Univ Record 2018

literally, and read all of every entry that dated back to the earliest stages of English: I and
my colleagues soon became as grateful to Eric for his acute observations on the language
and culture of the seventeenth century, or the twentieth, or sometimes even the twentyfirst,
as we did for his (more numerous) incisive assessments of our treatment of much
earlier material.
Eric always had a particularly warm place in his heart for young lexicographers, and
indeed for all young scholars. He had little patience with fools of any age, but every new
generation who came into contact with him found that they were in the presence of
someone who would take their opinions and their ambitions seriously, and who would
quietly set about acquainting them with a very long tradition of lexicographical and
linguistic scholarship.
As one colleague commented, “Eric looked and sometimes sounded very much like
an absent-minded professor, but you would be dangerously mistaken to take him for one.
His mind was razor-sharp and he was capable of quite caustic comments on occasion; but
he was entirely benevolent.”
He will be very much missed by all who knew him.
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DAVID ESME BERNSTEIN (Dame Alice Owen’s School E.C.1) died on 25 August 2017
shortly after his 89th birthday. He had been in poor health for a while. David read
English at Univ, having attended Dame Alice Owen’s School in Islington, and been
evacuated to Bedford at the outbreak of war. On going down, David pursued a successful
career in advertising, working as a copyrighter, TV producer and creative director. He
worked variously for McCann Erickson, Garland Crompton, and Ogilvy & Mather, and
then in 1972 he went into partnership with Laurence Isaacson to launch The Creative
Business (TCB). “David said he wanted somebody who could do all the things he didn’t
like doing,” Isaacson later recalled. The agency’s client list included Reckitt & Colman,
Nestlé, London Weekend Television, Guinness, British Rail, Shell and Unilever.
David wrote and produced two of the commercials shown on commercial TV’s opening
night in 1955. He was also the author of seven books, two of which, Company Image &
Reality and Advertising Outdoors – Watch This Space!, are
regarded as classics in the advertising profession. The
advertising world, however, remembers him especially
for a short film called Risk and Responsibility, in which
he played one of a pair of over-cautious clients who
are asked to approve a daring advertisement for their
product, which through a succession of apparently
reasonable amendments they succeed in wrecking.
Although produced back in 1966, the film remains
highly relevant today with its argument that creative
risk-taking is essential to effective advertising.
David also wrote three plays for television. He
himself admitted that none were very successful,
although he did achieve the unlikely feat of having one
of his plays interrupted by one of his own commercials.
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