Maurice Bowra : a celebration

Hugh Lloyd-Jones

The late Sir Maurice Bowra (1898-1971), Warden of Wadham for over 30 years, sometime Professor of Poetry, and the ablest Vice-Chancellor and university administrator that England has known in recent years, was a figure who perhaps more than any other epitomised modern Oxford. As a classical scholar. and as a critic of European literature, he produced a stream of books that made their mark both by their originality and by their power to convey the spirit of the subject to the ordinary reader. A generous teacher, he was also, as the Times obituary said of him, 'a free thinker, an epicure and an uninhibited advocate of pleasure'; and his brilliant conversation, combined with a good nature unsual in one so witty, made him countless friends, on many of whom, especially as a young man, he exerted a profound influence.