Memorial Service for Dr Roger Highfield

Date: Saturday 21 October 2017
Time: 15:30
Venue
Merton College Chapel

The service was followed by tea in Hall.

Prelude
JS Bach Prelude in E flat BWV 552
Anthems
Byrd Justorum animae
Wesley Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace
Voluntary
JS Bach Fugue in E flat BWV 552

Memorial Address

Given by Philip Waller, Emeritus Fellow.

'And is there anything you would like to ask me?' It's the regulation question that every tutor puts to admissions candidates at the close of their interview. Mostly, it's redundant because they want only to exit pretty sharpish; but we all know there'll be one who's been itching to unleash their question. Roger's one came in the form of a decided Miss Robinson towards the end of a strength-sapping day. This was in the early 1980s, soon after the college ceased to be single-sex; and it's Roger himself who now takes up the story:

 '"Fire away", I said in a somewhat apprehensive voice. "What", Miss Robinson enquired, "are the ironing facilities of this college?" "Come on, Highfield", I said to myself, "sit up and take notice." "Miss Robinson", I observed, "it may surprise you to learn that in this college there are still a few young men, not many I admit, who like to put creases in their trousers. For them," I rather heavily pointed out, "there is a college iron." "One college iron!" came the outraged observation; and it was clear that whatever views the tutors might have had about the eligibility of Miss Robinson, she had then and there struck us off her list.'

Roger had a wonderful ability to laugh at himself coupled with an acute sense of the absurd, twin virtues that search committees should insist as essential in Further Particulars for Tutorial Fellowships. Appointed long before Teaching Quality Assessment was dreamed up, Roger was teaching quality personified. It's easy to forget, in the current climate of business-speak about value-added, that the best tutors start by striving not to damage their students. This requires restraint, by not showing off and by deterring discipleship. From that point, a difference can conceivably be made, above all by listening before talking and then by asking the right questions, to which there will not be a single right answer or perhaps any right answer. Roger was exemplary in being himself without self-importance. He deployed all his resources to cause others to shine. The reason why, under him, the Merton history school came to have the reputation it did is because he never sought to found a Merton history school. Dissimilarity and nonconformity, scepticism and independence of mind, are what he prized. To dedicate his life to that end demanded selfless service and complete absence of vanity and personal ambition.

So how did Roger see himself in all this? 'Of course I feel a bit of a fraud', he said in 1989, claiming that by sheer longevity he attracted regard that was also due to other members of the tutorial team. He recalled one pupil telling him what a good training it was to try to reconcile his three tutors' divergent views and approaches. This is no doubt true – and yet, and yet, it is rather curious, as Alice reflects about the wisdom of going down that particular rabbit-hole. It was Roger who set the tone and who provided the example.

Roger was his own man but, naturally, he too had learned from others and from experience. Foremost was a loving family home; next came Dulwich, where he was taught history by Arthur Gayford, who was known to the boys—with that delicate sensibility that comes naturally to boys—as 'Guts' Gayford. He previously taught Bruce McFarlane who in turn tutored Roger at Magdalen. His honours course, intermitted by war service, was capped by a First in 1947. He bagged a Senior Scholarship here at Merton in 1948, a Junior Research Fellowship in 1949 and Tutorship in 1951. So far, so serene? Not one bit of it. Roger's mother died when he was 12, his father at 16. Dulwich brought lesser challenges, but challenges all the same, led by compulsory rugby, which he loathed. Unlike the hard-boiled thriller writer Raymond Chandler, who excelled in classics at Dulwich, Roger took to history only after being, as he put it, 'sacked as a classicist'. His war began with humiliation, rejected as a Royal Artillery officer because of poor eyesight and worse trigonometry. Resuming at Magdalen in 1946, he was forced to repeat exams he had taken in 1940 and do the whole course in two years - a treadmill and a slog. He achieved his First by discriminating organisation on top of unremitting hard work. It was a lesson he imparted as tutor.

