French painter and portrait artist. As "T", he was one of the artists responsible for occasional caricatures of Vanity Fair magazine, specialising in French and Italian subjects.
Donald Dale was born in Bournemouth. He attended King's College London, and published many articles about Samuel Pepys in ‘Notes and Queries’ in the 1940s. Dale was the nephew of Edwin Chappell.
Will Arnold-Forster was the youngest son of Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster, a Liberal Unionist MP and his wife, Mary Story-Maskeline. He inherited an interest in art from his mother, and studied at the Slade School between 1905 and 1908 where he won several prizes. He moved to Italy in 1911 living in Tuscany. At the outbreak of war he joined the Royal Navy.
After the war, he married Katharine Laird Cox (known as Ka), who was then working at the Admiralty, and they moved to Cornwall where they purchased 'The Eagle’s Nest'. He was an enthusiastic gardener, and his garden at 'The Eagle’s Nest' was described as spectacular. He worked on the Memorial Garden at St Ives, and with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth on her garden there.
As a Labour politician, Arnold-Forster was a strong human rights advocate, and became involved in the creation of the League of Nations (1920). In the interwar period he was influential in foreign policy debates that tried to find an alternative to war and argued for multilateral disarmament. During the Second World War he continued to advance ideas for a new international body with more coercive powers. After the war he continued writing and speaking on internationalism and the United Nations.
As an artist, he first joined the St Ives Arts Club in 1909 and was noted for landscapes and pastels. His work is included in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Will and Ka were interested in progressive education, and they sent their son Mark, aged seven, to boarding school in Switzerland, and two years later to a boarding school in Salem, Baden-Württemberg run by Kurt Hahn. Hahn, a Jew, was imprisoned in Germany, but was released with the assistance of the Arnold-Forsters and fled to Scotland in 1933. Together they were instrumental in the founding of Gordonstoun. Will was the first chairman of the board of directors and Mark was one of the first pupils.
Ka died suddenly in 1938 at the age of 51, while her husband was in North America on a peace mission. The following year he married his friend Ruth Leigh-Mallory (widow of George Mallory). She died three years later of cancer.
Lettice Ramsey (née Baker, 1898 -1985) was a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, and she married Cambridge mathematician and philosopher, Frank Ramsey (son of A.S. Ramsey, President of Magdalene College) in 1926. Frank died in 1930 and Lettice looked for a new way to support herself and her two young daughters. In 1932 she set up in the photographic business with Helen Muspratt, a Dorset photographer who had trained at Regent Street Polytechnic in London. Lettice had the Cambridge contacts to get the firm work while Helen had the photographic skills and experience.
In 1937 Helen Muspratt moved to Oxford and set up a second studio for the firm there. While the partnership continued, Helen ran the Oxford Studio and Lettice the Cambridge one.
Nicholas Lee took over the business in 1978 when Lettice retired. The business was then purchased by Peter Lofts in 1980. There is an extensive indexed negative collection from the firm in the Cambridgeshire Collection, deposited by Peter Lofts after he bought up the business.
Ramsey and Muspratt are best known for their portrait work. Their sympathetic, well lit images quickly made the firm fashionable, photographing the up and coming and influential throughout the 1930s, including Anthony Blunt and Virginia Woolf. The firm also undertook a wide range of commercial photography.
Copyright and Reproductions
The negatives that survive from the studio and copyright are held in the Cambridgeshire Collection, the local studies department of Cambridgeshire Libraries.
Contact - Mary Burgess, Local Studies Librarian, Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge Central Library, (01223) 699755, Cambridgeshire.Collection@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
Francis Turner was the son of C.H. Turner, Bishop of Islington, and grandson of F.T. McDougall, first Bishop of Sarawak.
He was educated at Marlborough and then served in the Royal Flying Corps 1916-19 winning both the M.C. and the D.F.C.
He was admitted to Magdalene in 1920 to read History and became a Bye-Fellow in 1923, and a Fellow in 1926.
He served as a Precentor, Tutor, College and Pepys Librarian, Fellows' Steward, and President (1957-62).
He retired in 1962 and moved to Chichester where he married Anne Martindale in 1978.
