Concordia

Concordia Winter 2021

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Jacobean wall painting uncovered in a room at St John’s College, Oxford.

switch sides. That led to my parents being called in and Hugh Elder somewhat grudgingly agreeing, and it changed the whole course of my life. I owe so much to the late John Steane. I was moved to the History form, but found myself doing Latin as well as History and English, and taking eventually Ancient History A Level, and I think I was the first person in the school to do Roman Britain as my special subject. All sorts of things took off, both academically and socially. On the academic side, I have memories of enjoying Cicero’s forensic dissection of the dissolute behaviour of Catiline and his friends as taught by Rex Cherrett, or in English, encountering reception history for the first time in our examination of Shakespeare’s use of Plutarch with Harry Hunter or being exposed to the entire corpus of Marlowe’s works shot through with Classical learning by John Steane. Those Sixth Form

years were a wonderful time and my cultural horizons expanded in so many directions; experiences I shared with friends who, in different ways, have all continued to appreciate the legacy of the past. The Romans were really brought to life for me during my time at school by helping to excavate, in a very junior capacity, a Roman villa on Moor Park golf course. It was an intriguing structure with a deep cellar. Among the finds was an early Christian ring which I would later publish myself, and now, a full sixty years belatedly, the villa excavation itself will be published at last in a volume on Roman villas which I have co-edited. The Archaeological Society with its museum (‘The Ark’) was a place of refuge with real ancient objects to study – Greek pots and Roman coins – and my friends David Phillipson (1954-1961) and Graham Davies (1954-1961) and I were all avid coin