) The writer of my Biographical Memoir for the Roval Societv and others who mav be interested

one matter which may have occurred to you is the fact that I remalned unknighted. This note gives the story as far asI know it. After the New Year's Honours List of 1942, Lord Cherwell apologised to me for the absence of my name from the List, saying that he had not had much luck with his nominations on that occasion. This was a complete surprise to me, because I had no idea whatsoever that I had been eit'her nominated or considered: Honours were maLters that I simply had not thought about, in my junior rank and especj-ally j-n the preoccupatj-on of war. f was therefore gratefully surprised when in May 1942 the prime Minister's Secretary wrote telling me that it was his intentj-on to include me for a CBE in the impending lj-st, and he would. be glad to know that I would accept, which I did. Lord Cherwell then told me that there had been a strong objection from the Hdad of the Civil Service Sir Horace Wilsonr or the grounds that such an award would be inconsistent with my salary as a civil servant. Lord Cherwell had retorted that the recLification of such an anomaly was in the hands of the Civil Service for all- it needed to do was to j-ncrease my salary to the appropriate level. This, of course, was not done; but I received the CBE, when aII that Sir Horace would have sanctioned would have been an I4BE, two Steps downr or exceptionallyr EIfl OBE. Lord Cherwell told me that Sir Horace had threatened to reeign over the matter. In so far as I can understand them in retrospect, presumably the Civil Service argument is that the Crown always acts with justice, and rewards a civil servant commensurately with the responsibility of his office. Therefore even when discharg ing/ -2- discharging this responsibility to the fuII, the civil servant cannot do work of more than a certain degree of merit, and must thus be rewarded with the appropriate level of honour, just as in the Army a lieutenant would not carry the same responsibility as a General, and thus could not merit more than an I'IBE to the General's CBE. Years later, happy though f had been to receive a CBE, I learned from Churchili himself that he had intended the honour to be even higher. It seemed that a recommendation had been made by the Air Minister Sir Archibald Slnclair, after the success of the attack on the German radar station at Bruneval in February 1942, and on hearing of this recommendation Churchill mj-nuted Sir Archibald on 3rd April 1942: 'Dr. Jones's claims i-n my mj-nd, are not based upon the Bruneval raj-d, but upon the magnificent prescience and comprehension by which in 1940 he did far more to save us from disaster than many who are gtittering with trj-nkets. The Bruneval raid merely emphasised and. confirmed his earlier services. I propose to recommend hj-m for a CBr. ; Sir Horace Wilson's opposition had thus succeeded in thwarting Churchill's intentions to the extent of downgradj-ng the CB to a CBE. I was not a unique sufferer from Civil Service protocol for in his book The_Churchillians (Weidenfeld and Nj-colson, 1981) Sir John Colville, who was Churchill's Secretary, related the case of Sir Anthony Beever, whom Churchill proposed for a KCB in 1952. 'He was, it appeared, of the wrong seniority in the Cj-vil Service for a knighthood of any kind' wrote Sir John, 'and the secretary to the Treasury, Sir Edward Bridges, descended in wrath on No.10. He had a blazing row with the Prime Mj-nister: at least Bridges blazed, but to my surprise Churchill remained icily ca1m. Fortunately, the Queen quite independently had decided that Beever's long and helpfut connection with Auckingham Palace on episcopal matters deserved a KCVO. The Prime lr,linister at once concluded that a/ -3-

a personal gift of this kind from the Queen was even more distinguished than the order of the Bath. So with a mischievous smile he told me to let Bridges know he would withdraw his proposal ..When the Honours List was publj-shed a few days later, the Treasury were dumfounded" They had been outwitted by their own First Lord and their Sovereign' . In my own case, if I had known that Sir Horace Wilson's opposition had led to the downgrading from CB to CBE, I would have seriously consj-dered declining the Honour, if this was the system on which it had been awarded. Happily, perhaps, since I did not know the details until Churchill sen'L me a copy of hj-s Minute when he was writing his Memoirs, I accepted the CBE and there the matter rested. On New Year's morning, 1946, I- was surprised to read my name in the newspapers among the CBs there had not been the customary intimation from the Prj-me Ministerrs off ice. I had no idea of where the recommendation had originated; both Churchill and Cherwel-l were out of office, and I imagine j-t had come from the Chief of the Air Staff, Slr Charles Portalr ds he then was, and perhaps for this reason I had been treated as a Serving Officer who would be expected to accept an honour without discretion to d.eclj-ne - not that I had any objection. So the war had ended with my having been awarded both the CB and the CBE. These honours entitled me, according to Whitaker's Almanack,to take my place in State processions immediately after the Masters in Lunacy and ahead of the eldest Sons of younger Sons of Peers. The CBE later afforded me much delight when the President of the Hampton Instj-tute, a negro college in Virginia, introduced me to his audience with 'Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you Dr. R.V. Jones THE CHAMPION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE!' The CB, too, gave some cause for mystified amusement when the Head of a college in Colorado in introducing me ended with 'He j-s also a Companion of the Bath, whatever that may mean'. rf/ -4-

