New Bats in Old Belfries Or Some Loose Tiles
By Maurice Bowra,
Robert Dugdale, £ 17.50

Oxford, despite its ambience of learning, is a strangely closed and insular world with arcane rituals, in-jokes and unforgettable eccentrics. Only occasionally, through a book like the one under review, is one allowed a glimpse into this world, its profound learning, the quirkiness of some of its famous characters, and the unending ability of some of these figures to laugh at themselves.

Maurice Bowra was one of those characters who added colour to the stones of Oxford from the Twenties till the Sixties. He was born in China in 1898, and was sent to Cheltenham College from where he won a top scholarship to come up to New College to study Greats (the Oxford name for the BA degree in Classics). Immediately after he had taken his Finals, Bowra was elected Fellow of Wadham College and its Dean. He became Professor of Poetry and also the Vice- Chancellor of the University. He became Warden of Wadham and his bust now stands in the college?s beautiful garden.

Maurice Bowra was a distinguished classicist of his generation but that achievement, the many honours he won, and the positions he held, do not adequately describe the impact he had on at least two generations of Oxford undergraduates and dons. He was a very loyal friend to a select circle of younger dons among whom were intellectuals like Isaiah Berlin and A.J. Ayer. He was a great liberator in an environment that valued form and propriety. He became a kind of icon whose style of speaking and manner were imitated but never matched. Even the great Isaiah Berlin modelled his talk on Bowra?s speech which, it was said, came like bursts of machine gun fire; his whispers could be heard across Oxford. He loved to shock; he epitomized, as one of his acolytes, Noel Annan, said, ?the don as wit?.

The imp in Bowra never died, as this book testifies. Throughout his life, Bowra wrote verse that was full of mischief and fun. He parodied famous poets, poked fun at friends and colleagues and commented on events. He satirized mercilessly. He never published this oeuvre. They circulated privately among his friends. Sometimes he read them out after dinner at Wadham. This is the first time that they have been collected together.

His parodies could be funny. Taking off on the first lines of T.S. Eliot?s ?Ash Wednesday?, he wrote, ?Because I do not hope for sperm again/ Even the worm has sperm,/ Because I do not hope/ Desiring this man?s God and that man?s Pope...?? The same poem?s ?Pray for us now and at the hour of our death? was rendered by Bowra as ?Prey on us now and in the hour of our debt.??

No one was more Oxonian than Bowra, but he mocked the ancient university?s traditions and he cocked a snook at many of its practices. There were echoes of Oscar Wilde in Maurice Bowra. Like Wilde, Bowra loved to posture. He had Wilde?s wit without Wilde?s genius. Above all, he teased his friends and exposed their frailties. Neither he nor his victims took these verses seriously. They were all part of a very big lark. Life and learning were too serious to be taken seriously. To have fun was to live. Only from such an attitude could emanate a statement like ?Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between evensong and cocktails.?