The Queen's College Record 2023

In October 1963 Kenneth Prysor-Jones and I arrived in College. We soon became
friends with Colin, a friendship which lasted 60 years until his recent sad death.
It was one much treasured by us all.
At the end of his third year, having completed his Schools, Colin departed on holiday,
to Germany as I recall. I had stayed up during the early part of the Long Vacation and
was surprised one day to see him back in College. He was not overpleased to have
been summoned back by the Examiners to attend the Examination Schools and was
rather puzzled. “They can’t need to Viva me”, he said. “I answered everything OK,
I know I must have got my First”, (he was always frank and realistic about his work
without ever seeming immodest) “so I don’t know what it’s all about”.
Obituaries
He duly went over to Schools and was pretty soon back, shaking his head and
grinning out of the side of his mouth. “Silly boogers” he said. “They never said a
thing. They just called my name and when I went in everyone stood up and clapped
and clapped. It was for quite a long time. Let’s have a drink then lad. Then I’m back
to Germany”. I got the impression that it had been a philandering venture which
had been so inconveniently interrupted. Thus, Colin’s take on his Laudatory First,
reputedly the best history first for a decade or so. During his three undergraduate
years his studies had been supervised by John and Menna Prestwich, Senior History
Tutors to the College, with whom he worked on terms of great cordiality and mutual
respect. He always held them in the highest regard, and was grateful to them for
all they did for him.
The beginning of the next academic year saw Colin back in Oxford, no longer at
Queen’s but at Christ Church, where he had been elected to be the Student in
History – the Christ Church term for a Junior Fellow. During this year he sat the
annual competitive exam for a Fellowship of All Souls. In the event Colin did not win
but was placed proxime accessit, while the award went to one X. To say Colin was
disappointed would be an understatement: but disappointment was utterly eclipsed
by outrage. “OK, X got a first, but not a first like mine. He is, quite simply, not as good
a historian as I am”. Again, this is Colin utterly realistic, not immodest. However, X’s
father was a Bishop and his godfather a well-known Cabinet Minister both, moreover,
themselves Fellows of All Souls. Colin was convinced, probably correctly, that the
competition had been judged not on academic grounds alone. He felt cheated – he
knew what a long way he had already come to arrive where he had; he had come too
far to be treated like this. “If that’s how they’re going to settle things in the so-called
Groves of Academe, bugger ‘em. I’m off”. He was as good as his word. Off he went.
Next stop Harvard Business School on a Harkness Fellowship.
The first of many years in the US behind him, Colin returned to London to be
employed by the prestigious merchant bank, Warburgs, where he learned the ways
of investment banking. The lure of opportunities in the US prevailed and he returned
there in the early 1970’s to join Oppenheimer & Co. where he was soon made partner.
College Record 2023 | The Queen’s College 107