Maurice Bowra: A Life

By Leslie Mitchell

(Oxford University Press, 385 pp., $50)

As warden of Wadham College in Oxford, president of the British Academy, the author of well-known books on ancient Greek literature, and a conversationalist of legendary brilliance, Maurice Bowra seemed, in the middle of the last century, the very embodiment of Oxford life. Enjoying a huge international reputation as a scholar, a wit, and an administrator, he was duly elected into prestigious academies and awarded honorary degrees in both Europe and America. George VI knighted him in 1951. Yet few who were not alive at that time know his name today. For those of the younger generation who are aware of him at all, his career conjures up the Oxford of Brideshead Revisited, and it has been said that he was the model for Mr. Samgrass. A few of his bright remarks linger on among the chattering classes: "Buggers can’t be choosers," or "Where there’s death there’s hope," or "He is a man who has no public virtues and no private parts." But for the most part Bowra has sunk into oblivion, to emerge from time to time in an obituary or in the voluminous correspondence of Isaiah Berlin.