Richard Davenport-Hines
Scholars & Psychics
Not Far from Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars
By Daisy Dunn
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 304pp £20 order from our bookshop
White men, superlatively educated, exclusive and discerning in their social and cultural tastes, who have no respect for ill-thought-out majority opinions and scorn Little Englander nativism are not à la mode. Daisy Dunn’s ‘conversation piece’ study of three 20th-century Oxford classicists is consequently a book of obstinate integrity. It is, too, eager and sprightly, sometimes laugh-aloud funny, sometimes saddening, and narrated with the affability of a good-natured and digressive raconteur.
Not Far from Brideshead is centred on three Hellenists and their worlds. The ascetic Gilbert Murray (1866–1957) was recommended by Henry Asquith for the crown appointment of Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford in 1908. The comfort-loving but non-luxurious E R Dodds (1893–1979) was appointed as Murray’s successor in 1936. The bon vivant Maurice Bowra (1898–1971) was disgruntled at not getting the chair instead of Dodds. Each of them was a huge character, striding in three-league boots through life. They had in common a gloriously fierce intelligence, a radical and internationalist outlook, and a hatred of war and national rivalries. There was nothing demotic or slovenly in their thought.
Murray began his education in an Australian bush school. He came to England at the age of eleven with his widowed and penurious mother. After a brilliant undergraduate career in Oxford, he fell ardently in love with a beautiful she-dragon, Lady Mary Howard of the Castle Howard family.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation