2011 Hertford College Magazine (Issue 91)

tervene it was always very powerful.
Although, as I have said, Roger formally
left Nuffield after only one year, he was
still much in evidence in seminars there,
and was notable particularly as a croquet
player on the tiny lawn in the north east
part of the quad. I can see him now, usually
partnered by Ralph Carnegie, despatching
his opponents with implacable
charm, aware of every angle, a master tactician
on the lawn as at the bridge table.
These were, indeed, the skills he
brought to university committees, especially
in his role as Estates Bursar. He
kept meticulous records, and so was formidably
well-informed, both about the
history of any problem (and previous attempts
to solve it), and about the smallest
element in what was now being proposed:
if the devil was in the detail, Roger
would find him. But his careful research
built into big pictures, too, especially in
his amazing spread-sheets of all the colleges’
accounts, completed in his instantly
recognizable spidery handwriting.
Although he served on many university
committees, he was, at heart, a college
man. Nowhere was this more in evidence
than on the Oxford and Cambridge
Colleges’ Fees Committee, which negotiated
with the Department of Educa-
“ If the devil was in the detail,
Roger would find him ”
tion (in the long-lost days when universities
were still understood to be about
education.) Patiently and courteously
Roger annually took apart the civil servants,
especially the statisticians, reassembling
their arguments and data in a kind
of intellectual jujitsu to produce the best
possible settlement for colleges. ‘What
result do you want me to produce?’ I recall
an official asking in desperation!
HERTFORD COLLEGE MAGAZINE
Hertford report: Roger Van Noorden’s memorial celebration
Bursars often took advantage of Roger’s
perseverance and command of detail: why
bother to get one’s head around a complex
issue if Roger was there to defend the interests
of colleges? We were all free riders
on his Hertford train, relying on his total
devotion to that college to serve us as well.
Roger built the modern Hertford up,
step by careful bursarial step, husbanding
its resources: a model bursar. The
strong college he has left is truly his memorial.
Yet like another great college bursar
before him, Hart-Synott of St John’s,
he will be remembered amongst bursars
for something less tangible. Hart-Synott
negotiated with the Inland Revenue over
“ The strong college he has left
is truely his memorial ”
the taxation of college staff housing, and
many fellows are unknowingly indebted
to him. Although Roger also negotiated
powerfully with the Revenue, in his case
over the taxation of conference activities
(which he contrived to show were hardly
profitable at all), his lasting bursarial
legacy is the Van Noorden Index of college
costs. I do not propose, you will be
glad to hear, to explain the intricacies of
the construction of that index: I well recall
once questioning an element of it, and
being swamped by Roger’s patient rebuttal.
It was typical of him that when he retired
he asked that the index be renamed.
But the ‘Oxford Colleges’ Cost Index’
does not have the same resonance and
recently the Estates Bursars, not a body
known for sentimentality, resolved to restore
the originator’s name in his memory.
In years to come, as fees and charges
move towards full cost levels, the Van
Noorden Index – now the VNI to Cherwell
and Oxford Student – will become
even more important. Given how much
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