh air. Trinity term has fortunately seen the return of in-person events once again, and with it the opportunity to record a series of video interviews with some of our undergraduate students discussing their dissertations or research projects. These videos should be available on the College YouTube channel in the near future, so watch this space! Finally, I have continued to make content for my website and YouTube channel under the ‘Tom Rocks Maths’ brand, with recent videos of me taking an A-level Maths exams reaching almost 1 million views. You can watch the Maths A-level exam video here: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=uupjxztr2q8 I have also continued to work with the excellent ‘Numberphile’ YouTube channel which currently has over 3.14 (or pi) million subscribers. I have now featured in 10 videos on the channel – reaching over 5 million people – with my recent video on the ‘Gabriels’ Horn Paradox’ in particular generating a lot of attention. You can watch the video here: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=yZOi9HH5ueU Dr Tom Crawford, Early Career Teaching and Outreach Fellow in Mathematics More information and examples of Tom’s outreach work with ‘Tom Rocks Maths’ can be found on his website: https://tomrocksmaths.com

Remembering Terry Jones by Geoffrey Bourne-Taylor

We honoured the memory of and remembered the laughter brought to us by Aularian and Honorary Fellow Terry Jones last year. Here are some more fond memories. It was with dismay that many of us noted Terry Jones’s death in January 2020. Terry brought so much to the Hall, not only while in stat pup but later when his connections were strengthened by an Honorary Fellowship. I count myself fortunate to have got to know him during those later years on his frequent visits. He was tickled that his room, opposite the Bursary, became a lavatory; it is now part of the administrative offices in the ‘Cottage’ at the end of the Quad; the tale became the centrepiece of his performance at one of the Aularian London dinners. Amongst some of the less-well-known Monty Python recordings is the ditty, “I like traffic lights” which I came across in 1980. The verses ran through an inane recital of the phases of traffic lights – “I like traffic lights, … no matter where they’ve been;… specially when they’re green” and on and on and on… certainly not a choice for Desert Island Discs! Sidling up to Terry as he was about to visit his old room, I whispered the lyrics into his ear. “Oh no! No!” he recoiled, and we were friends thereafter. It was to this song that he recorded an additional verse that we sent to one of my sons, on his gap year somewhere near the Syrian border. There were some stuffy objections when a number of colleagues joined me and Stephen Farthing (one-time Ruskin Master of Drawing) to propose Terry for the Honorary Fellowship: they didn’t think much of his academic credentials! Finally convinced that he was actually a quite famous and deserving alumnus, the fellowship was granted. Not surprisingly, he was very popular with the SEH community and ever supportive of the Hall. In 2001, the College and some alumni sponsored an anthology of verse, Chatter of Choughs to which Terry contributed the following: When I see a one-eyed chough I pity birds whose life is tough. When I see a two-eyed chough I reckon God has done his stuff. When I see a three-eyed chough I start to think my eyesight’s duff. When I see a four-eyed chough, I know that I have had enough.

But there was another piece of doggerel he submitted that found its way onto a Teddy Hall mug, alongside a cartoon that depicted Terry as a sozzled chough leaning on the Well: I met a chough as I came here Who I thought was acting queer: His beak was wagging up and down;

He wore an academic gown. And as I stared, I saw his wings

Were wrapped around some curious things: A scarf, an oar, a rugger ball – I thought: “A member of the Hall! I’d better buy the bird a beer!’ And so I did – but dear oh! dear!....” My guess is that these mugs are now a collectors’ item. Rumour has it that the Python sketch, ‘the Bruces’, took its inspiration from the late Bruce Mitchell, a broad Australian don who taught Terry Old English (and incidentally contributed Miceles forme raedelle [‘Mitchell’s first riddle’ – about a chough] to the anthology). In the sketch, everyone in the scene is called Bruce or Sheila. Bruce denied that he was the inspiration… but he was not insistent… In another confession, Terry admitted that the part that he had least enjoyed was the exploding Mr Creosote in The Meaning of Life: “I’ve never felt so ill”, he confessed. Geoffrey Bourne-Taylor, Bursar 1988 – 2006