Univ Record 2017

O- and A-levels. But of much more importance, I found that history is about analysing
why something happened, reflecting on the different outcomes that might have occurred,
and seeing the bigger picture at the same time as relating to the very personal. Above
all he encouraged me to develop the ability to inhabit a particular era and see the world
as it was then and not with the benefit of hindsight ... Another lifelong lesson he taught
me through his approach to history is that, if you want to know where you are going, you
need to know where you have come from.
“He was also in charge of the school’s debating team and I think he was its best coach
precisely because as a master reader and teacher of history, he had a logical and enquiring
mind … One special joy was being captain of the team when we beat St. Michael’s
College, Leeds, whose pupils were all coached by very logical Jesuits.”
Dermot is survived by Sylvia, his wife of 52 years, and their three sons. We are very
grateful to Sylvia for supplying the information for this tribute.
JOHN EDWARD DONNE (Charterhouse) died in October 2016 aged 83. He read
History at Univ. His father was part of that Univ crew which went Head of the River in
1914. The following tribute is taken from a eulogy given by Roddy Dewe (1954) at John’s
funeral.
Maurice Hynett, John Duncan and I met John in the autumn of 1954, during our
first term at University College, Oxford. He’d already been up a year and, having done
his National Service, he made it clear that he was too old to tolerate the college’s petty
restrictions. So he was often caught climbing in at night after the gates were shut, and
fined by the Dean.
John’s father was in the Colonial Service, based up country from Dar-es-Salaam.
John always stressed to me that, although he was born in England, he was conceived in
Africa and that, after he was born, his mother took him straight back there. He loved the
five years he spent in East Africa.
What distinguished John and me from most of the other undergraduates was that
his father, and my grandfather, had been at Univ and, apart from being approved by
the Dean as “good chaps” we didn’t have to take
any other entrance qualifications. We got to
know each other mainly through playing cricket
together, especially during the College tours we
made around the West Country.
When he left Oxford, he found a graduate
trainee job at Unilever in Sheffield. A couple of
years later, John joined Ford.
Before their marriage Eithne shared a flat
in London with my wife-to-be Anne. I invited
them both to a party, and it was there she met
John, and it was love at first sight. Once wed, they
moved to Battersea where their son Adrian was
born and fifteen months later Susie appeared.
Tiring of Ford, John took a marketing job
in the IMI-owned ammunition manufacturer
Ely Kynock in Birmingham. After a while, he
felt that he wasn’t going to get any further in
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the company. Winchester Rifles had offered him the opportunity to launch a European
subsidiary and he leapt at the chance. The family moved to a house at Tunnel Farm, near
Droitwich, where Eithne would develop her skills as an artist.
John decided to retire when Winchester sold the business, but there was plenty of
overseas consulting work which kept him busy.
Tragically, Eithne died in 2010 and Adrian in 2013. Susie looked after John who
became increasingly bedridden. When it became clear that there was nothing more that
the doctors could do, he came back to Tunnel Farm and after a short while passed away
peacefully.
NORMAN THOMAS PHILIP MURPHY (Wimbledon College) died on 18 October 2016
aged 83. “Spud” Murphy, as he was known to his friends, read Jurisprudence at Univ,
having served in Egypt during his National Service. On going down from Oxford, he
taught Latin and History at the Dragon School in Oxford, and then sold typewriters
for IBM. Dissatisfied with his position, he returned to the army, joining the Ordnance
Corps in 1959, and remained in the army for the rest of his career, rising to the rank
of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was posted to the Ministry of Defence, where he became
a specialist in logistics. He once claimed, with justification, it appears, to have been
the only person in NATO to know what that organisation possessed, and where the
equipment was to be found, and later served in Northern Ireland, Germany and Aden.
On retiring from the Army, he and his wife Charlotte moved to Cumbria, where he
served as a local councillor, but from there he was briefly called back to write NATO’s
first logistics manual.
In his later years, however, Spud acquired a completely different reputation as an
authority on the life and work of P. G. Wodehouse. He became convinced that many of
the people and places in Wodehouse’s novels and short stories were based on real people
and places, though many powerful literary names disagreed. In the 1970s, he regularly
spent his lunch breaks from the Ministry of Defence researching Wodehouse’s origins
at the British Library, and in 1981 he privately published the fruits of his research in In
Search of Blandings. After it was reissued by Secker and Warburg, and became a bestseller,
the world accepted his view. He published other books about Wodehouse, including
The Reminiscences of the Hon Galahad Threepwood (1995) and A Wodehouse Handbook
(2 volumes, 2006), and in 1997 he founded the British branch of the P. G. Wodehouse
Society.
Spud proved to be a lively and popular speaker, regularly arranging tours of
Wodehouse-related locations. It was on one of these walks that, shortly after his wife’s
death in 1999, Spud met Elin Woodger, President of the American Wodehouse Society.
They married on Long Island in 2001. On his death, many tributes were paid from all
areas of his life to Spud’s effervescent energy, his kindness and warmth of personality,
and his phenomenal memory. [We thank Patrick Nobes (1953) for his help with this
tribute.]
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