Noel Denis Worswick (born 25 December 1940; died 29 January 2015)
Funeral address and other reminiscences The following tribute was given by Richard Smail at Oxford Crematorium on 5th March 2015
What follows is personal: it contains some of my memories of Noel. I first met Noel in September 1980, when I had just begun to teach classics at Radley College. Noel was at that time Director of Studies at Wellington College, a school which has always enjoyed a friendly rivalry with Radley. I was a tiro; Noel already had over fifteen years of school mastering behind him, yet he immediately and generously treated me as an equal, and gave me sound advice, not only about Greek history, but also about how to put it across to sometimes recalcitrant teenage boys!
Soon after Noel returned to Oxford in the 1990s, I, too, came back to teach classics and become Chaplain of Brasenose. For the next twenty years Noel and I regularly coincided at lunchtime in the Back Bar of the King’s Arms, a place where I first realised what a wide and varied circle of friends surrounded him. On any weekday, alongside fellow classicists and congenial Wadham colleagues such as Peter Derow (whose untimely death shook Noel more than he let on) one might find a book- seller, an estate agent, a wine merchant, a librarian, a graduate student or former pupil, and sometimes a somewhat bemused visiting foreign academic. There Noel presided, a wonderful cross between Socrates and Dr. Johnson. Yet one could quickly sense the way in which his friendliness and concern for individuals brought such a disparate group together. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, with Noel’s death that ‘goodly company’ has dissolved. Not that his benevolence was universal. On one occasion at which I was present, Noel stalked in, assumed his usual chair, and peered malevolently into the corner of the bar, where Christine and Neil Hamilton were sitting. ‘Since when,’ asked Noel, in a voice which resembled a dyspeptic lion’s roar, ‘has this bar become a refuge for disgraced Tory politicians and their frightful wives?’ Even Christine Hamilton fled in disarray! For so many people Noel WAS the Back Bar, and in it all generations relished his wit, his grumpiness and his friendship. It is very fitting that the Manager of the King’s Arms has approved the placing of Noel’s photograph in that bar, near the picture of his beloved Tutor and close friend, George Forrest.
Many of us have been fortunate to experience not only Noel’s friendship, but also his regular but unobtrusive acts of kindness and generosity. Particularly, perhaps, with his pupils, he was generous in giving them his time, helping them with personal as well as academic problems. No wonder so many became friends for life. I am myself very grateful for a repeated experience of his kindness and generosity. Some years ago, on learning that I had nowhere to go at Christmas, he immediately invited me to join him for lunch on Christmas Day at the Eastgate Hotel, where he generally spent a few nights in December. A splendid meal was 2 always accompanied by some special bottles from the Wadham cellar, the decanting of which had been the result of lengthy and meticulous instructions to the hotel staff. It was perhaps fitting, though very sad, that the last time I saw Noel was last Christmas Day, which (as most of you will know) happens to be his birthday. He had been overcome with food-poisoning, and so was in bed in the hotel. On my arrival, however, I was told that Mr Worswick had insisted (despite his ill health) that I should join him to toast the day. A bottle of Drappier – his favourite champagne – was opened, and he managed to enjoy it. We had several glasses, and his good humour increased. I feel that it is somehow appropriate that virtually the last words I heard Noel utter were, ‘Go on, Smail, finish the bottle’!
Noel was a strong supporter of communities, and relished the combination of conviviality and scholarship he found at the two institutions he loved above all others, and to which he devoted much of his life. At Wellington he became a successful teacher and administrator, although no later Master, (that is – in Wellington parlance – Head) approached in his esteem the first one he served: the Honourable Frank Fisher, and I (and many others, I know) were regularly treated to late-night telephonic tirades about this or that example of later head-magisterial incompetence.
But Wadham was his first and his last love. Bowra, Stinton, Forrest, Crombie, Derow were his heroes among the dead; Davies, Ockenden, Heyworth his particular friends among the living. He relished dining in college as a member of the SCR, and was, of course, a very generous host. He also enjoyed assisting in the purchase of wine for Wadham by regular attendance at merchants’ tastings, and developed and a particular rapport with the cellarer, Gervase Wood, perhaps the most astute of all Oxford wine-tasters.
