Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

Christopher was born in London on 21 December 1926. After attending
Rugby he came up to King’s, but left after one year. He then spent several years
in the RAF before starting his employment with J Lyons in 1948. In March
1950 he married his wife Nella. Christopher died during the 1980s, although
the College did not hear of his death until many years later.
GEORGE THORNYCROFT SASSOON (1955) was an eccentric gentleman
scientist and linguist who seemed to belong more to theVictorian age than to
post-war Britain. He was also – a fact irredeemably interwoven with his
existence – the only child of the poet Siegfried Sassoon. Neither father nor son
were to live easy or conventional lives that made for smooth company with
others or between themselves, but they did on the other hand never leave
people who came close to them neutral or unaffected. George, like his father,
was a brilliant and sometimes difficult man.
For the not-so-young Siegfried Sassoon the birth of George on 30 October
1936 was a momentous and joyous occasion.After the end of his homosexual
affair with the artist StephenTennant in the early 1930s, Siegfried had adopted
heterosexuality and married the much younger Hester Gatty in 1933. But by
the time George was born in the Sassoon home, Heytesbury House, the
marriage had already soured to a considerable extent. Things were not made
easier by the fact that their Georgian mansion inWiltshire lay only a few miles
from Tennant’s home in Wilsford. Hester tired of Tennant’s taunting visits; at
one point he almost ran her over with a pony cart for fun, and she moved
away from Heytesbury and Siegfried. George was left with his father – the
author of poems in his honour like To My Son and The Child at theWindow – who
retreated further and further into the rambling house, leaving George in the
charge of servants.
George was sent to Oundle School, which he thoroughly disliked. It was
torture for a young inquisitive mind to be in an environment where things
were only either compulsory or prohibited. George engaged in spirited rows
with his Housemaster, partly destroyed a science laboratory after
experimenting with explosives and mocked his masters with wireless
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OBITUARIES