If it is idle but intriguing to speculate on what might have happened if Churchj-llrs 1942 intention had been fulfilled at the time, because the question might then have arisen at the end of the war of recognition for my post-Bruneval servj-ces. These included the Scientific Intelligence effort in support of Bomber Command, the original suggestion of Window, or 'Chaff ', the counterj-ng of German radar for the Normandy Landings (where as a result of my nominating him to head the operation, as his Obituary in the Daily Telegraph for 30 November i98B recorded, Air Vice-Marshal Victor fait was awarded a KBE) and. the intelligence agaj-nst the V-1 and V-2 weapons, forecasting their technical performance in details so accurately that Churchill tabulated them in his Memoirs. It may not be too much to suppose that had I been made a CB for services up to Bruneval, a knighthood might have been contemplated in respect of the later services. Even sor the cB and cBE meant that I had received more recognition than nearly all other scientists in the war, except for Lindemannr-Tizard and Watson-Watt, and for the George Cross won by Peter Danckwerts. Recognition for men of science had indeed been meagre. The three Superintendents at the Radar Establishment at Malvern, for example, received no more than a CBE each, and. there was little beyond OBEs for those who had contr j,buted so marvellously at Bletchley - My own seemingly anomalous recognition therefore aroused some feelings, especially since whatever contributions I had made were hidden in official secrecy. It may well have been assumed that, far from being deserved, the decoratj-ons had come to me nepotically as Lind.emannrs 'bIue-eyed boy', even though the truth was very dj-fferent. When in 1946 I was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen, and my scientific referees were the Nobe} Prizewinners E.B. Appleton and G.P. Thomson, as well as Tizard, one physiclst (J.T. Randall, who had made a vital contribution in the invention of the centimetric magnetron) told one of my future colleagues at Aberdeen that my appointment had 'shocked the scientific world'. Whether/ -5-

Whether or not this ornl.lrJus comment might turn out to be justified, I left government service for Aberdeen in 1946 in the belief that some of us who had been so deeply involved in what science had done in the war should return to the universitles to bring on the new generations of students in science so that they would be able to draw upon the benefit of the many and intense experiences we ourselves have had, ard they in their turn could build on what we had done. It was a rewarding time, even though almost everything was in short supply, except for the students who were mainly ex-servicemen returning from the war. Including myself there whom were under 21 were nine academic staff, three of still ' and we had around 400 students. But these students had a vital qualification. Nearly every one of them had been in one or other of the Services, had seen matters of both life and death, had learnt the value of discipline and reliability, and had deci-ded that hre truly wanted the benef it of higher education. The sense of purpose in thOsepost-war vintage years vtas greater than anything I have since experienced except, perhaps, in some of the residential summer Courses for the Open University. I was little older than many of the students, and we shared the common purpose. One of them wrote to me in 1978: I I was one of the first crop of ex-servj-cemen attending your lectures back in 1946. For me it was a traumatic experience, having just finished five years 1n the Far East, back to universj-ty and studying subjects I had never been exposed to, such as chemistry, physics, etc. I recall your lectures with pleasure, even after all these years, and perhaps it may give you a modj-cum of satisfaction to know that yotr, inadvertently perhaps, mad.e a silk purse out of a sow's ear and created a scj-entist out of a liberal arts ex-serviceman. So that, to some of us your finest hour was not your contribution in the Battle of the Beams but the influence you had as an educator, for which we thank you'. -6-

