These notes on some important and/or frequently mentioned dramatis personae include rather more information than is appropriate in a footnote. The existence of these supplementary notes is flagged by asterisks attached to the relevant surnames on their first occurrence in a footnote, and in the index, thus: Isaiah *Berlin. As in the footnotes, coverage concentrates mainly on the period covered by the present volume; inclusion in the equivalent lists in earlier volumes is indicated at the end of the relevant entries.
Abramsky, Chimen (1916–2010), historian, bibliographer and book collector. Born in Minsk, the son of an internationally renowned Orthodox rabbinic scholar who left Russia for exile in Britain in 1932, Abramsky received little formal schooling, but in 1935 joined the HUJ, studying history and philosophy, and became an authority on Marx. He was a Communist Party member 1941–58. Stranded in England at the outbreak of the Second World War, he entered the book trade, but later, with the backing of IB and James Joll, pursued an academic career, becoming Senior Fellow at St Antony’s 1965; he was Lecturer in Modern Jewish History, UCL, 1966–9, Reader 1969–74 and Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies 1974–83. He remained a bibilophile during his academic career, specialising in antiquarian Hebrew texts and manuscripts, and rare books on socialism and political theory, and was for many years a consultant to Sotheby’s, a role which enabled him to forestall the sale by the firm on 3/4 June 1980 of some letters from famous correspondents, stolen from IB’s room in All Souls: they were listed in the catalogue, but withdrawn from the sale.
Alsop, Joseph Wright (‘Joe’) (1910–89), newspaper columnist and commentator on foreign affairs. Alsop belonged to an old-established Connecticut family: his mother, Corinne Douglas Alsop (1886–1971) née Robinson, later Cole, was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, and the cousin of both Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Longworth. Alsop wrote an influential and long-running newspaper column, ‘Matter of Fact’ (co-authored until 1958 by his younger brother Stewart), syndicated by the New York Herald Tribune, 1945–74. In spite of his family’s traditional Republicanism he was an early backer of John F. Kennedy’s successful 1960 presidential bid, and, in IB’s phrase, was one of the devoted ‘marshals’ who afterwards gathered around the new Napoleon: ‘not followed but very well liked – ear tweaked quite often’ (to Gladwyn Gladwyn, 12 November 1962). Alsop was fiercely anti-Communist, and unwavering in his support for American intervention in Vietnam, which ultimately lost him influence. A closet homosexual subjected in 1957 to a blackmail attempt by the KGB, in 1961 he married the famed Washington political hostess Susan Mary Patten (1918–2004) née Jay, widow of Alsop’s close friend the diplomat William S. Patten, Jr.; the Alsops divorced in 1973. ‘As for dear Joe Alsop, those splendid bass notes pealed out more finely than ever – the sardonic laughter like Mephistopheles in the more simple-minded operas that involve him, followed by tremendous “Ah”s, which go on for two or three minutes, and end in nothing more informative than one’s own Christian name’ (to Gladwyn Gladwyn, 18 October 1974). L1 703, L2 786.
Annan, Noel Gilroy (1916–2000), life peer 1965; historian and college head. After wartime service in military intelligence Annan returned as a Fellow to King’s, Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate; he was Provost of King’s 1956–66; Provost of UCL 1966–78; and Vice-Chancellor, London, 1978–81; he was also a director of the ROH 1967–78. Annan shared IB’s interest in the history of ideas, and wrote a biography of the writer and literary critic Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf. Recommending Annan to Robert Oppenheimer for a visiting fellowship at Princeton in 1962, IB wrote: ‘About him and his work I am sure you know: he was the appointed heir and Dauphin of Bloomsbury, Keynes performed some kind of laying on of hands, and the Book of Leslie Stephen was the formal offering on that particular altar. Since then he has been a most energetic Provost of his College, a university reformer, a chairman of some sort of government committee on the teaching of Russian, an appointer to vice-chancellorships in new universities, etc. etc., and is a man of great ability, and half-American to boot’ (to Robert Oppenheimer, 4 December 1962).
Ayer, Alfred Jules (‘Freddie’) (1910–89), Kt 1970, philosopher. After reading classics at Christ Church 1928–32, Ayer lectured in philosophy at Wadham; he was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, London, 1946–59, and Wykeham Professor of Logic and Fellow of New College 1959–78; his Language, Truth and Logic (1936) ‘scandalised established philosophy’, but nevertheless permeated pre-war Oxford, principally through the discussion group of younger dons that met in IB’s rooms in All Souls (Richard Wollheim, ODNB). Ayer married: (i) 1932 Renée Orde-Lees (q.v.) – they divorced in 1941; (ii) 1960 Alberta Constance (‘Dee’) Wells (1925–2003) née Chapman, journalist, novelist and broadcaster. L1 703, L2 786.
Ben-Gurion, David (1886–1973) né David Gruen, statesman. Born in Płon´sk in Poland, the son of a secular Zionist, he was involved in the socialist Poalei Zion party; he emigrated to Palestine 1906, taking the Hebrew name Ben-Gurion, became one of the leaders of the Jewish labour movement, and was central both to Histadrut (the General Federation of Labour) and Mapai, the Workers’ Party. In 1935 he became chair of the Zionist Executive and of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and thus effective head of the Yishuv. He led Zionist resistance to the British Mandate after the Second World War, overseeing the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, and securing it against the Arab attacks that ensued. He was Prime Minister of Israel 1948–53; then resigned, and retired to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the northern Negev; returned as Prime Minister 1955–63, abruptly retiring again to Sde Boker; came out of retirement to lead the breakaway RAFI (Israel Workers’ List) party 1965–7, but resigned his Knesset seat in 1970. He died at Sde Boker, 1 December 1973.
Berenson, Bernard (1865–1959) né Bernhard Valvrojenski; art historian, collector, and authority on the Italian Renaissance. Born in Lithuania to Jewish parents who emigrated to the United States, Berenson converted to Christianity, becoming an Episcopalian, and later, in Italy, a Catholic. He attended Harvard and studied in Europe before settling in Italy. He acquired considerable wealth from the commissions charged on advice to collectors buying Renaissance art, and in 1907 bought the villa I Tatti in Settignano, outside Florence, where he lived until his death; there Berenson assembled an unparalleled collection of books, photographs and works of art, which he bequeathed to Harvard, along with the villa itself, as a centre for Italian Renaissance studies. L2 787.