Noel was a considerable scholar, as well as a successful teacher at both school and university level. His knowledge of Greek history, particularly the political history of Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, was both wide and deep. Noel was never the tidiest of men, but we believe that somewhere in his living room (which resembled nothing so much as a giant walk-in waste-paper-basket) there lurks the manuscript of some original work in his field of expertise. Noel taught for several colleges, most notably New College and Lincoln, where his scholarship and conviviality were much appreciated by Robin Lane Fox and Nigel Wilson. Noel’s chief passion as a teacher was the pursuit of truth, and he was uncompromising in that quest. I should like to believe that he is out there somewhere, perhaps subjecting Thucydides to a tough viva about the date of the Peace of Callias, and eventually – but grudgingly – awarding him alpha minus query minus.
3 Although Noel was humane, he was also very human. He could be curmudgeonly (although there was usually a twinkle in the eye, and one realised that underneath the carapace he was rather enjoying it all.) I sometimes thought that Noel in his chair in the King’s Arms was playing at being Diogenes the Cynic in his barrel. He could also get very angry. Last year I received a late-night telephone call from Noel (I surmised that a tincture or two might have been taken). He was incandescent with rage because his latest bête noir, Anthony Selden, the current Master of Wellington, had just been given a knighthood. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised if the receiver in my hand had begun to glow in the dark!
How might one attempt as it were to crystallise the qualities of this complicated man who gave so much as a teacher and as a friend, and who, through his kindness and his generosity, his love of community and his dedication to scholarship, touched the lives of so many? I should give two answers: LOYALTY and INTEGRITY. Noel was loyal to the countless friends he made: he was not a man who would let you down. If he said he would do something for you, he did it. Above all, he was a man of integrity. He and I disagreed about politics. We disagreed about religion. But Noel’s positions on these and other important issues had been clearly thought out and were cogently – if sometimes rather hyperbolically – expressed. The things he said he would have liked to have inflicted on Tony Blair are not for repetition here!
Integrity means wholeness. Noel’s convictions were all of a piece with the man himself. They were closely argued and crisply expressed – as they should be from someone who had read and taught Greats. He stuck tenaciously to those convictions. He was a man of his word. He loved his friends, and they – we – loved him.
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Richard Smail’s tribute captures the essence of Noel’s spirit perfectly: Noel’s chief passion as a teacher was indeed his pursuit of the truth — that is something he instilled in me and which I benefit immensely from every day, whether in reading between the lines in news stories or seeking to get justice for clients. His loyalty and integrity were undeniable and a great example to all. He was without doubt my best and favourite tutor at Oxford. I was very sorry that we lost touch in the last years of his life — I had hoped to introduce him to my wife with whom he would have got on terrifically (a feisty half-Ukrainian half-Russian with a similar healthy cynicism about the media and most politicians!), but it was not to be. Charles Banner (Lincoln 1998-2002)
4 Other reminiscences
Noel and I were cousins and shared a maternal grandfather, Joseph Robinson, whose loyal trade unionism caused him to turn down management opportunities with Lever Brothers on Merseyside. I have, hanging above my desk, his Award of Merit from the Amalgamated Engineering Union for 37 years of faithful service as a branch official. Noel approved of old Joe’s politics but, in later life, would have had difficulties with his Methodism.
As a child I was in awe of my tall, thin and clever elder cousin from Sheffield, but we became good friends as we grew older. My Army career took me away from mainland Britain for much of the late 1960s and the 1970s and we saw little of each other, but a broader and bearded Noel was there for my marriage to Caroline in 1973. He was with us again more recently for our Ruby Wedding celebration, bearing bottles of wine and vintage port from the Wadham cellar.
Our peripatetic lifestyle made boarding education inevitable for our sons but Noel was characteristically circumspect about offering advice until we opted for Wellington College and asked him for guidance on prep schools and Wellington house or dormitory. He gave the subject a great deal of thought before recommending Lambrook and Benson House, both excellent choices. My year at the Army Staff College at Camberley in 1980 meant that we were able to meet more frequently and it was my first experience of his bohemian style of living. His rooms in one of the original Victorian buildings at Wellington were decorated with battered posters of Greek plays from Oxford, Canada and Wellington and the ‘walk-in-wastepaper-basket’ described by Richard Smail at Noel’s funeral was already evident. I repaid some of Noel’s generous hospitality by inviting him to dinner at Staff College when Conor Cruise O’Brien was the guest speaker. Unfortunately O’Brien’s host for the evening was so generous with the wine that the debate with the great man, which Noel was anticipating keenly, was something of an anticlimax.