He died with his wife in a fire at their home in Chichester on 18 January 1982.
Obituary:
College Magazine, No. 26, 1981-82, pp. 1-5.
Studied at the Royal College of Art, where he won a Travelling Scholarship. Married to the sculptor Mary Gillick. Exhibited RA, RSA and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Gillick was awarded the RBS medal in 1935, three years later becoming a fellow. Was master of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1935, served on the faculty of sculpture of the British School in Rome and on the Imperial Arts League’s council. Gillick completed a large volume of public sculpture, including the Frampton memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral, London; medals for the Royal Mint, RA and Inner Temple; London’s Lord Mayor’s seal; plus a variety of work for Commonwealth countries. Lived in London. The Henry Moore Institute archive, Leeds, holds a huge postcard collection documenting sculpture, monuments and paintings by Gillick from around the world.
An archaeologist, geologist and Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran who pioneered the use of aerial photography as a method of archaeological research in Britain and Ireland. He was Professor of Aerial Photographic Studies at the University of Cambridge from 1973 to 1980.
Michael Keall was born in Putney and was educated as a Chorister at King's College School, 1940-1945, at Culford School, and at King's College, Cambridge (1951-1954) where he took the Historical Tripos and a Certificate in Education.
National Service (2nd Lt, Royal Artillery), 1950-1951.
Assistant Master at King's College School, 1955-1957 and at Bedford School, 1957-1962.
Headmaster at the Junior School, Portsmouth GS, 1962-1969 and at Eastbourne College Preparatory School, 1969-1977.
Headmaster of Westminster Abbey Choir School, 1977-1987.
Junior Bursar of Magdalene College, 1989-1994.
Alumni Secretary, 1999-2012.
Fellow-Commoner, 1989-2019.
Michael took a warm interest in the student body and knew many students personally. He was interested in all student activities but in particular, he took a special interest in College music and sports, compiling the list of College Blues and Half Blues for publication in the College Magazine each year. His memory for and eager interest in every individual he met, his wide range of interests, from rugby to choral music, his unobtrusive but profound kindness, his unruffled enthusiasm and good humour, all this and more made him universally loved.
Obituary: College Magazine, No. 64 (2019-2020), PP. 29-35.
Admitted as a pensioner at Magdalene College in October 1876.
Was a D.L. (Deputy Lieutenant) and J.P. (Justice of the Peace).
He died at Bronsil, Eastnor, Ledbury aged 70.
Undergraduate at Magdalene College, 1902-1905.
Son of the Rev. Francis Jourdain (Pembroke College, Oxford), of Ashbourne vicarage, Derbyshire.
School - Derby.
Admitted as a Pensioner (age 18) on 1 August 1889.
Prizeman; Scholar, 1891; B.A. 1892.
Kept a school at Clifton, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.
Served in the Great War, 1914-19 (Capt., R. Fusiliers; Staff Capt., War Office; wounded; Brevet-Major; mentioned in Secretary of State's List for "valuable services").
Of Charlynch, near Bridgwater in Somerset.
Died on 31 July 1942, in Newquay, Cornwall.
Eugene Power was born in Traverse City, Michigan and received his BA degree (1927) and his MBA (1930) from the University of Michigan.
During World War II, Power directed the microfilming of thousands of rare books and other printed materials in British libraries. He paid the library a minimal fee per exposure and then took the film to the United States where he sold copies to US libraries. The idea was both a clever business arrangement and a benefit to American scholars, who lacked access to European library collections. It was also an inventive form of preservation in light of wartime threats to libraries. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Power in the 1970s for this preservation work.
In 1938 he founded University Microfilms International in Michigan. The company merged microfilming with xerography, helping to make out-of-print books available for circulation again. The company also pioneered a business model for publishing limited-interest doctoral dissertations, becoming the publisher of record for all U.S. dissertations in 1951.
University Microfilms was acquired by the Xerox Corporation in 1962 for $8 million. Power continued to work for Xerox until his mandatory retirement in 1970 at the age of 65. The company he founded is now ProQuest.