Berlin, Aline Elisabeth Yvonne (b. 1915), daughter of Baron Pierre de Gunzbourg, a Russian-born banker who had settled in Paris, and Yvonne Deutsch de la Meurthe, the daughter of a French-Jewish industrialist. Aline married: (i) 1934 André Strauss (1903–39), son of the art collector Jules Strauss; they had one son, Michel Strauss (q.v.); (ii) 1943 Hans Halban (q.v.); they had two sons, Peter and Philippe Halban (qq.v.); they divorced in 1955; (iii) 1956 Isaiah Berlin (q.v.). Marriage to Aline provided IB with a deep sense of stability and contentment, embodied in the family home – Headington House – where the Berlins lived in Oxford. She encouraged him to accept the headship of Iffley College in November–December 1965, and took a keen interest in the evolution, design and development of Wolfson College, becoming a committed and involved ‘first lady’; the College’s first rowing eight was named the Aline in her honour. As one of the directors of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, 1948–79, she was involved in planning its renovation in 1961. L2 792 (s.v. Halban).
Berlin, Isaiah (1909–97), born in Riga on 6 June 1909; educated at St Paul’s School, London, 1922–8; CCC, 1928–32, gaining first class honours in classics 1931, and in PPE 1932; Prize Fellow, All Souls, 1932–8; Lecturer in Philosophy, New College, 1932–8, Fellow 1938–50; war service with Ministry of Information in New York 1941–2, at British Embassies in Washington, 1942–6, Moscow, September 1945 to January 1946; All Souls, 1950–67 (Robertson Research Fellow 1950–7, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory 1957–67); President, Wolfson College, Oxford, 1966–75; Professor of Humanities, CUNY, 1966–71; Vice-President of the British Academy 1959–61, President 1974–8.
Honorary posts: Director, ROH, Covent Garden, 1954–65, 1974–87; President of the Aristotelian Society 1963–64; Academic Advisory Committee, University of Sussex, 1963–6; Committee of Awards for the Commonwealth (Harkness) Fellowships 1960–64, Kennedy Scholarships 1967–79, Trustee, Humanitarian Trust; member of editorial board, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann.
Visiting professorships: Harvard 1962; Princeton 1965.
Lectures: A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1965; Danz Lectures, Washington University, 1971.
Honorary fellowships: CCC 1967; Wolfson, Cambridge, 1974; Wolfson, Oxford, 1975.
Honorary doctorates: Hull 1965; Glasgow 1967; East Anglia 1967; Brandeis 1967; Columbia 1968; Cambridge 1970; London 1971; Jerusalem 1971; Liverpool 1972; Tel Aviv 1973.
Publications include: Four Essays on Liberty (1969), Fathers and Children: Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament (1972), Zionist Politics in Wartime Washington: A Fragment of Personal Reminiscence (1972).
IB married, 1956, Aline Halban (see Berlin, Aline). He was knighted in 1957, appointed OM in 1971, but declined a peerage in 1979. L1 704, L2 787–8.
Berlin, (Mussa) Marie (c.1880–1974) née Volshonok (‘Wolfson’), IB’s mother, first cousin of her husband Mendel. Writing to Stuart Hampshire soon after her death in 1974 IB acknowledged her influence in shaping his character: ‘I suppose I do owe my Judaeocentricity […] & Russian-Jewish cultural roots, to her: my father had none of that’ (23 February 1974). He was perhaps a more dutiful son than he then allowed – ‘I am ashamed of the legend of what a devoted son I was: the truth is different’ (ibid.) – but was always keenly aware that he did not visit his mother often enough, or show her enough patience when he was with her. Writing to Shirley Anglesey, in anticipation of a visit to Nice with Marie at Easter 1961, he observed: ‘I am very attached to my mother whose vitality is undiminished. But the tedium of being alone with her for 10 days can be great – you know, surely, what it is like to be fond of, genuinely devoted to, delighted at the idea of being with, someone, & yet go through agonizing ennui?’ L1 704, L2 788.
Berlin, Mendel (1884–1953), timber and bristle trader, IB’s father. Depicted by IB as ‘a gentle, intelligent, timid man ruled by his emotional and domineering wife’ (MI 13), Mendel was not the fixture in his son’s life that Marie Berlin was: ‘I loved my father, but although I felt terribly sad, his death did not sweep away my past; my mother’s death has broken a vital link’ (to Walter Eytan, 26 April 1974). It was nevertheless through Mendel’s foresight that the family escaped post-Revolutionary Russia, and through his industry that they had the means to start afresh in England; and his gifts to his son included sending him to St Paul’s, even after he had failed to win the expected scholarship there. He wrote an autobiographical memoir published as ‘For the Benefit of My Son’ in BI. L1 704–5, L2 788.
Bohlen, Charles Eustis (‘Chip’) (1904–74), US diplomat and Soviet specialist. With a degree in European history from Harvard, and distant family ties linking him to the steel-producing Krupp family, Bohlen was ‘much the “European” American’ (The Times, 3 January 1974, 14e). After joining the foreign service in 1929 he was specially selected to study Russian, in advance of the official recognition of the Soviet Union by the US, and his diplomatic career was punctuated by regular spells in Moscow. From 1943 he was Roosevelt’s liaison officer with the US State Dept, an arrangement extended for a time under Truman, and he later served as US ambassador to the Soviet Union 1953–7, to the Philippines 1957–9, and to France 1962–8 – the latter appointment reflecting President Kennedy’s great confidence in his diplomatic skills at a time of ‘almost obsessive anti-Americanism in Gaullist policies’ (ibid.). In 1935 Bohlen married Avis Howard Thayer (1912–81), whom he met when she was visiting her brother, a junior diplomat, at the US Embassy in Moscow in 1934. L2 788.
Bowra, (Cecil) Maurice (1898–1971), Kt 1951; classicist, Warden of Wadham 1938–70. Bowra arrived at Oxford after serving with the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War 1917–18, and remained there for the rest of his life, much the greater part of it spent as Warden of Wadham: ‘The College became the only permanent home he ever knew. It was also a community he transformed, a court he ruled, and a forum in which he established a national reputation. His ideas about the purpose of a university could not have been clearer. He saw an ongoing struggle between those who loved life and those who were interested only in undermining its wonderful possibilities. Jokingly, he declared himself “anti-prig, anti-elitist, anti-solemn, anti-Balliol” ’ (L. G. Mitchell, ODNB). Bowra was a powerful and positive influence on many young lives at Oxford, notably IB’s, and a ‘very deep and lifelong’ friendship resulted, even though towards the end – as IB put it – ‘I did love him much more […] than I respected him’ (to Noel Annan, 31 August 1973). L1 705–6, L2 789.