Tim started at Wellington College in 1987 and Simon joined him in 1990. Noel was always there to give advice but neither of the boys felt oppressed by his presence as a senior member of staff. He was equally discreet and supportive when Simon followed him to Wadham in 1995, also to study Lit. Hum. We met often then, usually in a pub for a good lunch, sometimes followed by watching soccer on television, as Liverpool FC was a lifelong shared passion.
Latterly, I remember Noel mostly for the telephone calls that began once Simon left Wadham. Sometimes they were to ask for advice on buying ex-Army equipment for the New College chalet (I wasn’t much help), always they included Liverpool FC, but often he wanted to discuss military strategy. Some of my childhood awe 5 returned as I found that nearly 40 years in the military were barely enough preparation for dialogue with Noel, who read widely and thought deeply on any subject that interested him. It was helpful that our views coincided on Iraq and Afghanistan. When he learnt last year that I was about to start studying for an MA on the First World War it opened up a new line of discussion. Amongst other things he became interested in the career of Erich Ludendorff and, once again, I had to work hard to keep up.
I helped Crispin Boyd for a few days clearing out Noel’s flat. Amongst the piles of paperwork it was heart-warming to find countless letters from, and copies of references for, colleagues and former students, along with help and advice for friends on their academic research. There were also sheaves of old exam papers, lots of out-of-date wine lists and many responses to his letters of complaint about bureaucratic pettiness! Sadly some of the recent correspondence was about the diabetes and arthritis that were to plague his later years. Most of the hundreds of photographs and lots of the documents concerned the New College chalet and it was clear what great joy he still derived from supporting young people, perhaps the driving force in his life.
Caroline and I met Noel for the final time last summer when he hosted Tim and his two daughters (then aged ten and seven) at Wadham and for tea at the King’s Arms. He delighted in showing the College to the girls and he particularly enjoyed our time in the Gardens, where many of you will meet to remember him. I had counselled Noel against a ‘hard sell’ but he couldn’t resist telling our granddaughters that he had already ‘put their names down’ for Wadham!
I shall miss Noel’s sense of humour, his generosity of spirit and his sharp intellect, all of which survived much pain in his later years. I am proud to have shared his friendship and his heritage; the trade union certificate above my desk will always remind me of him.
Ted Green ------
I was taught by Noel during the Hilary Term of 1965 while George Forrest was enjoying a brief Sabbatical. It just after Noel broke his leg spectacularly on the football field. (I was present on that occasion. It sounded like a pistol shot. A fellow spectator, Peter Maybury, threw up and then fainted!)
My wife and I remained in contact with Noel for the remainder of his life and saw him on and off both as a guest at our various homes and in Oxford. Latterly contact was mainly by phone, although we came up to Oxford for some years in the Summer and picnicked in the Fellows’ Garden with him and one of our daughters 6 and her family (Noel was very fond of the children). Visits to Oxford invariably included time spent in the back bar of the KA where Noel jealously guarded what he saw as his absolute right to the use of the corner chair in priority to any other customer, including those who were unlucky enough to be found in occupation of the seat on his arrival.
Neil Sullivan (Wadham 1963-67)
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Noel Worswick was a master of his trade and profession, a very well informed Classics teacher, and an outstanding Administrative Master at Wellington College from 1971 to the time he resigned to take up tutorial posts at Lincoln and New Colleges in Oxford and also at the University of Exeter. Wadham College was his Alma Mater and a place he dearly loved.
Born in Liverpool, his family moved to Sheffield where, in 1951, he entered King Edward VII Grammar School to later gain admission in 1959 to Wadham College, Oxford to read Mods and Greats, the latter under the tutelage of George Forrest, who later became a very dear friend. Noel, a Liverpudlian, shared the same dry sense of humour as his Glaswegian tutor, whom he revered.
