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

208
OBITUARIES
he could let his talents blossom and he excelled in Languages and
Mathematics, as well as in rugby, Drama, and Music. From Christ’s Oliver
moved on to King’s where he took the Tripos in Mathematics and Modern
Languages. He also continued playing sports and sang in the chapel. He
spent the long vacations in Switzerland working as a guide and perfecting
his own language skills.
After graduating from King’s Oliver took up a position at MacFisheries, a
subsidiary of Unilever, and in 1939 he married Molly Spencer. The war saw
him drafted into the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries where he worked
on the dietary basis of food rationing. In 1944 Oliver was seconded to
Newfoundland to be Deputy Food Controller. The desire to travel must have
been awoken in Oliver as, following a brief return to MacFisheries after the
war, he took a position as Chief Fisheries Officer in the then-colony of
Nigeria. In this new job Oliver helped to expand Nigerian deep-sea and inland
fishing as well as supporting the nascent canning industry. He travelled
extensively across Africa and could use his linguistic skills for presenting
papers in French or German whenever needed. Olivier enjoyed his expatriate
life, and played sports as well as participating in amateur dramatic productions
among his fellows. But time was not on his side: the Empire crumbled and by
the end of the 1950s Oliver had to return home against his wishes.
It is a testament to Olivier’s character that he threw himself into a new career
immediately after returning from Africa and devoted the remainder of his
working life to school mastering. In 1958 he became Assistant Master at
Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury where he had William Golding as one
of his colleagues. Later he moved on to work at Millfield where he felt right
at home in the school’s atmosphere of enthusiastic individualism.
When Oliver retired in Wiltshire he found time to devote himself fully to his
interests. He was a member of the Salisbury Studio Theatre ensemble and
played tennis to an advanced age. The love of languages had been a constant
passion in his life and in retirement he took to learning Italian. He also
embarked on a correspondence about the origins of set theory with a
Cambridge Fellow. It was no surprise that he was able to drive his car well past