Univ Record 2017

THE REVD. CANON DAVID MURRAY MAIN (Wrekin School) died on 19 November
2016 aged 90. David read Physics at Univ, having served in the Army from 1947–9.
He then became an Assistant Master at Shrewsbury, where he became Housemaster of
Ingram’s Hall from 1965–73. He then left teaching to be ordained a priest, and spent
the rest of his life serving the Scottish Episcopal Church. He was first a curate at St.
Margaret’s, Newlands Glasgow in 1974, and then from 1975–9 Rector of All Saints,
Challoch, with St. Andrew’s Newton Stewart. From 1979–93 he was Rector of Holy
Trinity, Kilmarnock. In 1985 he was appointed a Canon of St. Mary’s Cathedral,
Glasgow, and he became an Honorary Canon on his retirement in 1993. In his later
years, he was an Honorary Assistant at St. Ninian’s, Castle Douglas.
PROFESSOR IRVING SINGER (Harvard) died on 1 February
2015 aged 89. He studied Philosophy at Univ for one year before
returning to the USA. An eminent philosopher and the author
of 21 books in the field of humanistic philosophy, his threevolume
The Nature of Love is one of his most famous works,
described as “majestic” by The New York Times Book Review.
Other books focus on topics such as the nature of creativity,
moral issues, aesthetics, and philosophy in literature, music,
and film.
Recently the MIT Press honoured Singer’s work by
republishing many of his books in “The Irving Singer
Library” including Meaning in Life, Volumes 1, 2, 3; Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy
in Film; Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on his Creativity; Mozart
and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas; and Modes of Creativity: Philosophical
Perspectives. Singer is also the author of George Santayana, Literary Philosopher and
Santayana’s Aesthetics: A Critical Analysis. His books have been translated into Korean,
Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and other languages.
In 1958 he joined the Philosophy faculty at MIT where he remained for 55 years.
He was actively teaching into his mid-eighties. Singer enjoyed teaching immensely,
appreciating it as integral to his process of developing ideas that would inform his
writing projects. Several of his course lectures are viewable via YouTube, thanks to MIT’s
OpenCourseWare programme. In 1973, his knowledge of opera led to a friendship with
Leonard Bernstein, whom he met at Harvard during the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.
He was born in Brooklyn to parents who had emigrated from Austria-Hungary and
owned a grocery store in Coney Island. Singer graduated from high school at the age of
15, having skipped three grades throughout his schooling. He began his undergraduate
studies at Brooklyn College, and then served in the Second World War, where he was
commissioned to write a history of the 210th Field Artillery Group.
After the war, Singer studied at Biarritz American University, France, and then, as
a beneficiary of the GI bill, completed his BA at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude.
He was awarded a PhD at Harvard in 1952. During his time at Oxford he enjoyed the
company of Sir Isaiah Berlin. Professor Singer was predeceased by his wife Josephine,
and leaves four children, Anne, Margaret, Emily, and Ben. [We are most grateful to
Professor Singer’s daughter Emily for her help with this tribute.]
SIR RODNEY GORDON TOUCHE, BT. (Marlborough) died on 13 May 2017 aged 88.
He read English at Univ. It had been expected that Rodney might train as an accountant
and join the family firm which later became Deloitte Touche, but instead he became a
journalist and joined the Evening Standard. There, he met Ouida MacLellan, a Canadian
journalist. They married in 1955, the bride being given away by Lord Beaverbrook, and
in the following year they emigrated to Canada, where he worked for the Financial Post
in Toronto. The Touches moved west to Calgary in 1961, where Rodney wrote reports on
the Canadian oil industry for an investment group. He also invested his own money in
the industry, making some good returns.
In 1972, Rodney’s career took a very different turn. A keen skier, he and his family
had regularly visited the resort of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. Now he was
invited by Sir Norman Watson, a margarine tycoon and keen skier, to help transform
the place into a major resort. He eventually became general manager there. Watson and
Touche even shipped brown cows over from Europa to give the resort a Swiss flavour.
The result proved highly successful. In 1990, Rodney published a memoir of his time at
Lake Louise, Brown Cows, Sacred Cows.
In 1985, Rodney formally retired from the management of Lake Louise, but in 1988
he served as British attaché during the Winter Olympics at Calgary, a Games made
memorable by the presence of the ski-jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards.
In 1972 the Touches bought land on the island of Mustique. There they built a villa,
Pelican Beach, where they regularly wintered. Rodney acquired a reputation as one of
the best tennis players on the island, playing well into his eighties. He became chairman
of the Mustique homeowners’ association and the Touches were popular figures there.
Rodney was a keen, if daring, motorcyclist. In his fifties, he was once barked at by a
driver for weaving through traffic on his bike that he wasn’t going to live long that way,
to which he replied that, since he had already made it to fifty, he was not too worried. He
was also a keen pilot, co-owning a small Cessna plane, which he once flew from Calgary
to Mustique – a distance of almost 4000 miles.
Rodney was predeceased by Ouida in 2009. They had a son and three daughters, one
of whom also predeceased
him. [We are grateful to
Sir Rodney’s youngest
daughter, Professor Karen
Lightstone, for helping
in the preparation of this
obituary.]
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