My aim had been to concentrate enti-re1y on building up both the teaching and research in the universj-ty which had been courageous enough to risk offering me its Chair, and for the first two or three years I did little eIse. It was not long, though, before there were calls on my servj-ces from outside the unj-versity, when glimpses of my war work were given, for example by Tizard at the Roya1 Unj-ted Services fnstitution in 1947 and especially by ChurchiLl in Thej-r Finest Hour in 1949. was asked to join the Safety in Mines Research Board and to follow the tradition of Michael Faraday and Humphry Davy of there being at least one academic scientist to make his services available to the miners. In 1948 I was invited to join the Research Advisory Council of the British Transport Commission, overseeing all the scientific effort j-n the railways, docks, waterwdYS, road transport and even the railway hotels. There were also the Physics Panel of the Control Commission for Germany to advj-se on the revival of academic physics in West Germany, and the Physics Manpower Committee of the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry of Supply, too, ca1Ied. on me to chair its Infrared Committee, where our work in Errowing crystals at Aberdeen was bearing results. There were even recalls from the Ministry of Defence, and j-n 1952 Churchill himself asked me to go back for a spell to try to restore something of the Intell.j-gence organisation whi-ch had proved successful in the war, but had afterwards been jeopardised in the ways that I have outlined in Reflections on Intelligence. It proved, though, a most thankless task; and instead of earning any gratitude from the l"linistry for leaving my family for 18 months and asking for little beyond my salary to continue at its university level and for fares back to Aberdeen once a month, I incurred mainly resentment because I had to poi-nt out the errors the Ministry '. r.B rtinuing to make in its arrangements for Intelligence. Perhaps the most generous comment made was that by the Ministry's Chj-ef Staff Officer, who told my wife that f had a first class mind, but that a less brilliant man would fit much better i-nto its organisation. -7-

