The History of St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1950–2000

329 Pages·2000·2.531 MB·English

by  C. S. Nicholls, Sir Marrack Goulding (auth.)

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The History of St Antony’s
College, Oxford,
1950–2000
C. S. Nicholls
Senior Member
St Antony’s College
Oxford
Foreword by
Sir Marrack Goulding
Warden
St Antony’s College
Oxford
in association with
ST ANTONY’S COLLEGE
OXFORD
©C. S. Nicholls and St Antony’s College 2000
Foreword ©Sir Marrack Goulding 2000
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-79183-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
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The author has asserted her right to be identified
as the author of this work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2000 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-41904-3 ISBN 978-0-230-59883-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230598836
Acatalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
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For Alison and Shaun
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Contents
List of Plates viii
Foreword by Sir Marrack Goulding ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 The Founding of St Antony’s College 1
2 The First Decade 15
3 The College Buildings 31
4 The Russian and East European Centre 44
5 European Studies and International Relations 59
6 Asian Studies 80
7 The Latin American Centre 102
8 The Middle East Centre 115
9 African Studies and Race Relations 132
10 Financing the College 143
11 The Governing Body, Fellows and Senior Members 165
12 The Bursary, Dining Hall, Buttery and Social Life 199
13 The Junior Members 220
14 The Library, College Publications and Public Relations 244
Conclusion 253
Appendix 1 The Life of Antonin Besse 255
Appendix 2 An East European Student’s Impressions of
Appendix 2 St Antony’s 257
Notes and References 259
Index 297
vii
List of Plates
1. Antonin Besse
2. The Old Convent Building
3. The Hilda Besse Building (1)
4. The Hilda Besse Building (2)
5. The Original Dining Hall
6. The Gulbenkian Room
7. Dining Hall
8. The Groundbreaking Ceremony of the Nissan Building
9. College Library
10. The Four Wardens
11. First College Photograph
viii
Foreword
The year 2000 is not only the Year of the Millennium. It is also the
Fiftieth Anniversary of St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford,
which admitted its first students in October 1950.
The College was founded through the generosity of Antonin Besse,
a Frenchman born in 1877 who had gone to Aden at the age of twenty-
two and built an extensive commercial empire in south-west Arabia
and north-east Africa. Besse regretted that his own education had not
proceeded beyond the secondary level and decided at the end of the
Second World War to found a university college. His initial intention
was that it should be in France but his ideas found a greater welcome
in Britain. St Antony’s thus became the first, and so far only, institu-
tion of higher education in the United Kingdom to be founded by a
citizen of France.
Once founded, the College evolved rapidly and has established for
itself a distinctive niche in the University of Oxford. Indeed, four char-
acteristics taken together make it unique amongst Oxford’s colleges: it
takes graduate students only; it takes enough of them to create the crit-
ical mass needed for a lively and varied academic community; it is
extremely cosmopolitan, less than a fifth of its students being British;
and it has a clearly defined field of academic specialization, namely
modern history and social studies related to the main regions of the
world. It also prides itself on being more open than most colleges to
practitioners in government and business world-wide (which has led
on occasions to its being maligned as ‘the spy college’).
Dr Nicholls has written this history of the College to celebrate its
Golden Jubilee. She has had unfettered access to the College’s archives
and has mined the memories of hundreds of former members of the
College. She has herself been associated with it since the mid-1960s
when she took her MA and then her DPhil here. Her husband, who has
assisted her in this project, has been a member of the College since
1959. Dr Nicholls thus has personal acquaintance of almost all the
men and women who have made the College what it is today.
Restrained only by the decencies of friendship (and the Warden’s
nervousness about alleged libel), she paints lively pen-portraits of the
stars, and very occasional less-than-stars, who have glittered in St
Antony’s sky since its foundation.
ix