Wolfson College Record 2021

Personal News
88
research with single-minded passion well into retirement, often collaborating
with Sandy Perez from South Africa and Alan Merchant at Oxford, to produce
an impressively long list of publications, the results of which have been described
as ‘ground-breaking’. To an outsider his work seemed dauntingly technical, but
Brian was always ready to give patient and lucid explanations that dispelled at
least a little of the fog. In his funeral eulogy, David Robey said of him that ‘he
deeply disliked all forms of pretentiousness and self-praise, and never talked up his
own achievements: the closest I can remember him coming to that was a casual
remark once that, for some years, every scientific topic he touched seemed to
turn to gold. For these reasons, no doubt, he may not have received all the public
recognition that his work merited. It would not have occurred to him to seek
public recognition, or to complain about not receiving it.’
Within the College Brian regularly did what was expected of him, attending
meetings and helping with JRF interviews, but the only administrative post he held
was Acting Secretary to the Governing Body for a term, which he found wholly
uncongenial. The social life of the College, on the other hand, he greatly enjoyed
and entered into fully.
‘I don’t see why’ was an expression that fell often from Brian’s lips. Ever the
rationalist, he needed to be convinced of the rightness of any course of action,
whether it was a matter of College policy or general conduct: David Robey recalls
an evening in a pub in Jericho when Brian broke a glass and refused to make the
required donation to the charity box because he didn’t see why he should. He
was firm about doing what he wanted to: for several years he spent Christmas
alone in bed with a bottle of whisky. But he was far from being a grouch, having
a good sense of fun and a dry wit, and he was excellent company. He was a great
collector of books and used to tour the country visiting second-hand bookshops,
returning with amusing anecdotes about the dottier proprietors as well as his
spoils. He had a special interest in the works of Robert Graves (he acquired a
virtually complete set of first editions) but read voraciously and widely. In fiction
he preferred detective stories (preferably, and rather bafflingly, not those written
by women) and, unlike most of us, he could remember not only all the titles but
also the details of every plot.
With his first wife Brian had four children, and when the marriage broke up he
looked after the two youngest (then in their early teens) in a house in Garford
Road, stubbornly insisting on a prompt return from evening parties despite any
ensuing sulks. He was always very proud of them all, not least of their artistic
efforts. ‘He then had’, as David Robey has noted, ‘two significant relationships
with women of great character, strength and achievement, and resolutely resisted
college record 2021