Cliff Davies’s speech at the anniversary of his 50 years as a Fellow at Wadham.
This is a wonderful turnout, extending back well before my time, even to pupils of
Bill Deakin in the late 40’s. Bill must be the only Wadham history tutor – indeed
probably the only Wadham Fellow ever – to have ‘made history’ in the political
sense, indeed, to have forged a regime, by persuading Churchill to support Tito, the
leader of the communist resistance in Yugoslavia, as against the royalist faction. His
pupils had their tutorials interrupted by phone calls from Churchill, for whom Deakin
was ghosting The Second World War.
The Pat Thompson – Lawrence Stone partnership through the fifties, and until 1963,
of which I myself was a product, was a brilliant combination of very different
personalities; Pat cautious, ambivalent, and worldly-wise; Lawrence, an innovative
historian, keen to pursue the latest theories, often falling over himself in his haste, but
unfailingly stimulating. In 1963, I was pretending to teach modern economic history
at Glasgow University and came across Lawrence at a conference at Edinburgh, just
after he had been elected to a prestigious chair at Princeton. He had been not only my
main tutor, but my graduate supervisor. I asked him whether there was any point in
my applying for his job at Wadham. He thought for a while (rather unusually), then
said: “Well, probably not, there are a lot of big names applying.” I fired off an
application. Somehow the big names disappeared, probably because of Wadham
cussedness. In the end I was elected, by the narrowest of margins, over another
candidate at my own stage of life.
1963 was a hectic summer. The Wadham election took place in June. Kathleen and I
were expecting our first child in October, and had to sell up in Glasgow and buy a
house (in which we still live) in Oxford. I had to retool back to my original earlymodern period, with (following Lawrence) medieval English history thrown in.
‘Gibbon and Macaulay’ had just been introduced, which Pat cleverly landed me with,
so that I spent spare moments, like other freshmen, getting up these marvellous but
bulky authors. All worked out. But for a split vote at a Wadham governing-body, my
daughter Liz would have been a Scot.
I think Pat and I also made a good combination; myself inclined to be fussy, pedantic,
rather a tough tutor, increasingly so as the years went by (probably too much so), Pat
was more tolerant, insinuating subtly where one had gone wrong. I was always
grateful that although I had been his pupil we discussed business as equals. Tutors are
closest in the hectic few days of the admissions season. We tended to agree by and
large, but there was always a disagreement on the last vacancy. We would discuss
endlessly, until at about 9.30pm Pat would say: “We aren’t getting anywhere. We
have to sleep on it.” Next morning we reassembled; both having in the interval
changed our minds.
From 1987 Jane and I also made, I think, a good combination, though in a different
way. Jane’s putting the interest of the individual student top in any circumstances is
wholly remarkable; as is her capacity to take enormous pains, as today’s events make
plain. I suspect that she resembles Margaret Thatcher in one respect at least, in not
needing sleep. Since my own retirement in 2001 Wadham history has gone from
strength to strength under Jane and Matthew, with the splendid support of the
successive Pat Thompson Fellows; getting firsts in numbers only partially due to
grade inflation.
I could go on much too long about the changes in what is studied. For most of my
time, the essential was English political history, underpinned in a mildly Marxist way,
by the belief that this reflected, in broad terms, the underlying economic reality. Now
there is a wider emphasis, with ‘global history’ in some sense becoming part of the
mix; balanced by a rich choice of particular detailed subjects. Political and economic
history has been joined, perhaps even overtaken, by intellectual and cultural subjects,
as exemplified by the research interests of Matthew and Jane. There are of course
losses and gains in this; and the perennial problem of gallons and pint pots. The
essential point, however, is the continuation of the tutorial system, even though now
varied by other methods of small-group teaching. And Oxford still demands a weekly
essay, at least.
I have had an exceptionally happy life; in my family; and in doing the job I would
have wanted from teenage but would never have aspired to. I enormously enjoyed
teaching. No academic would admit to this, but I also enjoyed my involvement in
running things, particularly as Senior Tutor and later as Tutor for Graduates, in
College, and running graduate affairs in the Faculty. I have written less than I should
have done, but what I have written has always been because I thought it needed
writing, not, as is now demanded, to fulfil some sort of quota of ‘x’ articles and ‘y’
books every five years. Much of my writing arose directly from arguments in
tutorials. I had a marvellous set of colleagues and of pupils. I thank you all.