In 1967, Power created the Power Foundation for Philanthropy. He donated funds to establish the Power Center for the Performing Arts at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. He also endowed a scholarship program at the university (affiliated for many years with Magdalene College at Cambridge University) and helped to buy the site of the Battle of Hastings in England to preserve it from real estate speculation.
Power served two terms as a regent of the University of Michigan, served on the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and became president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in 1970. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1975.
In 1987, Marion Island in Lake Michigan, was renamed "Power Island". Power died of Parkinson's disease in 1993 at the age of 88.
First Master of Magdalene, 1544-1546.
Dean of Bangor Cathedral from 1534. At the time he was made Master he also held two rectories of Llaneingan and Aber in Carnarvonshire and the vicarage of Terrnington St John in Norfolk to which he had been presented by the Bishop of Ely in 1541. Had no connections with Cambridge prior to being made Master.
Admitted pensioner aged 17 at Magdalene College 22 May 1897
Son of Francis William Otter, of West Grinstead Lodge, West Grinstead, Horsham, [Sussex], deceased and Dorothea Mary Augusta, daughter of Sir Walter Wyndham Burrell, Bart.
Born 1879
Eton School, one term only
Matriculated, Michaelmas term 1897
Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Sussex Regiment and served in the Great War.
Captain and Adjt., Sussex Yeomanry.
Married Patience Marion, only daughter of Sir Edmund Loder, Bart, on 21 June 1904
Had issue
Lived at Selehurst, Horsham, Sussex
Died on 6 August 1940 and is buried at Lower Beeding, Sussex
Born in Willesden, north London, on 25 July 1897. Attended University College School in Hampstead in 1912.
In December 1915 he won a scholarship in history to Peterhouse, Cambridge but war service intervened and he was commissioned into the West Yorkshire regiment. He saw active service on the western front, chiefly as his battalion's signals officer. He was wounded and captured in the German offensive of March 1918 and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
Willey went up to Peterhouse in January 1919, and took the second part of the historical tripos in the summer of 1920, obtaining a First. He then switched to the newly established English tripos, taking a First in 1921. He won the Le Bas prize in 1922. He began to lecture (as a freelancer) for the English course in 1923.
Following the reorganisation of the University in 1926, he held one of the new probationary faculty lectureships at Cambridge for five years.
In 1934 he was appointed to a permanent lectureship, becoming a Fellow of Pembroke College in 1935.
On 20 July 1923 he married Zélie Murlis Ricks with whom he was to have two sons and two daughters. Following his marriage he and his family lived at 282 Hills Road, but in 1938 he commissioned an architectural colleague to design a much larger house on land at 18 Adams Road, where apart from two extended periods as a visiting professor in the USA, he lived until his death.
Willey's life coincided with, and was profoundly shaped by, the heyday of the Cambridge English tripos, which had been taught for the first time in 1919.
In 1946 he was elected Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's successor as the King Edward VII Professor at Cambridge, and he held the chair until retirement in 1964.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1947.
Subsequent honours included Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature, an honorary DLitt from Manchester University, and an honorary fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was for twelve years chair of the Dove Cottage Trustees, and from 1958 to 1964 he served as president (vice-master) of his college.
He gave the Hibbert lectures in 1959.
Born on in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.
In December 1910 he won an exhibition to Exeter College, Oxford and went up to the University in 1911 to read Classics. In 1913 he achieved a Second and changed to study English. He achieved a First in his finals in 1915.
He served in France during the war including at the Battle of the Somme. In October 1916 he got Trench Fever and returned to England where he remained for the rest of the war.
1920 – appointed reader in English language at the University of Leeds.
1925 – 1945 held the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and was a Fellow of Pembroke College.
1945 – 1959 was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College.
Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings.
He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
Amongst his work are The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
1926 she went to St Hilda's College, Oxford, and in 1929 obtained First Class Honours in English language and literature.
1929 -1931 accepted a temporary post at the University of Birmingham.
1931-1934 worked as an assistant lecturer at the Royal Holloway College, London before returning to Birmingham where she joined the English department (1934–41).
In 1941 she returned to Oxford to become a tutor (1941–54), and later Fellow (1942–66), at her old college.
