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GAZETTE
The Guardian’s obituarist writes that ‘he
could easily have been mistaken for an absent
minded academic or a country parson’. This
description will have surprised his friends
from Catz days. Although he always had an
ambition to be a writer, he concealed the fact
utterly as an undergraduate; he was President
of a notoriously rumbustious JCR, played
lock forward in the Catz rugby side (where
he packed down next to Malcolm Dalziel –
later CBE – whose name he mischievously
appropriated for fat Andy Dalziel in the Dalziel
and Pascoe novels) and was a leading light
in the social life of the College. Perhaps his
greatest feat was, with great verve, to relieve
a Balliol boat of a bottle of whisky under
Magdalen Bridge during the annual May Day
celebration.
Reg’s father had been a professional footballer
for Hartlepool United but they moved to
Cumbria when he was a boy and Reg was a
product of Carlisle Grammar School. He never
lost his love of Cumbria and he returned to live
near Ravenglass as soon as he could afford
to give up teaching at Doncaster College of
Education and live off his writing alone. He
was a keen and very active fell walker and the
service of celebration of his life at the Church
of St Michael’s and All Angels at Muncaster
was marked by the attendance of companions
from his Friday walks, fellow crime writers, and
friends from his Catz days. He is survived by his
wife Pat, a sweetheart from school days, who
he married immediately on leaving Oxford.
Michael Shattock (1957, Modern History)
DR MICHAEL
SHAW (1959,
Engineering)
was born in the
City of London
hospital on 12
July 1940, within
the sound of
Bow Bells and
next door to
the Royal Mint. At the age of three months
our mother took us to Wales to escape the
Blitz. We lived in the School House in the
village of Llanpumpsaint in the Schoolmasters’
house. We were looked after by Mr. and Mrs.
Johns, the Schoolmaster and his wife. Mrs.
Johns would make a lint poultice vest soaked
in goose fat to assuage our bronchitis and
bad colds. Now my research shows what an
interesting history the Schoolhouse has but
that is another story.
We returned to our parents’ flat in London in
1943. We both went to the nearby Montem
Street Infant and Junior schools and Hebrew
classes at Finsbury Park Synagogue where
Michael had his Bar mitzvah. Following a move
to Windsor Rd, Michael attended Grafton Road
Junior School for a short time before taking
the 11-plus exams and following me to Dame
Alice Owen’s school, then located at the Angel
Islington.
Michael made several lifelong friends, joined the
Chess Club, took up rowing, became a cadet in
the Royal Artillery company and a prefect.
Going up to Oxford in 1959, Michael graduated
with a BSc in Chemical Engineering in 1961.
Whilst at Catz he became an enthusiastic
member of the Rowing Club, taking on the
responsibility of treasurer in 1961.
Following graduation, Michael worked on various
projects including Concorde. He then joined the
European Space Agency in Noordwijk, Holland.
One of his experiments concerning the solar soft
X-ray spectrum was flown on the Orbiting Solar
Observatory 4 in 1967, and another, studying
solar flare mechanisms and X –ray flares, was
carried on the Esro Il satellite, and led to his
doctorate in astrophysics from UCL in 1972.
Via an MBA from Manchester University,
Michael moved to the United States and
became a business consultant in Washington
DC, teaching a course of Concepts of
Technical Management at Maryland University.
Subsequently moving to California, he became
an Adjunct Professor at the Haas School of
Business, Berkeley.
66/OBITUARIES