I first met Noel, totally perchance, at Wadham whilst I was in my first term at Jesus College. I was invited there by a former school friend who was president of the college JCR for coffee. A knock on his door announced the arrival of the president of the MCR – Noel Worswick, a research student – bearded then with a crisp voice and direct speech to talk about ‘College Matters’. Little did I know then that I would meet up with Noel again, thirteen years later, when I was appointed as Head of the Geography Department at Wellington College.
Noel gave his heart and soul to Wellington, in his forthright and no nonsense manner, in his role as College administrator and the timetable guru. Painstakingly, he worked into the early hours of each morning in getting things right for the Master. Few colleagues at that time really appreciated what a tiresome post he held. After serving under the Masterships of Frank Fisher and David Newsome, both of whom he most respected, Noel took a long deserved and overdue sabbatical year to return to Oxford. Dons recognised his genius and he was called on as a tutor by various colleges, and eventually resigned from Wellington.
As a Greek, Latin and Ancient History teacher he inspired many Wellingtonians to read these subjects at university. He was the expert on the right university course; and his knowledge of university applications was second to none. Quietly he brought back into the Wellington Community many recalcitrant and what he called 7 ‘bolshie’ students who had upset their Housemasters. A week or more spent in lodging with NDW certainly raised their self-esteem and taught them to appreciate the sacrifices their parents were making to pay for their education at an independent school. None of those students ever let Noel or the College down! Throughout his life he fought the battles of the underdogs and the non-conformists.
In his later years Noel was an avid armchair observer of all sports, especially rugby, cricket and soccer. He was a true supporter of Liverpool FC and of England RFC. For 44 years, since they first joined Wellington College, Frank Richards, the former Housemaster of The Murray, and Noel had an annual bet on the Wales v England rugby outcome. Noel phoned Frank only two weeks before his death to confirm that this bet was still on for the match on 6 February 2015. Many Wellingtonians will remember Noel as a House match rugby referee following the run of play in his long blue, early sixties rugby shorts. He was a demon with the whistle on the rugby pitch; and with bat and ball for the Staff Cricket side.
I and many of my former teaching colleagues will miss Noel’s astute and objective opinions on politics and on educational changes, especially the plethora of rapid changes imposed by successive political parties over the last forty years, affecting both schools and universities. May Noel now rest in peace and remain in the memories of pupils and colleagues. He was a true friend to many people of all walks of life.
Alan Rogers (Head of the Geography Department, Wellington College, 1978-82)
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We spent five happy years at Wellington. Throughout that time Noel Worswick played a central and formative role in our lives. He taught a small group of us Latin and Greek for A level and we will always remember the camaraderie which Noel created amongst us. He had an admirably rigorous approach to teaching classics with a keen eye for detail — no slip up was missed. His tremendous enthusiasm for the beauty of Latin and Greek was infectious as was his fascination for all his favourite authors, particularly Tacitus whose economy of expression he loved. As a result he imbued us with a life-long appreciation of the ancient world.
The key additional elements in all Noel’s classes were his dry humour and delightfully acerbic wit. Imagining Noel’s likely response to a situation or a less than sharp comment gave us hours of pleasure and continues to do so. He encouraged us to be exacting in our standards and we have both tried but failed to emulate his example ever since.
8 We were a very happy club under Noel’s tutelage and each of us went on to read classics at Oxford and Durham; a real tribute both to Noel’s dedication and to the quality of his teaching. Indeed, Noel’s attempts to sharpen our intellect did not stop there. He encouraged us to join his Times crossword and bridge clubs but we showed insufficient promise in those departments.
Noel also organised many enjoyable trips to productions of classical plays at schools and universities. There were some gloriously hilarious moments when the cast lost all track of their lines. Under Noel’s guidance we had some success at classical reading competitions across the south of England. He prepared us brilliantly and we all set off in his beaten up old car to various decaying halls to try and bring life to extracts of classical prose or verse. These events may not sound glamorous but they were such eccentric gatherings that we always found the trips hugely enjoyable. The competition was intense. We wanted to win for ourselves and for Noel; if we were beaten we always had Noel’s post-mortem of the event to keep us amused on the way back to Wellington, while he dodged the traffic.
