Maurice Bowra

Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra (8 April 1898 – 4 July 1971) was an English classical scholar, literary critic and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.

Quotations

• I'm a man more dined against than dining.
  • Parodying King Lear's "more sinned against than sinning" (act 3, sc. 2). Qtd. in John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells (1960), ch. 9 — Knowles (2009)

• Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between evensong and cocktails.
  • Cartwright (2008); or was "useful for filling that awkward time between tea and cocktails" — Mitchell (2009), p. 147

• Splendid couple—slept with both of them.
  • On hearing of the engagement of a well-known literary pair. — Wilson (2009)

• Though like Our Lord and Socrates he does not publish much, he thinks and says a great deal and has had an enormous influence on our times
  • About Isaiah Berlin. Letter to Noel Annan. — Lloyd-Jones (1974), p. 53

• Where there's death, there's hope.
  • Bowerstock (2009)

• Can't help you. Pity. Slept with him once—should have asked him then.
  • When asked by an undergraduate for help with translating a passage by Apollinaire, whom Bowra had met whilst in France during the First World War. — Atticus (2018)

Disputed

• Buggers can't be choosers
  • Explaining his engagement, later called off, to a "plain" woman, poet and Somerville alumna Audrey Beecham, niece of conductor Thomas Beecham — Hollis (1976), p. 22. "Allegedly", according to Mitchell (2009), p. 144

• I don't know about you, gentlemen, but in Oxford I, at least, am known by my face.
  • Allegedly after being observed bathing naked at Parson's Pleasure and covering his face rather than his privates. — Doniger (2000), p. 193

External links

• G. W. Bowersock, "Unquiet Flows the Don" [review of Mitchell (2009)], The New Republic (5 October 2009)

• Justin Cartwright, "Oxford: Does Brideshead still exist?", Daily Telegraph (2 March 2008)

• Wendy Doniger, The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)

• Christopher Hollis, Oxford in the Twenties (London: Heinemann, 1976)

• Elisabeth Knowles, "Maurice Bowra", Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 7th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2009)

• Hugh Lloyd-Jones, ed. Maurice Bowra: A Celebration (London: Olympic Marketing Corp., 1974)

• Leslie Mitchell, Maurice Bowra: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

• Atticus (Roland White), The Sunday Times (11 November 2018)

• Frances Wilson, "The Sunday Times Christmas books: biography", The Times Literary Supplement (December 2009)