Post by pchallinor on Oct 3, 2011 22:30:18 GMT
The best obituary of Robert Robinson you are likely to read, from the Judge
Robert Henry Robinson was born in Liverpool shortly before Christmas 1927, the only child of a Mancunian accountant who worked in the export trade and his wife, a daughter of the Liverpool Irish. Robinson Senior was transferred to his company’s London branch a little while after and the family settled in Malden.
It was whilst attending Raines Park Grammar School in the late 1930s that the bookish, slightly aloof boy came under the influence of the school’s eccentric headmaster John Garrett, a graduate of Exeter College Oxford and a man well connected with some of the major figures in English letters at that time (he persuaded W H Auden to compose the school song). Garrett was highly ambitious for his pupils and, obviously sensing fertile ground in the accountant’s son, encouraged and guided him towards a future place at his own alma mater.
Two obstacles to his progress intervened, both of them military: firstly, the buzz-bomb attacks on London, which led to Robinson and his mother being sent to stay with her extended family back in Liverpool, thus disrupting his education at a crucial juncture; and secondly, his being called up for National Service with the West African Army Service Corps in what later became Ghana and Nigeria.
His two-year tour of duty done, Robinson duly achieved his ambition (and that of Garrett) by going up to Exeter College to read English. At Oxford, he threw himself into the social and literary aspects of varsity life with perhaps more enthusiasm than his studies, which was - in retrospect - little to be wondered at when one considers who else was there at the time. For his contemporaries included the director John Schlesinger, Tony Richardson, Robin Day, Shirley Williams (née Catlin), Paul Vaughan and Derek Cooper.
Two non-academic fields particularly engaged him at that time: the theatre and journalism. Robinson was a regular member (as both performer and writer) of the University’s Dramatic Society (OUDS), and actually took part in a short tour of the US which brought Shakespeare into the auditoria of agricultural colleges in the upper Mid-West. It was here too that he first met his future wife, Joseé Richard.
But it was as editor of the student magazine Isis that he embarked upon his career’s true path. It was a job for which, by his own admission, he had been angling ever since he had gone up; yet he described many years later his reaction on finally taking the position in 1950. Realising that it was now his responsibility to actually get the magazine filled, he felt, “…my guts turn to water, as they say in the novels… I had to run to the lavatory”.
Continued
Robert Henry Robinson was born in Liverpool shortly before Christmas 1927, the only child of a Mancunian accountant who worked in the export trade and his wife, a daughter of the Liverpool Irish. Robinson Senior was transferred to his company’s London branch a little while after and the family settled in Malden.
It was whilst attending Raines Park Grammar School in the late 1930s that the bookish, slightly aloof boy came under the influence of the school’s eccentric headmaster John Garrett, a graduate of Exeter College Oxford and a man well connected with some of the major figures in English letters at that time (he persuaded W H Auden to compose the school song). Garrett was highly ambitious for his pupils and, obviously sensing fertile ground in the accountant’s son, encouraged and guided him towards a future place at his own alma mater.
Two obstacles to his progress intervened, both of them military: firstly, the buzz-bomb attacks on London, which led to Robinson and his mother being sent to stay with her extended family back in Liverpool, thus disrupting his education at a crucial juncture; and secondly, his being called up for National Service with the West African Army Service Corps in what later became Ghana and Nigeria.
His two-year tour of duty done, Robinson duly achieved his ambition (and that of Garrett) by going up to Exeter College to read English. At Oxford, he threw himself into the social and literary aspects of varsity life with perhaps more enthusiasm than his studies, which was - in retrospect - little to be wondered at when one considers who else was there at the time. For his contemporaries included the director John Schlesinger, Tony Richardson, Robin Day, Shirley Williams (née Catlin), Paul Vaughan and Derek Cooper.
Two non-academic fields particularly engaged him at that time: the theatre and journalism. Robinson was a regular member (as both performer and writer) of the University’s Dramatic Society (OUDS), and actually took part in a short tour of the US which brought Shakespeare into the auditoria of agricultural colleges in the upper Mid-West. It was here too that he first met his future wife, Joseé Richard.
But it was as editor of the student magazine Isis that he embarked upon his career’s true path. It was a job for which, by his own admission, he had been angling ever since he had gone up; yet he described many years later his reaction on finally taking the position in 1950. Realising that it was now his responsibility to actually get the magazine filled, he felt, “…my guts turn to water, as they say in the novels… I had to run to the lavatory”.
Continued