THE test of a teacher, whether schoolmaster or don, is the amount of affection that he/she engenders in those entrusted to his/her care. Jeremy Catto, for nearly 40 years Tutor and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, passes this test with honours. This biography is by one of those undergraduates whose lives were transformed by him.
He is not, though, an easy man about whom to write; for he strictly compartmentalised his life. This is seen both in the matter of his faith and his life-long partnership with John Wolfe. While he became a Roman Catholic at school, faith remained a private matter not open to discussion. Similarly, although he and Wolfe shared a house together in Northamptonshire, Wolfe very rarely came to Oriel. Undergraduates understood that Catto’s private life was out of bounds.
Naturally clever, Catto was fortunate in those who taught him. At the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, he came under the influence of an outstanding teacher, Sidney Middlebrook, who, in Catto’s words, “treated his pupils not merely as pupils, but as persons”, something that he himself would go on to do.
At Balliol, he was tutored by two distinguished medievalists, Maurice Keen and Richard Southern, and it was no surprise when he obtained a top first-class degree, despite being rusticated for a term for a moment of madness, and then, on “strong advice from his tutors”, dropping out for the remainder of his third year.
Then followed a five-year interlude at Durham as a lecturer in the History Department, a time chiefly important for Catto in the enduring friendship that he built up with Bryan Ferry. Here, he also completed his doctorate, before, in 1969, returning to Oxford, where he would remain until retirement in 2006, becoming the “quintessential Oxford don”. At that time, Oriel was at a low ebb. Catto was to play an important part in its rejuvenation.
Quoting the opinions of former students and colleagues, the author considers in turn Catto’s teaching methods, tutorials, and scholarship. In teaching, Catto encouraged his students to think for themselves. Treating them as adults, he expected adult conversation. His idiosyncratic tutorials — alcohol flowed, and he often fell asleep — provided unforgettable memories. That he never wrote a book does not mean that he was not a very significant intellectual figure with encyclopaedic knowledge, as his many brilliant essays testify.
Catto was utterly devoted to his college, a constant presence at all times, at the centre of its social life, as well as present in chapel at Sunday evensong. As an unlikely Senior Dean, he exercised his authority with both “a sense of generosity as well as his sense of humour” to the benefit of college and errant undergraduates.
In the author’s view, whether Catto had a bias towards public-school boys remains an open question. He had certainly long opposed the admission of women to the college. Perhaps surprisingly, he was very active in the college’s financial administration and in securing endowments. Within the history faculty, where he acted as a cautious reformer, his approach was collegiate. Catto’s networks were legendary and extraordinarily wide-ranging. Many were forged through the Oxford Union, to which he was dedicated. A committed Tory, he was a conservative whose conservatism has been described as “an instinct rather than an ideology”.
Catto found retirement hard, but threw himself into editing the widely admired Oriel College: A history. His gift for friendships continued — warm, kind, generous and loyal, full of humour and love of gossip, never malicious. Finally, the author considers Catto’s legacy and concludes: “we will never see his like again.” I wish it could be other.
Canon Anthony Phillips is a former headmaster of The King’s School, Canterbury.
Jeremy Catto: A portrait of the quintessential Oxford don
David Vaiani
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