Brock, Michael George (b. 1920), historian, educationalist and college head; Fellow and Tutor in Modern History and Politics, CCC, 1950–66, and University Lecturer 1951–70; Vice-President and Bursar, Wolfson, 1967–76; Professor of Education and Director, School of Education, Exeter, 1977–78; Warden of Nuffield College, 1978–88; author of The Great Reform Act (1973). In order to realise his plans for his college-in-the-making, IB sought in the summer of 1966 a ‘general manager’ who would run operations on the ground. This required industry, tact, an intimate knowledge of the workings of the University, and, most importantly from IB’s perspective, a sense of humour, and in July 1966 he wrote to inform Leonard Wolfson that he had found his ‘College builder’: ‘my college unanimously elected (remember, we are a democracy) a very excellent man called Michael Brock […] a very able, tenacious, strong-willed character, conscientious and honourable and dedicated – I have great respect and liking for him. Although you may find him exaggeratedly academic, do not let his unassuming appearance deceive you!’ (to Leonard Wolfson, 13 July 1966). Married 1949 Eleanor Hope Brock (b. 1921) née Morrison; LMH English 1940–3; Admiralty Secretariat, Whitehall, 1943–5; schoolteacher in Scotland 1945–9; three sons.
Bullock, Alan Louis Charles (1914–2004), Kt 1972, life peer 1976, historian, founding Master of St Catherine’s 1960–80. Bullock and IB had overlapped in the senior common room of New College, where Bullock was Fellow and Tutor in Modern History 1945–52; during this time Bullock wrote his influential Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952); he left New College to become Censor (i.e. head) of the St Catherine’s Society, which he transformed into a full college – complete with radical architecture and an emphasis on the sciences – and his example was one that IB kept in mind as he approached the task of building Wolfson. At IB’s request, Bullock became a member of the trust that oversaw the creation and early running of the College, and in time he became one of the trustees of the Wolfson Foundation itself. He was the University’s first full-time Vice-Chancellor 1969–73, a post that proved especially challenging during a period of student unrest. He relished fund-raising – the thrill of the chase – and in 1990 secured the initial funding for the editorial and publishing project of which the present volume forms the penultimate part.
Bundy, McGeorge (‘Mac’) (1919–96), national security adviser, academic and administrator. Bundy became dean of faculty at Harvard, where he had previously been an associate professor of government, when he was only 34, and his tenure, 1953–61, was by common consent a dramatic success. It led to his being chosen by President Kennedy as his ‘Special Assistant […] for National Security Affairs’ in 1961, despite his family’s traditional Republicanism. Bundy was centrally involved in all the major foreign policy episodes of the day, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, but it is for his advocacy of American intervention in Vietnam that he is most remembered: although he left government relatively early in the war he was nevertheless one of its ‘primary architects and defenders’ (Richard Holbrooke, review of The Doves Were Right, New York Times, 28 November 2008, B12). Bundy was an ‘action-intellectual’ (136/4) – one of ‘the best and the brightest’ (the sardonic title of David Halberstam’s damning 1972 indictment of the policymakers behind the Vietnam war), and his portrait adorned the cover of Time magazine in June 1965. In December of that year, however, he abruptly left government, following a disagreement with President Johnson, and became President of the Ford Foundation 1966–79. It was at this opportune moment that IB approached him about funding for Wolfson College, and without Bundy’s personal support the venture could hardly have succeeded. They probably became acquainted some time in the first half of 1949, either at Harvard, where they were both visiting lecturers, or in Washington, where they had mutual friends.
Burdon-Muller, Rowland (1891–1980), connoisseur of the arts; educated at Eton and at Oriel, where he studied English and French. Burdon-Muller worked as a volunteer in a French military hospital during the First World War, and in 1924 moved to the US, where he established himself as an interior designer, and lived in Boston with the art collector Charles Bain Hoyt (1889–1949) (they also shared houses in Switzerland and Maine). In early 1972 Burdon-Muller moved to the luxurious Beau-Rivage Palace hotel in Lausanne, where he was given clean sheets every day. Both men made significant gifts of art to museums. While not agreeing with Burdon-Muller’s radical politics, always trenchantly expressed, IB valued his commentary on current affairs: ‘My letters from Burdon-Muller on the subject of [Senator] Goldwater are the most splendid philippics since the original Philippics, and far grander than anything Cicero or Zola ever attempted. They really are very fine’ (to Arthur Schlesinger, 23 September 1964). ‘I am devoted to him’, he wrote to Mary McCarthy: ‘he is the last witness of his age and always knew much older people than himself, even in 1910. The story of his relations with Proust is marvellous’ (7 August 1964). L2 789.
Carr, Edward Hallett (‘E. H.’) (1892–1982), historian and diplomat. Carr entered the Foreign Office during the First World War, having been declared unfit for military service, and was appointed second secretary at HM Legation in Riga 1925–9; there he mastered Russian, and on his return to England produced biographies of Dostoevsky, Herzen and his circle, and Bakunin. His increasingly academic interests, which focused on Russian industrialisation and German politics, caused him to leave the Foreign Office for a chair at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth in 1936, and in 1939 he published his seminal The Twenty Years’ Crisis, an influential monograph on post-Versailles international relations. Carr was Senior Research Fellow at Trinity, Cambridge, 1955–82, where he largely wrote the 14 volumes of his A History of Soviet Russia (1950–78), in which he was assisted by, among others, Tamara Deutscher, widow of the biographer Isaac Deutscher. His polemical Trevelyan lectures at Cambridge, published as What Is History? (1961), led to a debate with IB, one of his principal targets, in the pages of the Listener: ‘harsh though the language of our controversy occasionally grows […], our personal relations happily are unaltered and continue to be affectionate and excellent’ (IB to H. P. Simon, 27 May 1971).
