RIP Jasper Griffin

[rockfreak]

Come on you older Blues from our distinguished school, one of the great classicists of my era popped his clogs just recently and attracted a very appreciative obit in the Guardian. Not much use I know since most of you guys read the Torygraph, the Mail (or even perhaps the Sun) but anyway Griffin was one of that illustrious and numerous breed of fifties entries from CH to Oxbridge when CH was distinguishing itself with classicists and historians. Read all about them in Geoffrey Cannon's contribution to this site. The obit writer was clearly a fellow classicist who went into Griffin's research into ancient Greek literature with a toothcomb, so I'm afraid that much of it went over my head. It mentions his scholarship to CH but says that he didn't like the boarding bit of it. I imagine there must have been obits in other national papers unless they've all taken Michael Gove's line that classics are a complete waste of time and only hedge fund managers are entitled to an obit.

[Katharine]

I’d never heard of the man, but looked him up, and see what you mean about that obit!

I also discovered that Boris found time in the election campaign to write a bit in the Telegraph about his former teacher. I think that’s about the first time I’ve read something about him that I respect the man for! Rockfreak the Guardian is far more my home territory than the Torygraph, can’t read their obit it’s behind a paywall.

[RobinKinloch]

Sad to hear of Jasper Griffin's passing - he was easily acknowledged as the foremost scholar of our year, at least on the arts side. His subsequent stellar career was a source of great pride for us his contemporaries. While his Oxford lectures and his books may not perhaps have reached a wider audience, the articles he wrote in such publications as the New York Review of Books were a reminder to us all of his impressive thought and style. My condolences to his daughters - RIP.

[Mid A 15]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... n-obituary

Hopefully this link will work for those wishing to read it.

Good to see you back Rockfreak albeit bearing sad news.

[brian walling]

Vey sad news. Sincere condolences to his family.

I skim most of the papers each day on the Web, but I must have missed this (and I don't recall seeing it in any of the recent OB News from CH). Thanks, Rockfreak, for bringing this up. The name Jasper Griffin immediately got my attention.

I was a Classicist too and pupil, like Jasper, of the well-known Derek Macnutt, head of Classics at CH (although I changed fields to Economics at university and later added some Mechanical Engineering). I remember Jasper quite well as a senior figure in the School, although he was 5 years ahead of me and we overlapped only by 2 years. I never actually knew him as a Classicist, but when I reached the elevated level of Classical Grecians under the direct tutelage of Derek Macnutt in 1958, Jasper, who by then was 2 years beyond CH, was already starting to become something of a legend and Derek Macnutt, as I recall, used to highlight Jasper's progress to us.

I lost touch with the world of Classics after leaving CH -- although it proved useful when I moved for a while to live in Greece (Corfu) -- but the name Jasper Griffin, even after some 60 years, still got my immediate attention when the topic was posted on this forum.

[ZeroDeConduite]

Quote from Guardian article:
"He did not enjoy boarding but thrived academically..."
With him a Grecian and me as a squit, I remember his face displaying a supercilious disdain for the whole process of the school's regime treating everyone essentially like an 11 year-old in every field apart from education.
He had a younger brother in the house and they were a formidable twosome.

There were several members of MacNutt's classics/crosswords/Gilbert&Sullivan clique in Peele A. It seemed to me that, with my science/engineering inclination, he epitomised one facet of the CP Snow Two Cultures meme.
I remember very little of my 9 years at the school, but I can still picture his curled-lip contemptuousness of the day-to-day/close-proximity life in a CH house in the early/mid 1950s.