Noel’s influence went well beyond the classroom. He brought his unique coaching style to the rugby field and the cricket pitch. We both enjoyed a memorable cricket season for one of the cricket teams he coached in which we won all of our matches. It was clear that Noel hugely enjoyed the team’s success and he threw a great party at the end of the season at which, amidst much laughter, he served the beer we had been promised all season if we remained unbeaten. Our abiding memory of the whole season is not so much the cricket but Noel’s hilarious asides to his players (normally about the other team, its umpires or the poor quality of our play) while he was umpiring or on the bus on the way back to school.
Noel was also a keen dramatist and he was always incredibly encouraging to both of us when we performed in various plays, normally under the direction of Hugh Atkins. We also both acted in Noel’s groundbreaking production of Prometheus Bound. Noel translated and directed the play. It was performed in what was then called the New Block amphitheatre. So far as we know it was the first time that a Greek play had been performed at Wellington. Noel extracted extraordinary performances from a large cast of boys wearing masks, which did not always fit perfectly, who acted their socks off as various characters which included the tragic figure of Prometheus, a number of deities and a chorus of nymphs. The play was a great success and, looking back, an incredibly brave undertaking on Noel’s part.
We have a great deal for which to thank Noel. He was devoted to his students and we had enormous respect and affection for him. His tireless support and encouragement gave us tremendous confidence. He invested so much time and energy into making our lives at Wellington rewarding and enjoyable and, perhaps most memorably, great fun. 9
Charles Gibson & Chris Guinness (Wellington College, 1974-8)
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I knew Noel during three adjacent chapters of my life, starting at Wellington (1983- 88) where Noel drilled me in Latin in Blocks 2 and 1, and then guided me on my Oxbridge journey in the Lower Sixth, and into New College Oxford. He introduced me to philosophy, A.J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, and we even did an A Level in it for fun. Dour, serious, professorial — this was university glamour at its best for an academic-in-waiting like myself.
By the time Noel had gravitated to Oxford in the early ’90s I was already well- ensconced, with little interest in re-establishing old acquaintance. We enjoyed a few beers in the King's Arms, and I guess I slowly lowered my defences. I was wary of his revolutionary and challenging political views and maintained a cordial if distant relationship. He wished me well just before my finals, with his typical brio of ‘looking forward to a first, Mr Wilson’. All of that changed on June 6th 1992, exactly half way through my finals. That day I was given the train-crash news that my mother had passed away quite suddenly. Already in a haze of exam stress, this news knocked me sideways and I simply did not know how to continue, who to inform or what to do. My world was swallowing me, and I turned to the only person, I realized, who knew me well enough to help, who was Noel. He calmly managed the situation for me with my examiners and tutors and enabled me to stand down from my exams and concentrate on being with my grieving family. This incident remains one of the most powerful of my life, and I will always be grateful for Noel for helping me through this difficult time. And I am feeling ripped apart now, knowing that I did not return the gesture in his time of need.
After this we became firm friends, and in the autumn of 1992 I became his lodger on the Bullingdon Road for a year while I stayed on as a post doc researcher. This was certainly an odd couple relationship but it worked as he got to know many of my student hedonist friends and we got to know his friends, his real views on the world and his famous boozy Sunday roasts. During that period Noel influenced my world view like no one else. He instilled a healthy dose of anti-establishment scepticism, and the need to challenge one's sources and assumptions at every turn. Yes, Noel could drift into the paranoid conspiracy theorist, but I've always believed thanks to him that every piece of received wisdom has a counter point that deserves inspection. And in 1994, having licked my wounds and ‘sorted my shit out’, I left. I left Oxford for London, and I left Noel for new friends my age with more street cred and better looks. He would have been proud that I have flown high and proud, but he would have taken me to task for ‘selling out’, as everyone naturally does in Noel's eyes. I landed in Asia fifteen years ago, and have not seen Noel since. 10
Noel showed me values that I've rarely seen in others: the real meaning of principle, the value of listening and understanding before speaking, and the notion of pursuing scholarship throughout life. Few people in public or private life lived up to his standards, George Forrest being the obvious exception. It is great to hear that he is being remembered so well by family, Oxford and Wellington friends and institutions, as well as the KA. Though I live in Singapore, rest assured I will be raising a glass of red to Noel on many occasions in the future.