Neither gratitude nor recognition was therefore to be expected from the Mj-nistry even though - as I afterwards discovered some of my friends wrote to the Prime Mj-nister's office suggesting that I should be knighted. My work for the other glovernment and public bodies, of course went on, as did my efforts in teaching and research, and the field of education generally. Around 1955, Sir Edward Appleton and Sir Francis Simon persuaded Lord Cherweli to nominate me for Fellowship of the Royal Society, and a year or two later a member of the appropriate Selectj-on Committee advised me that my chances would be good, if only I woul-d concentrate on research, and even one more paper might swing the balance. But I had to reply that this could only be done by cutting down on my teaching dutj-es, which would^ involve prejudicing the interest.s of my students at the expense of my or,vn. And if that was the only way I could get into the Royal Society, it was not for me to take it. I continued to put all possible effort into my commitments in teaching and. research at Aberdeen where the posj-tion was becoming j-ncreasingly difficult. An analysis of the difficulties belongs properly to a survey of what was happening in higher ed.ucation j-n Britain generally; but in so far as they are rel-evant to the question ralsed at the beginning of this note, they stemmed partly from the peripheral situation of Aberdeen so far north, which made it increasingly difficult to attract good staff j-n the face of many opportunities, both in universlties and government research establishments in the South and in the 'brain drain' to America. Even Sor my department had grown to be the largest in the university, and its successes fot example in growing crystals and in precise instrurnentation - as well as the inevitable publicity as further details of my wartime work were revealed, began to arouse je&Iousy in other departments, particularly in the 'Barchester Towers' atmosphere of an isolated university. In this, the growing publicity over my daughter, Susan, who became oMiss Scotland'rdid not help. I had also come up against the Unj-versity Court in its refusal/ -B- refusal to pay reasonable wages to the skilled technicians on whom much of our research depended', and where the influence of a 1ocaI businessman who was a member of the Court with a vested .interest in keeping wages down in Aberdeen generally, tended to prevail. The dispute at one stage resulted ln the Court calling in a Minj-stry of Labour assessor in an effort to disprove my contentions. When he saw the work that my technicians were doing (which, incidentally, J-ncluded an instrument for a U.S. Air Force Observatory to meet a specification which was at that tlme beyond anything that coul-d be matched in Amerj"ca) he was even more indignant than I was myself , and descr j-bed our work as rsweated labour'. But the Court took no notice and once again I lost most of my technicians to jpbs outside and had Lo trai-n another set from scratch. In 1956 I was myself elected to the Court and wag also made Dean of the S sience Faculty. I had sought neither of these offices, and such was the organisation of the university that f found myself on 47 of its committees and sub-committees. In addition, I had to plan a new building of about 10,000 sguare metres floor altea to house my department in its anticipated expansion. A11 this may well have incurred the further envy of academic colleagues, even though it involved me j-n little but arduous work. It was of course clear that unj-versities had to expand, and in 1956 I had written the first memorandum to point out that if Aberdeen was to justify its place among the 23 universities that then existed in Britaj-n, we shotild need to expand to take a one-twenty-third share of the student populatJ-on in Britain as it then was. Our difficulties at Aberdeen also pointed to those that would have to be faced naturally if university populations were to expand: there were not enough good lecturers or enough good students to fill the prospectj-ve plaees, whatever the statisticians might say. So acute was the prospective difficulty in physics nationwj-de that the Institute of Physics asked me to dnaLr / -9- chair a Committee to consider the problems facing physlcs departments throughout the kingdom, and prepare the Institute's evidence to the Robbins Committee that had been formed to plan the future of higher education. The Instj-tuters Committee was an excellent one, and among the very best of the many with which I have been associated, but in the upshot and with the 'do-good' atmosphere that then prevailed, the Robbins Committee largely ignored our warning about the dangers of a too rapid expanslon, and its Report, published in 1963, proposed to double the university population in little more than three years. I likened the situation to that of trylng to start a car when the engi-ne was cold - if you pressed the accelerator too hard, al-l you were like1y to do was to stall the engine. Most of my colleagues at Aberdeen, and indeed most academics throughout the Kingdom, greeted the Robbj-ns proposals with great enthusiasm. Some genuinely assumed that there was a great hidden pool of talent waiting to be tapped by the offer of stud.entships at universitj-es. Others saw the chance of academic aggrandisement because more chairs and lecturcships would have to be created, and many of J:hese new posts would have to be fitled from the ranks of academics whose achievements would not previously have been considered sufficient for advancement. It was clear that such a precipitate expansion was likely to be disastrous: the standard of academic staff must fall, and the entry standards for students were also like1y to fall as universitj-es lowered them in order to ensure that they could fill the new places - which must be done because a grant, from the government to a university was directly related to the number of students that it took. A few of us fought to convince the majority of our colleagues, but in vain: Some of the papers can be found in my box file labelled 'NEC Education'. In Aberdeen, student numbers were increased from 1,770, averaged over the years 1955-1959, to 4,200 for 1965-1969. The increased number of new places, amounting to 140 percent, were almost entirely filled by students taking osofto subjects and the staff who were recruited to teach them/ 9a

Such argument.s agalnst, p.rofligate expansion, though, did. not appeal to most of my co,lleagues at Aberdeen, who evidently viewed with some alarm the prospect that I might succeed to the Principalship on the unexpected death of Sir Thomas Taylor in 1962. I myseJ-f had not even considered the possibility, perhaps recalling the advice of Maurice Bowra in Wadham: 'Never become a vj-ce-chancellor, my boy! Just l-ook at them!' Moreover, I would have not sought such preferment over the head of my o1d colleagiue, Edwa::d Wright, the professor of mathemat,ics. Nevertheless, it transpired that there were some who would have liked to see me appointed, for two of their opponents, John Milne, a member of the University Court, and Rex Knight, the professor of psychology, made a special visit to the Secretary of State in Edinburgh to advise him against offering the apgrolntment to me. I had no knowledge of any such move at the time, but it was told to me many years afterwards by one of tLrose with special knowledge. -10- them (and given permanent appointments) would at no other period of academic history have been acc epted in academic posts. The situation at Aberdeen was exacerbated by its northern remoteness and its tendency to parochialism. When there were no more than 23 universities in the Kingdom, these factors were not altogether disadvantageous. Parochialism resulted in a1I quatified etudents in the rparish' (which included most of Scotland north and west of Aberdeen) came to us as a matter of course. Thus, in contrast with an Engli-sh provincial university, 'the cream' as one of my coleagues put it, 'was not skimmed off by Oxford and Cambrj-dge', and so we could in most years expect at least a few students of outstanding ability. But after Robbj,ns there were more than 40 institutions of uni-versity status, each one doing its utmost to attract students, especially since there !,/ere not enough good students to go round. Even Oxford colleges now began to canvas for students in Aberdeen itself, and since a student could now transfer, wj-th his grant, to any university that would accept him, talent began to drain south. The only way Aberdeen could counteract the drain would be for j-ts departments to,do such outstanding work that their reputations, particularly in the south, could attract good staff and students aIike. Indeed, one of the attractions for me in coming to Aberdeen was the fact that my predecessor G.P. Thomson had done his famous experiments to show that electrons had a wave-like behaviour. ' -11-

