Download PDF - St. Catherine's College - University of Oxford
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GAZETTE<br />
The Guardian’s obituarist writes that ‘he<br />
could easily have been mistaken for an absent<br />
minded academic or a country parson’. This<br />
description will have surprised his friends<br />
from Catz days. Although he always had an<br />
ambition to be a writer, he concealed the fact<br />
utterly as an undergraduate; he was President<br />
<strong>of</strong> a notoriously rumbustious JCR, played<br />
lock forward in the Catz rugby side (where<br />
he packed down next to Malcolm Dalziel –<br />
later CBE – whose name he mischievously<br />
appropriated for fat Andy Dalziel in the Dalziel<br />
and Pascoe novels) and was a leading light<br />
in the social life <strong>of</strong> the <strong>College</strong>. Perhaps his<br />
greatest feat was, with great verve, to relieve<br />
a Balliol boat <strong>of</strong> a bottle <strong>of</strong> whisky under<br />
Magdalen Bridge during the annual May Day<br />
celebration.<br />
Reg’s father had been a pr<strong>of</strong>essional footballer<br />
for Hartlepool United but they moved to<br />
Cumbria when he was a boy and Reg was a<br />
product <strong>of</strong> Carlisle Grammar School. He never<br />
lost his love <strong>of</strong> Cumbria and he returned to live<br />
near Ravenglass as soon as he could afford<br />
to give up teaching at Doncaster <strong>College</strong> <strong>of</strong><br />
Education and live <strong>of</strong>f his writing alone. He<br />
was a keen and very active fell walker and the<br />
service <strong>of</strong> celebration <strong>of</strong> his life at the Church<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>St</strong> Michael’s and All Angels at Muncaster<br />
was marked by the attendance <strong>of</strong> companions<br />
from his Friday walks, fellow crime writers, and<br />
friends from his Catz days. He is survived by his<br />
wife Pat, a sweetheart from school days, who<br />
he married immediately on leaving <strong>Oxford</strong>.<br />
Michael Shattock (1957, Modern History)<br />
DR MICHAEL<br />
SHAW (1959,<br />
Engineering)<br />
was born in the<br />
City <strong>of</strong> London<br />
hospital on 12<br />
July 1940, within<br />
the sound <strong>of</strong><br />
Bow Bells and<br />
next door to<br />
the Royal Mint. At the age <strong>of</strong> three months<br />
our mother took us to Wales to escape the<br />
Blitz. We lived in the School House in the<br />
village <strong>of</strong> Llanpumpsaint in the Schoolmasters’<br />
house. We were looked after by Mr. and Mrs.<br />
Johns, the Schoolmaster and his wife. Mrs.<br />
Johns would make a lint poultice vest soaked<br />
in goose fat to assuage our bronchitis and<br />
bad colds. Now my research shows what an<br />
interesting history the Schoolhouse has but<br />
that is another story.<br />
We returned to our parents’ flat in London in<br />
1943. We both went to the nearby Montem<br />
<strong>St</strong>reet Infant and Junior schools and Hebrew<br />
classes at Finsbury Park Synagogue where<br />
Michael had his Bar mitzvah. Following a move<br />
to Windsor Rd, Michael attended Grafton Road<br />
Junior School for a short time before taking<br />
the 11-plus exams and following me to Dame<br />
Alice Owen’s school, then located at the Angel<br />
Islington.<br />
Michael made several lifelong friends, joined the<br />
Chess Club, took up rowing, became a cadet in<br />
the Royal Artillery company and a prefect.<br />
Going up to <strong>Oxford</strong> in 1959, Michael graduated<br />
with a BSc in Chemical Engineering in 1961.<br />
Whilst at Catz he became an enthusiastic<br />
member <strong>of</strong> the Rowing Club, taking on the<br />
responsibility <strong>of</strong> treasurer in 1961.<br />
Following graduation, Michael worked on various<br />
projects including Concorde. He then joined the<br />
European Space Agency in Noordwijk, Holland.<br />
One <strong>of</strong> his experiments concerning the solar s<strong>of</strong>t<br />
X-ray spectrum was flown on the Orbiting Solar<br />
Observatory 4 in 1967, and another, studying<br />
solar flare mechanisms and X –ray flares, was<br />
carried on the Esro Il satellite, and led to his<br />
doctorate in astrophysics from UCL in 1972.<br />
Via an MBA from Manchester <strong>University</strong>,<br />
Michael moved to the United <strong>St</strong>ates and<br />
became a business consultant in Washington<br />
DC, teaching a course <strong>of</strong> Concepts <strong>of</strong><br />
Technical Management at Maryland <strong>University</strong>.<br />
Subsequently moving to California, he became<br />
an Adjunct Pr<strong>of</strong>essor at the Haas School <strong>of</strong><br />
Business, Berkeley.<br />
66/OBITUARIES