Andy Wilson (Wellington College, 1983-8; and New College)
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Noel spent a fortnight or so each year over several consecutive summers in the Alps, accompanying the New College reading parties to the Chalet des Mélèzes, or Chalet des Anglais. This odd property, high in the French Alps above St Gervais and Les Houches, and opposite Mt Blanc, had been erected by the eccentric Victorian diplomat and Turkish-bath enthusiast, David Urquhart, in the 1860s. It was inherited by his son, ‘Sligger’ Urquhart of Balliol, and thereafter used for Oxford reading parties. By Noel’s time, three colleges had summertime use of the unelectrified chalet: Univ, Balliol, and New College. Noel accompanied George Forrest there, as George was New College’s chalet patron. It was in this context too that I met both of them, in the summer of 1996, just after I had finished my first year exams. I had been mentioned to George by the widow of the classicist James Holladay, with whom my grandfather had written an article on the Athenian Plague in the back bar of the King’s Arms. George sent me a scrawled invitation to the chalet, and a few weeks later I met Noel at an ‘orientation’ session in the rooms of Robin Lane Fox. Noel was grubbing around in a box, and emerged with a scowl and some bottles.
By this time George was on almost his last legs. Noel was George’s factotum at the chalet, and it was he who made the daily fires, fiddled with candles and bottles, and worried over the mechanics of closed-system Alpine lavatories. Each chalet party numbered a dozen and a half students or so, a vertical section of college life – undergraduates and postgraduates of all stages and subjects, men and women, those who adapted well to Alpine life without electricity, and those who did not.
Noel was very keen on keeping up certain traditions and rituals. He playfully despised the trustees of the other colleges. University College he caricatured as a crew of drab puritans with too much interest in walking up, rather than sedentary admiration of, mountains. Balliol, on the other hand, was too mechanically bookish, with its ‘set text and seminar’ approach, rather than the solitary, unforced, easy cogitations of the New Collegian. Noel and George also defined their parties 11 against the other New College party, run by the college chaplain, Stephen Tucker. Noel and George promoted an atheistic, sceptical, scholarly, and of course hard- drinking operation, and members of their sorties were known as ‘chaletites’ (with the first ‘t’ pronounced) as opposed to ‘chaletites’ (without). This doubtless important distinction conceded, relations between both college wings were otherwise cordial – although Noel sulked and spat a little at the idea of Eucharist over the dining table. The chalet in the days of Sligger was a Papist affair, and there had once been a stone chapel out the back. After WWII it had disappeared, leaving behind only rubble, and as the Maquis had been in residence, Noel liked to think that they had dynamited it in philosophic judgment.
Peter Derow of Wadham visited too. He was wonderful; the first night I met him he turned up with a small tent and pitched it on our uneven lawn. He and Noel loved teasing students together, and were a memorable double-act. (Not infallible, though: they have both gone to the grave still owing a contemporary of mine a case of white burgundy over a bet concerning a small classical question.) I remember Noel and Peter idling in the dining room later the next morning, each eyeing an unopened bottle on the table. ‘It’s Tuesday, Peter’, said Noel. ‘You know what we do on Tuesdays.’ ‘Yes, Noel, I think I do.’
I was in the Alps with both Noel and George in 1997 at the time when Lady Diana died; it was a strange moment, for everyone knew that this was George’s last visit and that he would not survive long – he managed another month and a half – and this was not the death we were all expecting. ‘In the midst of life there is death’, intoned Noel. A few months later there was some very wobbly Greek ‘dancing’ by Peter and Noel at George’s wake in Wadham. A little while previously Noel had persuaded several chaletites to perform and record some music in New College to be sent to George in hospital – they shared a deep love of music, and I remember being crushed by both of them for daring to suggest that singing was an unhelpful confusion of sound and text.
In the daytime at the chalet, if the weather was nice Noel would take a battered straw chair out into the garden and read there, but in the evening he sat on either of the two facing couches closest to the wood-burning stove, quietly steaming. After dinner we would often play ‘chalet mafia’, a version of wink-murder adapted to the chalet. Noel would compere this, and I think he enjoyed this ritual most of all. In setting up scenarios for each chalet death he could pass covert judgment on the chaletites: so-and-so dead in bed from idleness, philistinism, religious belief, bad politics, or any form of ostentatious piety not shared by Noel.
William Poole (New College, 1995-present)
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