Cecil, Lord (Edward Christian) David (Gascoyne) (1902–86), son of the 4th Marquess of Salisbury, and grandson of the 3rd Marquess (Prime Minister 1885–86, 1886–92, 1895–1902); Fellow of Wadham 1924–30, New College 1939–69; Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature, Oxford, 1948–69. Cecil published and lectured mostly on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English writers. On assuming the Goldsmiths’ chair Cecil caused widespread anger, and jeopardised his long friendship with IB, by threatening to resign if Humphry House (1908– 55), a respected literary scholar, was appointed his successor at New College. He favoured instead a gentleman amateur, John Buxton (1912–1989) – perhaps better remembered as an ornithologist than as English Literature Fellow at New College 1949–79. L1 706, L2 789.
Crossman, Richard (Howard Stafford) (1907–74), Labour politician and diarist; Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, New College, 1930–7; leader of the Labour group, Oxford City Council, 1934–40; elected MP for Coventry East in the Labour landslide of 1945, holding the seat until February 1974. As a member of the Anglo-American Palestine Commission in 1946, Crossman became a close friend of Chaim Weizmann, and a convert to Zionism, and, according to Lord Boothby, his efforts in support of this cause ‘seriously retarded’ his political career (supplement to obituary The Times, 15 April 1974, 8g). According to The Times, Crossman provided ‘a classic illustration of the strength and limitations of the intellectual in politics, and more especially in Labour politics’ (6 April 1974, 16e). Distrusted by Attlee, and suspected by the party at large for his middle-class roots – he was a Wykehamist – he spent nineteen years on the backbenches. His ministerial chance came when Harold Wilson, whose 1963 leadership campaign Crossman had effectively managed, formed his first administration in October 1964: Crossman was Minister of Housing and Local Government 1964–6; Leader of the House and Lord President of the Council 1966–8; Secretary of State for Social Services 1968–70. He was also editor of the New Statesman 1970–2. IB had a difficult relationship with Crossman, and wrote to Stephen Spender shortly after his death that he was ‘a friend one didn’t really care for’ (9 April 1974). L1 707.
Drogheda, Garrett (1910–89) né (Charles) Garrett Ponsonby Moore, 11th Earl of Drogheda 1957; newspaper proprietor and opera manager; owner, and managing director 1945–70, of the Financial Times, chairman 1971–5; secretary to the board, ROH, 1951–8, chairman 1958–74. Drogheda’s ‘handsome looks and languid appearance concealed an iron determination to secure his ends’ ( Jeremy Isaacs, ODNB), and under his chairmanship Covent Garden flourished. He was legendary for dispatching pointed memoranda (the fabled ‘Droghedagrams’) to colleagues and employees, as well as to reviewers with whom he took issue: the unfortunate authors would receive their chastisement by motorcycle courier, early in the morning of the day that the review was due to appear: ‘It was not unknown for them to be brought round, should the victim live close enough […], by Drogheda himself, in slippers, pyjamas and dressing-gown’ (ibid.). IB thought him ‘a curious mixture of painstaking conscientiousness and aristocratic self-indulgence and impatience. But he does an excellent job and that is that’ (to Jack Donaldson, 11 February 1963).
Fisher, Henry (‘Harry’) (Arthur Pears) (1918–2005), Kt 1968; barrister, judge and college head. The eldest son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, Fisher combined a brilliant legal practice – he was appointed QC in 1960 – with a fellowship at All Souls 1946–73, where he also served as Estates Bursar 1961–6 and Sub-Warden 1965–7. In 1968 he became a Judge of the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, but soon found the work unsatisfying, and its social aspects uncongenial. His early resignation in 1970 proved controversial in the legal profession, not least because directly afterwards he took up a relatively lucrative City directorship (in fact legal convention forbade a direct return to the bar). He was director of J. Henry Schroder Wagg & Co. Ltd 1970–5, and of Schroder International Ltd 1973–5. However, in 1975 he left the City, returning to Oxford as IB’s successor at Wolfson College, where he was President 1975–85.
Floud, Jean Esther (1915–2013), sociologist and college head; taught sociology at the University of London (LSE and Institute of Education) 1947–62; Official Fellow of Nuffield 1963–72; Commission of Inquiry into Oxford University (Franks Commission) 1964–6; UGC 1969–74; Social Science Research Council 1970–3; Principal, Newnham, Cambridge, 1972–83. She married, 1938, the civil servant Peter Floud (1911–60), who was alleged to have had connections with the Oxford spy ring to which Jenifer Hart (q.v.) had belonged. Her friend Robert Skidelsky described her in an obituary as ‘one of Britain’s leading educational sociologists’, her career ‘a triumph of brains, charm and presence over class and gender prejudice’ (Guardian, 5 April 2013, 38). Jean Floud got to know IB through her work on the Franks Commission, had many intellectual interests in common with him, and became one of his closest friends. The present volume is dedicated to her memory.
Franks, Oliver Shewell (1905–92), Baron Franks of Headington 1962; philosopher and public servant. Franks was Fellow and Praelector in Philosophy at Queen’s 1927–37, and was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1937. After war service in the Ministry of Supply he returned to Oxford as Provost of Queen’s 1946–8, the only position ‘that he ever really wanted’ (Alex Danchev, ODNB), and spent a happy year there before being summoned again by the government, this time at the behest of the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, who needed him to co-ordinate the European response to the Marshall Plan. As Chairman of the Committee of European Economic Co-operation, June– September 1947, Franks melded the disparate interests of sixteen nations into a single report (with some involvement by IB: L1 35–9), and helped win Marshall’s case in Washington. His reward was to be made HM Ambassador there 1948–52, a post in which he contributed to a second great feat of transatlantic bridge-building – the drafting, with Dean Acheson, of the inter-governmental accords that created NATO. Once this work was complete, Franks left the diplomatic world to become a Director of Lloyds Bank 1953–75 (Chairman 1954–62), and of Schroders 1969–84. He returned to Oxford as Provost of Worcester 1962–76, and in this capacity led the Commission of Inquiry into Oxford University 1964–6, which resulted in ‘the Franks Report’. Franks was a man of immense moral authority and ‘practical wisdom’ (Danchev, ibid.), and IB relied heavily on his support for the Wolfson project during 1966: the following year Franks was made an Honorary Fellow of the new college. L2 791.
