St John's College Oxford

In Memoriam

Remembering members of the St John's College Community

This is a record of those whose deaths we have been informed of recently. We regret any omission and please do write to us if this has happened. We rely on information given to us by alumni, family and friends.

  • Nicholas Holman(1977, DPhil Chemistry^):

    Nicholas Holman was born in 1959 and came up to St John’s in 1977 to read Chemistry. He died on 18 July 2021. We are grateful to his friend, Michael Prior (1974), for this appreciation.
    Nick was born at home in Wimborne, Dorset, in December 1959. His father was a schoolmaster and his mother a midwife, and Nick was the youngest of their four children. Nick attended Queen Elizabeth’s School in Wimborne; the same school where his father taught history. Nick’s interest in chemistry, stimulated by a great teacher, led him to apply to study the subject at Oxford and be awarded a place at St John’s. Nick was still only 17 when he came up in October 1977; a result of him being recognised as a gifted pupil when at primary school and moved up a year. He did his chemistry part II research and then his D Phil with Dr (subsequently Professor) Steve Davies and was one of the first members of Dr Davies’ research group in Oxford following Dr Davies’s move from France to take up a University Lectureship.

    Having completed his DPhil, Nick moved to Nottingham in 1985 to begin his working life as a research chemist in what was then the pharmaceutical division of the Boots Company plc. Boots sold this part of their business to the German chemical company BASF in 1995, but in 2000 after a period of review and consolidation, BASF decided to close the Nottingham R&D facilities. Having explored a range of job opportunities in the UK and overseas, Nick emigrated to the USA in 2001 to work for Albany Molecular, initially at their Syracuse (NY) site and latterly at Albany. He changed jobs again in 2010 to work for Johnson Matthey at their Devens (MA) site, but doing similar work concerned with pharmaceutical development. Nick had a reputation as a valued colleague among those he worked with, always ready to give support and advice.
    Nick met his wife Ilene after he had moved to Massachusetts, and they were married in December 2016. He also gained two stepsons, Tony and D’vonne, and two step-grandchildren, Aiden and Illana.
    Sadly, Nick was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in late 2019. He faced up to his treatment with characteristic stoicism and fortitude, and for a long period was doing remarkably well. The end came quite suddenly, but peacefully, and with Ilene by his side. Travel restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic meant that, alas, family and friends from the UK were unable to attend his funeral. His sister Jenny did, however, manage to get to Nick’s 60th birthday party in December 2019 in the USA, and his brother Philip saw him earlier that month after his treatment had started. Those were their last chances to see him in person.Nick’s interests were wide and varied, including cooking, gardening, opera and the theatre. His intellect and knowledge were considerable and his friends in Nottingham remember him being a formidable team-mate in pub quizzes! He also enjoyed travelling, and although his time with Ilene was all too short, they were able to have a number of trips together before the final phase of his illness.
  • John Robson(1951, BA Literae Humaniores - Course 1):