In 1954 she was made reader in Renaissance studies and after one set-back was elected in 1966 Merton professor of English language and literature, with a fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall. The distinction of being the first woman to hold this chair gave her special satisfaction. She exerted herself as a supervisor and was as successful as she was strict.
To her Oxford DLitt (1963) and Cambridge honorary LittD (1981) she added honorary degrees from eight other universities.
She was appointed CBE in 1962 and a DBE in 1967.
She was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1958, twice won the Crawshay prize (1952 and 1980), and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
In person Helen Gardner was small and sturdy. Vivacious, temperamental, and occasionally overbearing, she appreciated good food and drink, liked to dress well, and revelled in parties where she talked well but, as she herself knew, too much. She was kinder in her actions than in her wit.
She retired in 1975 and died, unmarried, on 4 June 1986 in a nursing home at Bicester, Oxfordshire.
Probably born in Dieppe, around 1650-1660. Cavalier was a Huguenot who travelled extensively, working as a wax modeller and ivory sculptor, and specialising in portrait medallions. In 1682/3 he went to London, where he stayed until 1686; he then went to Trier, perhaps Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover, Kassel, and in 1689 to Vienna, Munich and perhaps Dresden. By 1690 he was back in London, where he carved pictures of the King and Queen and was given the passport as the 'King's medallist'. He was then at the Danish Court in 1691/3, and from 1694/5-7 in Stockholm, from whence he and his brother Denis, also a sculptor, journeyed as ambassadors on behalf of Sweden to Russia and Persia, where they both died. Cavalier was the most accomplished ivory-carver working in late Stuart England until the arrival of David Le Marchand around 1700.
Arthur Guy Lee known informally as Guy Lee, was a British Classical scholar and poet. He was particularly notable as a Latinist for his work on the Roman poets Ovid, Propertius, and Catullus; he also translated Virgil's Eclogues, Tibullus, and Persius.
He was an undergraduate at St John's College, Cambridge. He taught at the University of Cambridge for most of his career, where he was admitted as a Fellow of St John's in 1946.
In the Second World War, he joined the British military, and was posted in Iceland, where he learned Icelandic and earned a military award for his work on ciphers. He was later posted to French North Africa, Belgium, Italy, Norway, and Germany.
He returned to Cambridge after the war and served as a librarian, tutor, praelector, and lecturer of classics at various times.
He died in Cambridge in 2005, and is buried at Ascension Parish Burial Ground.
Professor Helen Vendler was an American academic, writer and literary critic. She was a professor of English language and history at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and other universities. Her academic focus was critical analysis of poetry and she studied poets from Shakespeare and George Herbert to modern poets such as Wallace Stevens and Seamus Heaney. Her technique was close reading, which she described as "reading from the point of view of a writer".
She was the Parnell Fellow at Magdalene College from 1994-1995 and was elected as an Honorary Fellow in 1997.
Her portrait, by Mrs Mary Minifie, is the first of a female Fellow to hang in Hall (2024).
Obituary - College Magazine, No. 68 (2023-24)
Richard Ladborough was a Fellow of French at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Pepys Librarian. He specialised in the Enlightenment era of French literature, and donated a wealth of such books to the College which are now held by the Old Library. Friend and correspondent of C.S. Lewis.
Obituary: Magdalene College Magazine and Record, New Series No. 16: 1971-72, p. 3
Admitted to Magdalene College aged 20 on 28 July 1881. Pensioner.
2nd son of the Rev. Lord Edward Henry Julius of Wighill Park, Tadcaster, Yorks and Jane, daughter of Henry Dowker, of Laysthorpe, Yorks. Born 6 August 1860.
School - Eton
Matriculated Michaelmas 1881. Cricket 'blue,' 1882-5 (Capt., 1885).
Succeeded his father as 7th Baron Hawke, of Towton, Yorks. on 5 December 1887.
J.P. for the West Riding.
Served in the 3rd Battalion, The Green Howards, retiring in 1894 with the rank of Hon. Major.
Captain of the Yorkshire Cricket XI, 1883-1910; of the England team on two South African tours; President of the M.C.C., 1914-18.
Received the Freedom of Scarborough.
Author, Recollections and Reminiscences.
Died 10 October 1938 in Edinburgh.