Graham, Katharine (‘Kay’) (1917–2001) née Meyer, newspaper publisher. Graham assumed the role of de facto publisher of the Washington Post after the suicide of her husband ‘Phil’ Graham in 1963; he had succeeded her father, Eugene Meyer, as publisher. Although she had a strong dynastic claim to run the Post, she lacked experience, in an era when very few women could expect to assume such a role; in the event she gave exceptionally strong leadership during a crucial period in the paper’s history, backing her editors and reporters in their pursuit of the story that uncovered the Watergate conspiracy and led directly to the resignation of President Nixon. Later that year IB wrote to her: ‘I hardly dared mention the fact that I knew you when, at a recent dinner […], I was asked if I knew anyone of importance in Washington: it sounded like bold name-dropping’ (4 November 1974). L2 791–2.
Halban, Hans Heinrich (1908–64), né von Halban, nuclear physicist. Married (1943– 55) Aline Strauss née de Gunzbourg (see Berlin, Aline). Father of IB’s stepsons, Peter and Philippe Halban. L2 792.
Halban, Peter Francis (b. 1946), publisher; Aline Berlin’s second son, and IB’s stepson. L2 792.
Halban, Philippe Alexandre (b. 1950), cell biologist specialising in diabetes; Aline Berlin’s third and youngest son, and IB’s stepson; Professor of Genetic Medicine and Development at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. L2 792.
Hampshire, (Grace Isabel) Renée (1909–80) née Orde-Lees, daughter of the explorer Colonel Thomas Orde-Lees, Royal Marines. She married (i) 1932 A. J. Ayer (q.v.) – they divorced in 1941; (ii) 1961, Stuart Hampshire (q.v.). IB considered that Renée Hampshire held her husband in thrall, and wrote to Aline on 23 October 1962, ‘She is a monster’ – a remark occasioned by his conviction that the Hampshires’ move to the US, which he blamed squarely on Renée, would make his friend deeply unhappy; but on the surface, at least, relations between IB and Renée were cordial by the time that the Hampshires returned to Oxford in 1970.
Hampshire, Stuart Newton (‘Hants’) (1914–2004), philosopher. A Balliol classicist, Hampshire first came to know IB during the latter’s fellowship at All Souls before the Second World War, and their friendship was lifelong; IB wrote, when recommending Hampshire to Teddy Kollek (q.v.): ‘I think I probably like him best of anyone in England; so do be nice to him’ (20 April 1959). Hampshire was Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at the University of London 1960–3, but left to take a chair at Princeton 1963–70, a move that IB firmly opposed, and subsequently did his best to reverse; Hampshire did return to England, and to Oxford, as Warden of Wadham, in succession to Maurice Bowra (q.v.), 1970–84. In 1961 Hampshire married Renée Ayer (q.v.), the former wife of his friend and colleague A. J. Ayer (q.v.), with whom he had had a long affair, which produced two children while the Ayers were still married; it was a liaison that IB never fathomed. L1 709, L2 792–3.
Hart, Herbert Lionel Adolphus (1907–92), legal philosopher and college head. Descended from nineteenth-century Polish and German Jewish immigrants, Hart read classics at New College 1926–9, and pursued a successful career at the Chancery Bar 1932–40. In 1941 he married Jenifer Williams (q.v.), and was recommended by her for work with MI5, where he served until the end of the Second World War. Influenced by her socialism, he gave up his well-paid legal practice after the war to become Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, New College, 1945–52. He was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford 1952–68; Fellow of Univ. 1952–68, and Research Fellow 1969–73; Principal, Brasenose, 1973–8. Hart’s dispute with Sir Patrick Devlin in the late 1950s over the extent to which criminal law should be employed to enforce a restrictive public morality – Hart opposed this notion – gave him a national prominence, and he was ‘by common consent the outstanding British legal philosopher of the twentieth century’ (Tony Honoré, ODNB); he declined a knighthood in 1966. Herbert and Jenifer Hart were among IB’s closest, and oldest, Oxford friends. L1 710, L2 793.
Hart, Jenifer Margaret (1914–2005) née Williams, civil servant and historian. The daughter of a leading barrister, Jenifer Williams was from youth steeped in progressive principles, and before arriving at Somerville College, where she read modern history 1932–5, had already ‘adopted a “humanistic hedonism” that owed much to Bloomsbury’ (Margaret Howatson, Independent, 31 March 2005, 35). Shortly after leaving Oxford she joined the Communist Party, and was urged to join the Civil Service as a ‘mole’ or ‘sleeper’; she was attached to the Home Office 1936–47. In 1941 she married Herbert Hart (q.v.), with whom she had lived since 1937: that she was given special dispensation to wed, in spite of the ban on women civil servants marrying, is a sign of the high regard in which she was held; she nevertheless left the Civil Service for Oxford when her husband became philosophy tutor at New College in 1945. She was Research Fellow, Nuffield, 1951–2, and Fellow and Tutor in History, St Anne’s, 1952–81. An unguarded interview with the BBC in 1983 about her pre-war Communist Party associations caused aspersions to be cast on her loyalty, and, without any justification whatsoever, that of her husband, who suffered a nervous breakdown as a result; she rejected these allegations in her 1998 autobiography Ask Me No More. L1 722 (s.v. Williams), L2 793.
Kallin, Anna (‘Niouta’) (1896–1984), producer for BBC radio. Born in Moscow, and educated at Leipzig University 1912–19, Kallin arrived in England with her father in 1921, and worked as a literary freelancer until joining the BBC in June 1940. Her background and language skills were valuable assets for the newly created Monitoring Service, and she was initially based at Evesham and assigned to German broadcasts. In January 1946 she was made a producer in the Home Talks service, and was thus associated with the Third Programme from its inception; it was in this capacity that IB came to know her. ‘She was an inspired producer of radio talks, a fearless exile who seemed to unite a British conception of public service with the Russian conception of the intellectual as a moral authority’ (MI 204). L2 794.
Kollek, Theodor (‘Teddy’) (1911–2007), public administrator. Born in Hungary, and raised in a Zionist household in Vienna, Kollek emigrated to Palestine in 1935, and was centrally involved in the creation of the State of Israel, working for both the Haganah (199/4) and the Jewish Agency in Europe; after independence he was employed in the fledgling foreign ministry, and was Director-General of the Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s office 1952–64, and chair of the Government Tourist Corporation 1958–65; it was at Ben-Gurion’s behest that he stood (reluctantly) for election as mayor of Jerusalem in 1965, an office that he held with distinction until 1993, presiding over the reunification of the city after the Six-Day War in 1967. IB wrote: ‘he is one of the few people in that country who behaved with warmth and understanding, real human feeling and intelligence to the Arabs in Jerusalem, and has, by this means, prevented much pain and much conflict’ (to Karl Popper, 25 October 1972). L2 795.