A further fact,or emerged: many of the new staff had led too sheltered 11ves, in whj-ch the principal event was the passing of one examination in order to qualify to study for the next one. Few were natural leaders, and were lacking in the experience or character to stand up to the challenge of students, and particularly of those who had come to universi-ty not because they genuinely desi.red education and learning, but because they had beerr pressed by their parents or because it was the fashion among' their cont,emporaries or even because it postponed the day in whj-ch they might have to earn their own living j-n the outside world - what a contrast, to the ex-service students of twenty years before. The flrst thing a university teachdr therefore had !o do was to convj-nce the new students that universj-ty study was worthwhj-Ie, and imbue them with a sense of purpose the earning of a lj-ving, service to the community, or the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The teacher therefore had to be sufficiently sure of himself to answer any such challenge in these terms, and. to command suffj-cient respect to exert the discipline that academic study needed. By no means dj.d all teachers measure up to this requirement, and those who'couId not do so sometimes sought an easy life by pandering to students who demanded to see standards lowered so that they would have to exert themselves less to pass examinations. In the Robbinsr Expansion, therefore, academic university discipline as well as academic standards decline, and unpopularity with students and staff arike was likery to befall a professor who stoofl against the tide. When my daughter came to the university ." a new student and was being welcomed at a shaff/ student reception j-n 1968 she was told by a lecturer in.sociology, on learning her name 'Your father is the most unpopular man j-n the universityr. That was about the level of grace to be expected in the new era.

:-,r.::_.:j:-.._ T'lec rohoolmaeter fcarr rnd flattcrr hlr pupllar and the pupllr deaptre both thelr lchoolaarter and thelr tutora t and altogethcr thg young act llko thetr aenlors and competc vlth them ln apcech and ln aotlonl uhllc the old men cor- derccnd to the young and becomo trluurphc of veraatllity and w1t, lmltatlng tbelr Junlora ln order to Evold the eppGarance of bclng rour a,nd dospotlc.

(a PL- k 7, r -1 2-

Despite, though, many offers of posts elsewhere (vf.ce-chancellorships, research establj"sLrment headships, and. in one instance a deanship of social science) I decj.ded to stay in Aberdeen because I stj.L1 hoped to build on the work that I had started more than twenty years before. Moreover, the future course of university expansion would show that I had been right in my disagreement both with the policy of the university and with the reckless way in which the well-intended Robbins Expansion had been implemented. I was reminded of Dean Ingers comrnent on the Gadariae Swine: 'No doubt they thought the going was good br the first half of the way! I I looked forward to the time I would be justified by events, and that my colleagues, having now realised that I had been rJ-ght, would now listen to my advice regardj-ng the future course of the university. By 1975 it was ind,eed clear that the Robbins Expansion had not produced the results that had been expected by the optimists, and a backlash against universities then started which has continued right up to the present day. I had, though, bY 1975 been organised out of the last position in which I mj-ght have been able to influence events internally, for I was now Senior Professor in the university, and in this capacity it was a Standing Order of the Senatus Academicus that if the Princj.pal of the University wes not present, the Senj-or Professor should take the chair at meetings. In 1974, when I became Senior Professor, the expansionists were sti1l j-n the ascendant, and two of them, Professors W. Watt and G.M. Burnett organj-sed a move to change the relevant Standing Order so that in the absence of the Principal the chaj-r was to be taken by the Acting Pri-ncipal and not the Senior Professor. The grounds on which the change was to be made now read, somewhat ironic. On proposing the motion for the change 'Professor Burnet,t said that the present practice could result in the Senatus being chaired by a Professor who was unfamiliar with the background to the business before the meeting;. The complexity of many of the matters-broncerned with university expans j-ons and expenditure meant that,it was in the i-nterests of the efficient conduct of University business for members to be able to appoint a chairman conversant with the background to questions of university policy.' -1 4-