Throughout all these tests, there were compensations. Dulwich came up trumps with a trip to Spain, before civil war engulfed it. The trip began in farce – the schoolmaster in charge, having a particular fondness for drink, headed for the ship's bar and was never seen again during the voyage – but the trip ended with Roger seduced by the idea of studying Spanish history. Roger's war also picked up after Catterick. As a NCO in the 97th Kent, he fetched up in Italy in Brigade HQ, converting his Spanish into Italian in order to parley with unpredictable locals; then, attached to the 10th Indian Division, he trained intelligence personnel. Here was his teaching debut, which he found captivating because the men were culturally inclined to follow an officer's lead whereas Roger wanted them to think for themselves. Thereafter, his pleasure reading included Indian writers whose vitality he relished. His war was also relieved by correspondence with his tutor McFarlane and through him with other Magdalen history undergraduates. His army pack and smoke ammunition box proved perfect to store Stubbs' Charters and a historian's other indispensable reading.

Friends made in the army, such as the horticulturalist Christo Lloyd, and at Magdalen, such as four future Oxford tutors, John Cooper, Gerald Harriss, Karl Leyser and Eric Stone, all became friends for life; but, while readily acknowledging McFarlane's teaching and scholarship, Roger perceived certain features as objectionable. One example: Roger introduced reading parties for Merton finalists in 1953, but whereas McFarlane invited a select few, Roger included all. Favouritism he abhorred and, while Merton during his tutorship produced a legion of star historians, he equally valued undergraduates who—very sensibly—had not the slightest intention of pursuing academic careers. If they left with critical acumen sharpened—'critical acumen' was a characteristic phrase—then Roger had fulfilled his purpose.

This keen sense of fairness was a driving force of his life. It was first manifested at Merton when as a Harmsworth Senior Scholar he was dismayed by one precondition of Harmsworth's bequest. This demanded the holder to demonstrate three generations of Protestant descent. The Highfields were this but, as tutor in 1956, he supported the introduction of Senior Scholarships devoid of any such restrictions. It hardly needs emphasizing that Roger was without sectarian prejudice. When for his pioneering scholarship and promotion of research, the Spanish government awarded him the Order of Isabella the Catholic, Roger, remembering his Dissenting Protestant family and forbears, was suitably amused by the irony.

For all of us here, Roger and Merton are inseparably joined. The college's history he transmitted through his annual talk to every matriculation student and through his 1997 book with Geoffrey Martin; but he was never parochial or insular. From his doctoral supervisor Sir Maurice Powicke he absorbed one valuable lesson, that whenever you think about English history think also about what was going on at the same time across the Channel. Likewise, think about foreign approaches to the writing of history. This was not a conspicuous strength of McFarlane, but it was of Roger and his Merton colleagues, that remarkable line of Michael Wallace-Hadrill, Ralph Davis, John Roberts, Robert Gildea, and Roger's own successor Steven Gunn. Breadth was what he admired and encouraged. For that reason he believed himself lucky to have been through the Oxford syllabus before it was dismembered into specialisms, because it provided an outline and reference points from which students could develop in any direction.

One final remark about Roger as tutor. His endurance was outstanding. In 40 years he claimed only once to have fallen asleep in a tutorial, despite countless temptations. He had then awoken in time to make at the end some remarks which, if of a necessarily general nature, he trusted were apposite. So what significance did Roger place on this incident? Why, of course, that the undergraduate was not a Mertonian.

There is much omitted from this address. The emphasis at a college memorial service is understandably on the college association. Even here Roger's signal contribution as librarian and archivist for over three decades has been passed over. Yet it is the personality, not this or that title, which is the lasting monument. Of Robin Harrison, Warden from 1963 to 1969, Roger considered his attributes to be loyalty, rectitude and a sense of justice. He best described these qualities by remarking that if he himself was confronted by a moral doubt, he would find himself saying, 'What would Robin Harrison have done?', because he knew that if he could answer that then it would be the proper course. We shall all think of Roger in the same way.

Watch the memorial address