Nabokov, Nicolas (1903–78) né Nikolay Dmitrievich, composer, teacher, writer and cultural ambassador; cousin of the novelist and poet Vladimir Nabokov. Like other members of the gentry, Nicolas Nabokov left post-Revolutionary Russia for the West, joining the exiles who gathered around Diaghilev and the Ballets russes in Paris; there he encountered Igor Stravinsky (q.v.), and his 1964 biography of the composer is in part a record of those days. Like Stravinsky, he settled in the US, becoming a naturalised citizen in 1939. He was a civilian cultural adviser to the American Military Government in Berlin 1945–7. As the Secretary General of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) 1951–63, Nabokov organised major cultural conferences and music festivals; when the CCF folded, after its covert funding from the CIA was exposed, Nabokov took a series of lectureships, notably at Princeton and CUNY. Explaining to Isaac Stern why he thought that Nabokov was not the right person to organise the 1964 Israel Music Festival, IB observed: ‘If Nicolas were a masterful, ruthless Diaghilev-like genius who, by hook or crook, was able to impose his will upon his “indignant collaborators”, the thing might work, although it would leave a good many corpses behind. But all the qualities for which we like him are incompatible with this kind of temperament. He is not a dictator: at the first sign of disagreement or discouragement, or obstacles whether justified or not, he falls into chronic despair and half understands the reason for them and half sympathises with them and in any case is not prepared to do enough trampling. He is not a walker over corpses’ (26 April 1962). L2 795–6.
Schapiro, Meyer (1904–96), art historian, artist and polymath. From a Jewish Lithuanian background, Schapiro arrived in the US at the age of 3, and lived and worked in New York, a city with which he was closely identified. In 1928 he married the paediatrician Dr Lillian Milgram (1902–2006) – they had two children – and during the 1930s their home in Greenwich Village ‘was much visited by members of the radical left’ ( John Russell, New York Times, 4 March 1996, D10). Schapiro taught art history at Columbia (from which he had graduated at the age of only 19) from 1928 until his retirement in 1973, and was, successively, professor 1952–65, University Professor 1965–73 and Emeritus Professor 1973–96. He enjoyed numerous other academic associations, and was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford 1968. Schapiro was a teacher of great renown, whose special expertise lay in Romanesque sculpture and the art of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, but his approach was interconnected and inclusive: ‘It was, in fact, the very essence of Schapiro that he never conceived of any aspect of art, of belief or of language in isolation’ (ibid.). L1 715, L2 797.
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr (1917–2007), writer, academic and liberal political commentator; associate professor of history, Harvard, 1946–54, professor 1954–61; Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, CUNY, 1966–95, Emeritus Professor 1995–2007. Schlesinger took sabbaticals to work on the presidential campaigns of the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, but transferred his allegiance to John F. Kennedy in 1960, and left Harvard to become ‘Special Assistant’ to the new President 1961–3. He later campaigned on behalf of the deceased President’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, who sought the Democratic nomination in 1968. IB wrote of his old friend in 1967: ‘poor Arthur has become the whipping-boy of every radical and every muckraker in America – I do not know what makes him such a target. I have just read a passionate and violent essay by a professor of linguistics and a genius in his own field [Noam Chomsky] on him in the New York Review of Books, which looks on him as an out-and-out scheming politician and fixer, and unfit to hold a chair, etc. I shall always defend him, for I am devoted to him, but in his own way he has made himself as unpopular as Joe – if they slew each other in mortal combat, not many would weep, even though your and my eyes would stream with genuine tears’ (to Pamela Berry, 20 February 1967). L2 797–8.
Silvers, Robert Benjamin (b. 1929), founder co-editor, New York Review of Books. Silvers graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 at the age of 19, and worked briefly as press secretary to the Democratic Connecticut governor Chester Bowles in 1950, before embarking on military service 1950–3. While based with the army at NATO headquarters in Paris he studied at the Sorbonne and the École polytechnique, and made the contacts that led to him becoming managing editor of the Paris Review 1954–8. In 1958 he returned to New York as associate editor of Harper’s Magazine; he left Harper’s in 1963, during a printing strike that had closed the New York Times, to co-found the New York Review of Books with Barbara Epstein (1928–2006), his co-editor until her death. IB first met Silvers in New York in 1964, and quickly came to value his friendship, not least for his reasoned objectivity: they visited Israel together at the end of 1969, when IB wrote to Edmund Wilson: ‘We are here for our annual Xmas pilgrimage: accompanied this time by the sceptical and imaginative Bob Silvers: in 48 hours he has become a (perfectly reputable) authority on the entire situation despite a stern talking to by that tremendous Deborah – Mrs Golda Meir’ (to Edmund Wilson, 28 December 1969).
Sparrow, John Hanbury Angus (1906–92), classicist, barrister, and Warden of All Souls 1952–77. Dominated ‘to a profound degree’ by his homosexuality (IB to John Lowe, 27 February 1989), Sparrow was a complex character – pugnacious, courageous, perverse, provocative, brilliant. By the early 1960s it had become clear, however, that he had no intention, as Warden, of seeking progressive solutions to the great challenges then facing higher education in Britain, and that, rather than attempt to place All Souls – one of Oxford’s richest and most prestigious colleges – in the vanguard of reform, he would make of it a bastion against change. This became one of the principal reasons why IB was ready to leave the College, in spite of the many fond associations that it held for him, not least because of Sparrow himself. L1 716–17, L2 798.
Strauss, Michel Jules (b. 1936), Aline Berlin’s first son, IB’s stepson, and the director of the Impressionist and Modern Art Dept of Sotheby’s 1961–2000, married Margery Tongway (b. 1932) in 1959 (divorced 2003). Author of Pictures, Passions and Eye: A Life at Sotheby’s (2011).
Stravinsky, Igor Fedorovich (1882–1971), composer, conductor, pianist and writer. Born near St Petersburg in 1882, and a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky’s collaborations with Diaghilev for the Ballets russes, notably The Firebird (1910) and The Rite of Spring (1913), placed him at the head of the musical avant-garde before the First World War, and he became one of the most influential and important composers of the twentieth century. After leaving Russia in 1914, he lived in Switzerland and France, before finally settling in America in 1939: he became a naturalised citizen in 1945. He married (i) 1906 his cousin Ekaterina (‘Katya’) Gavrilovna Nosenko (1880/1–1939); after her death he married (ii) 1940 Vera Arturovna Bosset-Shilling-Sudeikina (1888–1982) née Bosset, with whom he had begun an affair in 1921. IB greatly admired Stravinsky, and took pride in having suggested and supplied the libretto for his ‘sacred ballad for baritone and orchestra’ Abraham and Isaac (1962–3) (103).