Although affalrs at Aberdeen g:rew increaslngly depresslng, life was brightened when the release ln 1974 of 'The Ultra Secret' describing the wartime cryptography at Bletchley, resulted in greater public knowledge of, my work both in war and subsequently. ft may have been this that led io my being offered a Knighthood in the Jubilee Honours List in 1977. Perhaps ungratefully, I declined, the offer. If only it had not been an unvarnished knighthood, but one of the somewhat higher orders such as a KCB, I might have accepted.. But a Knight Bachelor is only minimally above a Compani-onship of the Bath, and it therefore represented the absolutely lease recognition for more than thirty years of public servlce as member or chairman of many committ.ees and councils, and the separation from my family for spells of eighteen months and a year for work wlthout renumeratlon in the Ministry of Defence. Others had been awarded KCBs and KBEs for consid.erably less, or even ln some cases for contributions that subseguentty proved. to be negative, and by 1977 even one of my own former students had been knlghted. I am in favour of an honest system j-n principle, but even accepting there must often be an element of luck either one way or the other, this appeared to be 'too litt1e, too late'. There were, of course, others to be considered, ill particular my r./ife and famity, and. whoever had been generous enough to put my name forward. rr{Y wife, to whom it would have meant most, nevertheless agreed that I should &cline, and in decli-ning I asked the Prime Minister's Office to convey my thanks to those who had proposed me. Thanks to them, mY mother, who died in 1978, was cheered by the knowledge of the offered Knighthood, although she was not surprised at my declining it. In retrospect, was f, wise to decline, or too proud? Certainly,/ -1 5-

Certainly, my decision had some unfortunate, if unforeseen, repercussions. As public knowledge of my work grew; especially after the publication of lntelligence Histories anrl my own Most Secret Wa!, there were many who asked why I had not been knighted. In 1974, for example, A.P. Rowe, who ha

There was an even sadder consequence in the unkind. cloisters Acad.eme, whi-ch particularly upset my wife. The fact that f was such an obvious candidate for a Knighthood and yet had received none, 1ed to speculation either that I had upset too many of those in authority or, worse, had committed some undisclosed offence so heinous that it had 1ed to my di-squalification. This was especially hard to bear for my wife, who had to listen to such back-bi-ting without being able to break a sj-Ience tnat would have set the record straight. In 1980 there was a chance that any such back-bi-ting might be silenced , for a group headed by Lord de I'fs1e and Dudley moved to recommend me for a Life Peerage. This, though was negatj-ved in a most unfortunate way arising at least in part, from a further vindictive *reak in the unj.versity. The origln of the trouble concerned the terms of my tenancy of B Queens Terrace. This had started in 1946 when, in,-continuation of a tradition whereby the University provided a professor with a manse at Iittle more than nomj-nal rent. The university, having at the time no unoccupied manses avail-able, therefore purchased the house which I and my family then occupied from 1947 onwards. On the original terms, the house might therefore be fairly regiarded as a'tied cottager which I would be expected to evacuate whenever I ceased to hold my Chair. Thj-s situation, though, changed after 1965 when the university al-tered the terms '' of the tenancy of its houses. Partly to raise its income and partly to put pressure on occupants to move out so as to make it easier to provide houses for the new staff resulting from the Robbins Expansion. The new terms were 'a Regulated Tenancy' under the Rent Act 1965 which was subject to a registered Fair Rentr So that the house would no longer be a tied cottage but in compensation for t:e increased rent, a tenant would have permenancy of tenure so long as he could afford to pay. rne/ -17 -

