Mr Alan Bott OBE 1935 - 2026

It is with great sadness that the College announces the passing of Mr Alan Bott OBE, FSA. Alan read History as a Postmaster at Merton 1953-56 as a student of Dr Roger Highfield. Roger remained a friend for life and encouraged him to remain an active historian throughout a successful career in the long-distance shipping industry, latterly as Director of P&O Containers Ltd.

At Merton Alan was already versatile, playing squash, tennis and badminton for the College, singing in the Chapel Choir and serving as President of the College History Society and the University Archaeological Society. During and after his business career he wrote two substantial histories of the shipping industry and published widely as a local historian of Surrey, with more than a dozen illustrated histories of parish churches. His work on the history of the College was more prolific still. Definitive surveys of the monuments in Chapel and the heraldry visible in College were joined by an edition of the Chapel’s registers of baptisms and marriages, by Merton College: A Short History of the Buildings (1993), and Merton College: A Longer History of the Buildings and Furnishings (2016), by many contributions to Treasures of Merton College (2013) and annual articles in Postmaster. These works were richly illustrated, often with material from the extensive collection he assembled of historical depictions of the College.

In 2001 Alan was elected as the first Bodley Fellow of the College ‘in recognition of his lengthy and continuing service to the College’. He maintained until very recently the enthusiastic participation in College events from which generations of Mertonians will know him. Throughout this busy life, Alan was accompanied by his wife Caroline and their family, and our condolences go out to them.