Taylor, Alan John Percivale (‘A. J. P.’) (1906–90), historian; lecturer, Manchester, 1930–8; Tutor in Modern History, Magdalen, 1938–63, Fellow 1938–76. Taylor began his career researching diplomatic history in Vienna in 1928 (he could read five languages), and, in addition to a prodigious academic output, he wrote for the press, broadcast regularly on radio, and became one of the first ‘telly dons’. His academic reputation was cemented with The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (1954), but he was nevertheless passed over for the Regius Chair at Oxford in 1957 in favour of Hugh Trevor-Roper (q.v.), which embittered him, and may have contributed to the brilliantly paradoxical, and perverse, nature of some of his judgements. Satirising his style in a letter to Alan Bullock (11 January 1963), IB wrote: ‘Taylor could show that Marxism had nothing to do with Lenin’s wholly accidental idea that 1917 was a good time to make a revolution in Russia.’ For his part, Taylor wrote to his wife Eva on 31 July 1981: ‘It is strange to me how people fall for Isaiah. He is entertaining, he has an impressive manner, he implies that everything he says is profound, but what does it all amount to?’ A. J. P. Taylor, Letters to Eva: 1969–1983 (London, 1991), 438–9.
Taylor, Charles Margrave (‘Chuck’) (b. 1931), Canadian philosopher; graduate of Balliol; Fellow, All Souls, 1956–61; taught political theory at McGill 1961–76 (professor of philosophy 1973–6); also associated with the Département de philosophie, Montréal, 1963–71; later (1976–81) Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford – IB’s successor but one.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh Redwald (1914–2003), later (1979) Baron Dacre of Glanton, historian; Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford and Fellow of Oriel 1957–80; Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1980–7. In 1954 he married Lady Alexandra Howard-Johnston (1907–97; 383/1), formerly the wife of Rear Admiral Clarence Howard-Johnston. IB wrote: ‘I have read Edgar on Gombrich, and must say it is remorseless.1 A real scorched earth operation. What a terrible hater he was. Reminiscent in some ways of Trevor-Roper’s relentless polemics’ (to Colin Hardie, 5 April 1973).
Utechin, Patricia (‘Pat’) (1927–2008) née Rathbone, IB’s favourite and longest-serving private secretary, equally cherished by Aline Berlin. In Oxford she worked first for the economist John Hicks, then with Max Beloff at All Souls, but a falling-out with Beloff in late 1961 led to her grateful acquisition by IB, who had long been ‘fishing’ for her (CV written by PU for Henry Hardy). IB was disconsolate when she moved to Glasgow with her husband Sergei in August 1965. In October 1970 she announced her intention to return to Oxford (IB replied that her letter ‘made my day, week, month, year’, 28 October 1970), and in April 1972, following an amicable separation from her husband, her happy association with IB was renewed. Pat’s special skill was in managing, with great efficiency and aplomb, IB’s academic and social arrangements, which were made chaotic by his frequent movements, the wide range of his interests, and his own (very readily admitted) disorganisation. Mother of the former BBC radio producer Nicholas (‘Nick’) Utechin, and occasional compiler of funerary Oxoniana, notably Epitaphs from Oxfordshire (1980).
Walicki, Andrzej (b. 1930 in Warsaw), son of the art historian Michał Walicki, studied at the universities of Łódź and Warsaw (PhD Warsaw 1957); assistant professor, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, 1960–4, reader 1964–8, head, Dept of Modern Polish Philosophy and Social Thought, 1968–81, professor 1972–81; Visiting Fellow, All Souls, 1966–7; later (1986–99) first O’Neill Professor, Dept of History, Notre Dame. IB regarded Walicki as the leading authority on social and political ideas in Russia and Poland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and wrote to George Weidenfeld on 5 September 1963:
It seems to me that the country in which the most interesting ideological things are being said at present – and have been said for some time – is Poland. There is a great intellectual ferment there, and the conditions are just dangerous enough and just free enough to produce a critical mass with the resultant intellectual explosions. […] I know Walicki, and he is a serious, fascinating, original and very brave man who goes to Moscow at regular intervals, is on the whole disapproved of there, but continues to be and to write and to influence.
Their relationship is described in Walicki’s Encounters with Isaiah Berlin: Story of an Intellectual Friendship (Frankfurt am Main/Oxford, 2011). Six of his books were published by the Clarendon Press 1969–89.
Weizmann, Chaim (1874–1952), chemist and statesman, first President of Israel 1949– 52. Born near Pinsk, Belorussia, in the Jewish pale of settlement, Weizmann was raised on Zionist principles from youth. He studied chemistry in Berlin, was awarded his doctorate at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and lectured at the University of Geneva, where he met his future wife Vera Chatzman (see Weizmann, Vera). In 1904 Weizmann took up a junior position at the University of Manchester, and was made Reader in 1913. Through his friendship with C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, he gained access to leading public figures, including A. J. Balfour, and his skilful advocacy of the Zionist cause was the driving force behind the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. This led directly to his being elected President of the Zionist Organization in 1920, a position that he held, with a hiatus (1931–5), until 1946. He played a major role in the founding of both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sieff (later Weizmann) Institute of Science at Rehovot. Weizmann, who became a naturalised British citizen in 1910, was strongly Anglophile, working for the British government during both World Wars, in the second of which he lost his son, Michael, a Flight-Lieutenant in the RAFVR. The Balfour Declaration initially appeared to justify his steadfast faith in the British government, but the subsequent vacillations in official British policy made his position untenable to a more radical generation of Zionists, and although he was elected the first President of Israel in 1949 he had for some time been effectively sidelined and denied an active role in politics. IB became an intimate friend of the Weizmanns when in Washington during the war, but although IB recognised Weizmann’s genius, and defended his reputation against detractors, he also saw his limitations clearly: ‘For all his anger with its shortcomings, Weizmann made the British connection the basis of his entire policy. When, in the end, he became convinced that he had been betrayed by Britain, this was the deepest wound, and, indeed, the central tragedy, of his life’: IB, ‘The Biographical Facts’, in Meyer W. Weisgal and Joel Carmichael (eds), Chaim Weizmann: A Biography by Several Hands (London, 1962; New York, 1963), 26. L1 721, L2 799.