    William John Hurlstone Robson
    John Robson was born in 1933 and came up to St John's in 1951 to read Classics. He died in 2021. We are grateful to his brother-in-law and friend, Andrew Edwards (1958) for this appreciation.
    John Robson was a student at St John’s between 1951 and 1955. He went on to teach at Fettes College, Merchant Taylors’ School and, as Head of Department, at Bristol Grammar School before becoming an esteemed Headmaster for 20 years of Bury Grammar School in Lancashire.
    Brought up in Staffordshire, and a pupil at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School, he won a Classical Scholarship to St John’s at age 16. He then worked on a farm before spending four happy and fulfilling years at St John’s. The superb tutors who taught him there included the legendary Donald Russell, who later became a great friend, and he graduated with Firsts in Mods & Greats.
    After St John’s, he felt a strong calling to educate the young. With much encouragement from Donald Russell, therefore, he became a teacher and taught Classics for 14 years at the schools already mentioned.
    I was one of his pupils at the first of these schools, Fettes. Razor-sharp in intellect, incisive, and full of opinions and insights on a formidable variety of subjects, vigorously projected in a strong voice, he made an unforgettable impression. He somehow managed to transform the teaching of an extraordinarily narrow curriculum, based on translating difficult classical texts, into a happy and enlightening experience. His pupils at all three schools won many scholarships to Oxbridge.
    Keenly interested not only in classics but also in religion, politics, games and other school activities of all kinds, he loved to propound arresting theories and to dissect weak arguments, by politicians, sportsmen, generals and visiting preachers not least, always in an entertaining way. After quoting the offending phrases, he would emit a huge laugh followed by a shout of 'ludicrous!'.
    Like his colleague Eric Anderson, John became ever more successful, the more senior he became. After his 14 years of classics teaching, he became Headmaster of Bury Grammar School in Lancashire and served there for 20 years, 1969-90, as a highly successful Headmaster.
    His first great achievement was to lead the School into independence in the mid-1970s when the Government’s Direct Grant was withdrawn. Staunchly Conservative, and a strong supporter of the Grammar School ethos, he opposed the option of letting the long-established school be absorbed into the comprehensive system. Instead he championed the case for independence, assuming a new and prominent role as leader, public advocate and fundraiser alongside managing the school.
    His other great achievement was to develop thereafter a highly successful independent School, with outstanding teaching and facilities across the sciences, arts and games.
    Important elements in this success were a large, well-judged programme to extend the fabric and resources of the school and skilful selection of outstanding staff. No less important was his keen focus at all times on doing the best that could be done for each and every pupil at the school so as to give them the best possible chances of achieving success in higher education and in life. This he saw as his own, and the school’s, foremost duty.
    Alongside all his duties of leadership and management, he knew every pupil personally, read every school report, attended all inter-school sports, every play and concert, every parents evening. All this while also bringing up a young family.
    After 20 years at the helm, he felt a little exhausted, not surprisingly, and decided it was time to hand over the reins. Retiring with his wife Ruth, my sister, to Ludlow, he devoted much time to preaching and pastoral roles as a greatly respected Reader in the Church of England, preaching thoughtful sermons, visiting the elderly and often taking them communion. He had earlier planned to become ordained but later felt he had been right to remain as a lay preacher and reader.
    More recently, as church membership declined, he became concerned about the prospects for Christianity. He felt that the church needed to find a new way, applying the central Christian visions in the real world and re-thinking some of its traditional doctrines, including the Trinity. Its members should not, he thought, be obliged to regard tales which strained the credulity as being literally true or to hold specific beliefs on many matters about which there could be no certainty.
    Also in these last years, he kept telling me how much he regretted that Donald Russell, who had often stayed with him and Ruth, had missed out on the accolades which many other scholars had received. We agreed that something must be done, and this led directly to the commissioning by luminaries of the College and the Classics Faculty of the College’s fine portrait of Donald at age 97 which now hangs in the Faculty building.
    John and Ruth were a loving couple for 54 years. He visited her every day in her nursing home during the five years for which she survived after some debilitating strokes.
    He died in June, peacefully, after a few months of serious illnesses. The flags of Bury Grammar School flew at half-mast for him. So too will the flags in the hearts of all of us who were close to him. His family will miss him sorely, as will countless former pupils, colleagues and parishioners.
  • Richard Lorch(1961, Dip Mathematics^):

    Dr Richard Paul Lorch
    Richard was born in 1942 and came up to St John’s in 1961 to read Mathematics. He died on 17 February 2021. We are grateful to his sister, Jennifer Lorch, for this appreciation.
    After gaining his first degree at St John’s Richard stayed in Oxford to read for a diploma in the History of Philosophy and Science, specialising in the early medieval period and then proceeded to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology where he gained his PhD in 1971. His thesis was Jābir ibn Aflah and his Influence in the West. In 1977 he took the opportunity to teach Mathematics at the University of Birzeit. This led to a Humboldt Fellowship in the Semitic Languages Department of the University of Munich. Richard remained in Munich for the rest of his working life, returning to England in 2011. The last ten years of his life were hampered by Parkinson’s.

    Richard Lorch was a scholar. He published over fifty books and articles mostly in the area of mathematics and astronomy in the Arabic-Islamic World and its influence in Europe and specialised with Paul Kunitzsch, also in Munich, in producing lucid editions of hitherto unavailable texts which involved both transcription and editing. As a boy he had no desire to travel but the pursuit of knowledge took him enthusiastically to many countries: among them, Spain, Italy, India, Syria where he spent two years as a research professor at the University of Aleppo (1980-1982).

    Richard enjoyed good family relationships and was a loved and loving brother to Jennifer, Julia and William. He had a wonderful capacity for friendship. His friends came from all over the world, many of them academic but others from various walks of life. He was known and appreciated for his quick wit and dry, laconic humour. He was a kind and gentle man, frugal in his habits but generous with his gifts. His interests included book collecting, chess (which he had started playing as a boy at the Gravesend Chess Club), bridge and walking. While in Germany, a walk to the Andechs Benedictine monastery in Bavaria where the famous Andechs beer is brewed was a de rigueur outing for all visitors to Munich. He left a substantial library, which he enjoyed dipping into in his later years.

