College Record 2019

Photo by Eamonn McCabe
PERSONAL NEWS
Obituaries
Bryan Magee
(1930-2019)
(VS 1991–3, VF 1993–4, MCR 1994–2018)
philosopher, writer, broadcaster, politician,
died at St Luke’s Hospital, Headington, on
26 July 2019 aged eighty-nine.
Bryan was born a Cockney in 1930 in
Hoxton, the son of a gentleman’s outfitter
who instilled in him a love of music and
theatre that came to be dominant passions.
He was educated at Christ’s Hospital and
at Keble College, Oxford, where he took
degrees in History (1952) and PPE (1953),
and was President of the Oxford Union
(1953). After a few years in temporary
academic posts and a spell working for
Guinness, he became an author and
television presenter, fronting the ITV current
affairs programme This Week, making
documentaries about social issues, and
writing books, notably the hugely successful
Popper (1973) for Fontana Modern Masters.
In 1974 he was elected as Labour MP for
Leyton, but in 1982 defected to the SDP,
losing his seat in 1983. He then returned to
full-time writing and broadcasting, notably
interviewing philosophers with marked
success in the radio series Modern British
Philosophy and in the TV series Men of
Ideas (1978) and The Great Philosophers
(1987). Books on Wagner and Schopenhauer
followed (he regarded the latter as his
principal contribution to philosophy).
WOLFSON.OX.AC.UK
Bryan had links to a number of Oxford
colleges through his life, but it was Wolfson
that provided him with his main base for
his last three decades. He first came to the
College for two years in 1991 as a Visiting
Scholar at the suggestion of its founding
President, Isaiah Berlin, whom he had
befriended in 1972, when he conducted a
discussion with him and Stuart Hampshire
on nationalism for Thames Television. In
1993 he became a Visiting Fellow for a
year, and in 1994 a permanent Member of
Common Room. In these early Wolfson
years he was working on his celebrated
intellectual-autobiography-cum-introductionto-philosophy,
Confessions of a Philosopher,
published in 1997.
In 2000 he left London, where he had lived
until then, buying a flat in Bardwell Road
so as to be close to Wolfson. He became a
familiar figure and almost daily presence in
College, walking up for lunch after a morning
of writing, and holding court in the Common
Room over coffee. He was a superb talker,
and his multi-faceted life provided a great
deal of matter for him to talk about. Many
Wolfsonians got to know him well, and he
was a widely valued personal and intellectual
resource in College. He continued to have
short-term academic attachments elsewhere
– in Oxford, Cambridge and Otago – but
Wolfson was the home he returned to,
sustaining him as he wrote The Story of
Philosophy, Wagner and Philosophy, Ultimate
Questions, and three volumes of personal
autobiography, Clouds of Glory: a Hoxton
Childhood, Growing Up in a War and finally
Making the Most of It, published last year.
Bryan was a man of many parts who
cannot be summed up by a single label, but
perhaps his most enduring achievement
will turn out to be his brilliant explanation
of philosophy to non-specialists. He made
the subject exciting and accessible without
condescension or dumbing down, and
was surely one of the most articulate and
THE RECORD
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