Weizmann, Vera (1881–1966) née Chatzman. Born in Russia, Vera married Chaim Weizmann – whom she had met while she was a medical student in Geneva – in England in 1906. In 1920 she was one of the co-founders of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, and during the Second World War was involved in the Youth Aliyah movement. During and after Israel’s war of independence she devoted herself to the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers. Some years after her death IB declined an invitation to write a conventional obituary: ‘I should be ashamed of it, particularly before those who knew her as well as I did – nothing is more awful than all those references to “the gracious lady”, her dignity, charm, wit, intelligence, independence of mind, humour etc. To tell the unvarnished truth will certainly not be appropriate to this occasion, even if I could bring myself to do it – at any rate the truth as it seemed to me – all that pride, snobbery, heartlessness, sentimentality, withering scorn, lack of love for the Jews, and everybody else, self-pity and false sentiment. I was very fond of her, in fact, and she was very nice to me, and we had excellent times together’ (to Julian Meltzer, 19 August 1971). L2 799.
White, Morton Gabriel (b. 1917), philosopher, historian of ideas; Professor of Philosophy at Harvard 1953–70; at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1970–87, Professor Emeritus 1987. In 1940 he married Lucia Perry (1909–96). For his long friendship with IB, which stimulated an extensive correspondence, see his autobiography, A Philosopher’s Story (1999), especially chapter 17, ‘Isaiah Berlin: A Bridge Between Philosophy and the History of Ideas’. L2 799.
Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen (1929–2003), philosopher; Fellow, All Souls, 1951–4, New College 1954–9; Lecturer in Philosophy at UCL 1959–64, Professor of Philosophy at Bedford College, London, 1964–7; Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of King’s, Cambridge, 1967–79, Provost 1979–87. The brilliant promise of Williams’s early career was realised during his Knightbridge Professorship at Cambridge, when he was closely involved in the governance of King’s, and produced a series of major texts, beginning with Morality (1972); he was elected FBA in 1971. His philosophical outlook, in particular his rejection of all attempts to simplify the complexity of human experience, was temperamentally akin to that of IB, and they also shared a love of opera: Williams was a director of English National Opera (formerly Sadler’s Wells Opera) 1968–86, and for a time chairman of its Opera Committee. He married (i) 1955 Shirley Vivienne Teresa Brittain Catlin (later Baroness Williams of Crosby), b. 1930; the marriage was dissolved in 1974; (ii) 1974 Patricia Law Skinner (b. 1942) née Dwyer, formerly senior commissioning editor in history and the social sciences at Cambridge University Press, later European editor for Harvard University Press, and publisher for the National Gallery in London. Bernard and Patricia Williams were intimate friends of the Berlins, and frequent visitors to their homes in Oxford and Italy.
Wolfson, Isaac (1897–1991), 1st Baronet 1962, businessman and philanthropist. Born and raised in a large Orthodox Jewish family in Glasgow – his impoverished parents had emigrated from Russian Poland in the 1890s – Isaac Wolfson assisted his father, a picture-framer, before setting up as a travelling salesman on his own account. In 1926 in London he married Edith (1907–81), daughter of Ralph Specterman; they had one son, Leonard (q.v.). In 1926 Wolfson was engaged as a buyer with the mail order business Universal Stores (from 1930, Great Universal Stores [GUS]), and thereafter made rapid progress in the company, becoming joint managing director in 1933, and chairman in 1946. He cleverly diversified the business, which became immensely profitable, and retained personal control by issuing only shares without voting rights. By the time of his death the stock-market value of GUS was some £3 billion; this phenomenal success ‘was underpinned by the belief that the acquisition of wealth could be justified only if it contributed to the public good – a reflection of the Orthodox Jewish ethos in which he had been brought up’ (Geoffrey Alderman, ODNB). In 1955 he established the Wolfson Foundation, with his wife and son as co-trustees: endowed with £6 million of GUS shares, it had as its objectives the advancement of health, education, the sciences and the humanities, and specialised in large infrastructure projects such as academic and research facilities. Isaac Wolfson was chairman of the Foundation 1963–72, president 1972–86, and honorary life president 1986–91. By 1991 its benefactions totalled some £130 million, including two sizeable endowments that made possible the foundation of postgraduate colleges – both bearing the family name – in Oxford (1966) and Cambridge (1977). In 1962 Wolfson became the first Orthodox holder of the presidency of the United Synagogue in London, his accession symbolising ‘the transfer of power within Anglo-Jewry from the old, Anglicised families to the children of the Eastern-European immigrants of the late nineteenth century’ (ibid.). He was created baronet in 1962 and, among numerous other honours, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1963; a freeman of the city of Glasgow in 1971; Founder Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, 1967; Honorary Fellow of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, 1959; he was not awarded the expected life peerage, but lived to see this honour accorded to his son in 1985.
Wolfson, Leonard Gordon (1927–2010), later (1985) life peer, businessman and philanthropist; the only child of Isaac (q.v.) and Lady (Edith) Wolfson; director of Great Universal Stores 1952–62; managing director 1962–81; joint chairman (with his father) 1981–6, sole chairman 1986–96; a founding trustee, with his parents, of the Wolfson Foundation 1955, and its chairman from 1972. Leonard Wolfson was keenly interested in history, and made prominent historians, such as J. H. Plumb and Alan Bullock (q.v.), trustees of the Wolfson Foundation. He also founded the annual Wolfson History Prize (in 1972). Inevitably compared and contrasted with his charismatic father, Leonard Wolfson had a reputation for shyness, though he was autocratic in his management style. He was knighted in 1977, and created a life peer, as Lord Wolfson of Marylebone, in 1985. He married (i) 1949 Ruth Sterling (marriage dissolved 1991); they had four daughters; (ii) 1991 Estelle (née Feldman), widow of Michael Jackson; one stepson, one stepdaughter. An observant Jew, Leonard Wolfson was president of the Jewish Welfare Board 1972–82, and supported a wide range of causes in Israel as well as in Britain. He continued his father’s munificence towards Wolfson College, and a newly constructed lecture theatre there is named after him.