The i-mplication of th.is change was not made clear to the tenants, although the Principal of the University and a 1egal member of the Universj.ty Court so fuI1y understood the change as to say that the Principal was the only member of staff who could now be brced to give up his house on retirement, because his Lodging was the only accommodation that henceforth would faI1 into the rtied cottage' category. Even sor and because the signj-ficance of the Regulated Tenancy had not been explained to us, my wife and I naturally began to think of our prospects on retirement, especially with the like1y rise in the cost of houses j-n the coming oil boom, and we iooked into the possibility of buying a house before this occurred. We had the chance of buying a house in the same terrace, but would naturall-y have preferred to stay where we were, if the Universj-ty was prepared to seIl at a reasonable price. Whether or not we could have afforded j-t was another matter, but we needed to know our position. In view of the prospective oi1 boom, though, the University was not prepared to se41 but both the Principal and the Convener of the Edilis Commj-ttee (which administered University property) assured us that we had no need to worry because we would be able to stay in B Queens Terrace as long as we wished. We therefore made no further move about trying to buy a house. It was therefore the gravest of shocks when on 13th llarch 1981, just six months before f was due to retire, I received a letter from tne Building Officer asking me when I proposed to move out of the house, since it would be required for occupation by my successor. Despite the previous understandings we had had with Principal Wright, who had retired in 1975, and with the Building Convener, Professor Wa1ton, who had died in the meantime, and despite Principal Wright's confirmati-on that he still believed that we had permanency of tenure, the University decided to press us to get out. Principal Wright recommended/ [email protected]\ -18-

recoromended us to engage a lawyer and the outcome was an action against us by the University, whi-ch on 13th April 1982 applied to the Eheriff Court of Aberdeen to grant a 'decree for removing You, your family, sub-tenants and dependants with your goods and possessions from the said property and for payment by you of the expenses of this action'. fn the meantj-me we had obtained Counsel's Opinion of the soundness of our position, but the University insisted on its action. When it began to realise that this action might fail because it would. break the terms of a regulated tenancy, the Universj-ty attempted a further attack on the grounds that I had myself broken the terms of the tenancy because I had sub-Iet some of the rooms j-n the house wi-thout obtaining the University's permission. Two of our 'sub-tenants' an American postgraduate Divinity student and his wife, were summoned to appear before a Court Commission for interrogation. They wrote'We deeply regret havi-ng to do this since you have been so kind to us It seems incredible to us that as wholly informal an arrangement as we had could ever be considered sub-leasinr

The J-nterrogation had taken place while I was myself away in America, but on my return I was able to show that i-n so far as anything that mi-ght be termed as 'sub-letting' had occurred, it had started in the early'60s when the Principal's wife had asked us to accomrnodate a student who had been unable to find a lodging, and this precedent had been followed ever slnce. In fact, every year we recelved a letter from the Lodgj-ngs Officer of the University begging us to make any spare rooms available for students because of the general shortage of accommod.atj-on. Fortunately I had still kept some of the letters, and as for rentingr my wife had always consulted the Lodgings Officer as to what would be a reasonable charge. -1 9-

So, perhaps due to the changes in its administrative staff, the University had not onty overlooked the fact that it had itself changed the terms of our tenancy but it had also forgotten its own request for us to take students i-nto our house. Nobody, though, could have expected a university with its Law Officer, Factor, and professors of Law could have ever pursued a course so fat in the wrong without checking its position. The outside world decided that a university could not be so far j.n the wrong, and therefore it must be I who was at fault. The press made much of it. Under the headline 'Top Boffin Gets the Order of the Boot' William Hickey in the Daily Express for 13th September 1982 wrote 'The threat of eviction hangs this morning over one of our most eminent wartime boffins, Professor Reginald Jones'. When the case came before the Sheriff he pronounced that the Universj-ty's case \.^ras "in a terrible mess"' and j-t was only with some misgivings that he was allowing the University to continue its action and present it in a '"proper and understandable form"' - To give the University the best possible chance, he allowed it six weeks to amend j,ts case. At the subsequent Hearing, the University's Counsel failed to appear and the University withdrew its action - We had therefore won in this most unhappy and degrading- episode - but at a price. The worry caused the beginning of the break-up of my wife's health, both physical and mental. And although our prospective eviction had made the London headlines, the Sheriff's dismissal had not. So the case, ds reported in the London newspaper: Ieft an unfavourable shadow; and since a candidate for public honours especially a Peerage, should be far above suspicion, Lord de lrIsIe and Dudley did not proceed with his nomination' we may speculate whether, had I accepted a Knighthood in 1977, the University might have stopped to think before attempting to .-.,-".----€vict me in 1981. And if there had been no action over the house Lord de l-'Isle might well have proeeeded with his proposal.