University College Oxford Record 2020

the best way in which to call on the College’s
various funds. More troubling are disciplinary
matters and of these there were several where
we felt we had to act together. One concerned
a student who complained that he had received
death threats from fellow students and called in
the police. The death threats were no more than
clumsy jokes but the matter took a
long time to sort out. Another much
more serious case we jointly decided
had to be referred to much higher, in
fact the highest, University authority.
Brian’s shrewdness and common
sense always showed through in
such emergencies. And so, in another,
happier if quirky case: that of the kestrel.
A scout came to me one day complaining
that on entering the room of Mr X she had
been attacked by a ferocious bird. Mr X was
one of Brian’s First-Year pupils who had brought
his kestrel to Oxford for company. There were
rules against keeping dogs in the College but
apparently none against birds, caged or not. After
consultation with Brian I convinced the scout
that the bird had not been attacking her but only
trying to escape and reluctantly she accepted the
argument. I then put the case to the student that
his kestrel’s natural environment was the Parks or
the Meadows and not a fusty old room in Univ.
He took the point.
As well as an attractive grin, Brian had a
palate, an ear and an eye. If you asked his opinion
of a Claret, you would receive wisdom as to
choice. If you asked him about that Schubert
quartet, he would give you the key and the
Deutsch number too. If you asked him about
Venice, he would recommend a hotel and also
the way of discovering the best restaurant if you
liked fish: go to the fish market at first light and
see which chefs are there buying the best for
the day’s menu.
Brian’s last official rôle in service of the
College – for there were many other less formal
ways in which he served, especially with Old
Members, Pomona and the Soros Foundation
– was as Dean of Degrees and as it happened,
I followed him in this. He gave me a
thick pile of file cards on each of which
were the hand-written Latin words
used to address the Vice-Chancellor
and Proctors at presentation of
supplicants for every degree from
DD to BA Fine Art, with number and
gender variants. Most of the cards were
so well-thumbed as to be illegible but I
appreciated the gesture. I thought it wise to
attend a ceremony and watch him perform so
as to see how things were done. Total quietness
reigned in the Sheldonian as he spoke: not, I think,
because the assembly craved to hear the arcane
Latin plea but because he spoke so softly as to
be virtually inaudible. Some other Deans perhaps
should have done likewise because their Latin
pronunciation was, unlike his, execrable.
He continued to live in the house in Stanton
St John that he and Jean had built when they
came to Oxford in 1961. At the rear of the house
is a long expanse of lawn and a hedge at the far
end separating it from fields. In the distance you
can see the rise where Brill stands. Brian used to
say he must cut back the hedge a little because
its branches were beginning to obstruct his view:
still the practical plant scientist.
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
58 University College Record | October 2020