  • Philip Bowcock(1944, BA Modern History^):

    Philip Parnell Bowcock

    Philip Bowcock was born in 1927 and came up to St John's in 1944 to read Modern History. He died on 4 June 2021. We are grateful to his children, Stella, Matthew and Oliver, for this appreciation.
    Philip Bowcock was born in Chebsey, Staffordshire. From an early age he showed an academic bent and loved reading. At sixteen, he gained an open scholarship to St John’s to read history and went up in 1944. Philip thrived at Oxford and was elected secretary to the University Conservative Association where he succeeded Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher). He also explored his Christian faith which became a lasting and quiet influence throughout his life.
    After earning his degree, Philip completed national service as an officer in the 15/19 King’s Royal Hussars. His regiment was stationed in Khartoum, and this taste of travel and the charm of the Arabic speaking world sparked his interest. In 1949 he joined the Sudan Political Service and was sent to the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in Lebanon to learn Arabic. He kept his Arabic skills for life and also learned many other languages.
    In 1951 he started as an Assistant District Commissioner in Khartoum, and in 1952-3 was posted to Western Nuer district, Upper Nile Province (now Unity State, South Sudan). During his time in Khartoum, he met Brenda Stephens, a midwife in the hospital. They married in Malakal in 1952 and worked together in Western Nuer until Sudan’s independence in 1954. Philip then moved to work with the British Overseas Civil Service in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) as a District Commissioner, having previously taken the first part bar examinations. During this time, his three children were born.
    When Philip returned from Zambia, he joined the Home Civil Service and became a Principal in the Ministry of Technology in London. Although the work was interesting and his colleagues stimulating, Philip decided, when offered favourable terms as an Articled Clerk in his uncle’s solicitors’ practice in Staffordshire, to turn to the law once he had taken the second part bar exams.
    Philip flourished in Staffordshire and became senior partner in Bowcock and Pursaill, Leek. His years there were happy, and he was not ready to retire at age sixty-seven when Brenda unexpectedly died. In time, he decided to move to Otford, Kent to be nearer family.
    He made many friends in Otford. When Philip died, he was still a member of a political discussion group, a history group, a literature group, a regular bridge four, the Sevenoaks chess club as well as U3A. He was an active member of the Athenaeum club in London and often attended events at St. John’s, even though he sometimes complained of being the oldest alumni there.
    In his later years, Philip wrote his memoirs ‘Last Guardians’ which is still available at Amazon (link here). It is a fascinating story of working in three crown civil services and then the law.
    Philip loved his garden and planted over two hundred and fifty trees in various gardens in his lifetime. Philip was a lively optimist who was always interested in people. His was certainly a rich and varied life.
  • Jon Westling(1964, BA Modern History^):

    Jon Norman Westling
    Jon Westling was born in 1942 and came up to St John's in 1964 to read for a BA in Modern History. He died in 2021. We are grateful to his friend, Lee W. Saperstein, for this appreciation.
    Jon Westling was my friend and roommate when we were up. I was at The Queen’s and he at Johns; we would invite each other to graduate table at Hall and we would always have lunch together at the Eagle and Child, now sadly reconfigured to look more antique. During his long career as an university administrator, ending as President Emeritus of Boston University, he continued to teach, his personal touch made him an excellent teacher. He taught long after he left the President’s office.
    Jon had a room in the Johns annex on Saint Giles and his scout, Frank was tolerant of his schedule. I was at the Engineering lab and would walk down to Jon’s room and together we would go for a simple pub lunch. I could stand a pint then without gaining weight. Jon was a medieval historian and would tell me of oddities during the minority of Henry VI. I thought that “Ye” was a version of a Quaker’s second person pronoun until he explained the Old English thorn, best pronounced as “the,” which made a lot of sense. He would go to the Public Records Office, then in central London, and read original manuscripts. He explained that he had to learn “diplomatic”, a word derived from reading diplomas and not from diplomacy.
    He loved machines that moved: motorcycles and motorcars. He had a BMW R50 bike that he rode everywhere. He told of the College’s Senior Tutor, who spied Jon outside of the College, and, placing his forefinger on the seat, asked, “Does it go fast?” He and another friend bought a 1934 (not sure about the year) Rolls-Royce and discovered to their chagrin that they do not last forever. After he moved out of college, we were roommates until his discovery that my landlady was not as tolerant of his schedule as was his college scout. He then went to more tolerant digs. The last car that I remember was a rare Riley drop-head (US=convertible) coupe. In retirement, my regret is that travel was not easy and we did not visit as often as I should have liked.