Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

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Ever Bluer
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Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by Ever Bluer »

"Widely recognised as one of the best minds amongst his contemporaries":

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obit ... 02833.html
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by Mid A 15 »

Ever Bluer wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:12 am "Widely recognised as one of the best minds amongst his contemporaries":

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obit ... 02833.html
I am sorry to read this.

Mark Cousins was Senior Grecian in my first year and a fellow inmate of Maine A where I started out. The seniors were remote to little squits in those days, and doubtless still are, but he normally had a nod and a smile if he encountered any of us in a corridor or the Day Room on his way to his study.

His brother, Tim, was also in Maine A at that time and my condolences to him and the rest of Mark's family.
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by jhopgood »

I have a feeling that his CH dates are incorrect. I remember the name and according to his dates, he would have been on my year, but he was not in any of my forms. Given that he received a First in 1968, he must have been at least one or two years before me, probably one as I will be 73 later this year.
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by Ever Bluer »

jhopgood wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 12:23 pm I have a feeling that his CH dates are incorrect. I remember the name and according to his dates, he would have been on my year, but he was not in any of my forms. Given that he received a First in 1968, he must have been at least one or two years before me, probably one as I will be 73 later this year.
The reference to 1968 in the obituary seems to me ambiguously worded: "the 1968 student upheavals" may simply mean the student upheavals that famously commenced in 1968 (and continued for a few years).

The date of birth given (8 October 1947) appears to tally with the CH dates.
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by jhopgood »

Ever Bluer wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 8:20 pm
jhopgood wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2020 12:23 pm I have a feeling that his CH dates are incorrect. I remember the name and according to his dates, he would have been on my year, but he was not in any of my forms. Given that he received a First in 1968, he must have been at least one or two years before me, probably one as I will be 73 later this year.
The reference to 1968 in the obituary seems to me ambiguously worded: "the 1968 student upheavals" may simply mean the student upheavals that famously commenced in 1968 (and continued for a few years).

The date of birth given (8 October 1947) appears to tally with the CH dates.
Didn’t notice that. Given that my date of birth is 23 December 1947, I must have come across him but memory fails.
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by Fidésien »

I was sorry to see that Mark Cousins has died, aged 73. And I was impressed by the obituaries in The Independent and elsewhere; which portrayed him as an engaging conversationalist and lecturer, a polymath, a public intellectual. He was two years behind me at CH and in a different house; so as was the norm in those years I scarcely knew him. He was, I think, a somewhat unusual choice as Senior Grecian. My memories [unreliable] are that he was a Modern History Grecian, rather than one of Michael Cherniavksy’s medievalists; that he was confident and bright and amusing; and that his natural milieu was the Debating Society and the Literary Society rather than the First XV or the First XI. For which reason I think he may have been an unusual choice. After CH he read History at Merton College, Oxford and started on a D.Phil. But I suspect that he never completed this, as he switched to the Warburg Institute to study Art History. His published output, mainly learned papers, suggests a real polymath embracing , neo-Marxist theory, post-structuralism, linguistics, and film theory, as well as architectural history. I only met him twice in the past fifty years. Once in about 1970 or 1971 when I had dinner with him and his first wife, Jane, at their cottage in Old Marston somewhere near The Victoria Arms. She has working for Harold Wilson, and I was working for Robert Maxwell, and those two figures may have dominated the conversation. It was a good evening. And also my birthday. Then in 1990 Mark came to the History Grecians’ Reunion lunch in honour of Michael Cherniavsky, held at the Royal Overseas League, organised by Robert Fyson. When we adjourned to the pub afterwards Mark and I, who had been at the same table, got into a long conversation about the way patients were treated in psychiatric hospitals. He was during his long tenure at Thames Polytechnic [now University] at the time, and I was a newly ordained [but not young] curate in Edinburgh. It was a passionate and quite personal conversation. Which spilled over into other things. He gave me an affectionate kiss as the gathering broke up, much to the amusement of the other Old Blues present. Who assumed that he was bi-sexual. I never saw him again. Would that Michael Scuffil was still with us to tell us more.
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

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Chris of Macaulay?
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by Fidésien »

Howard, No. I think you are thinking of my younger brother, Peter Martin. He was at Macaulay for a year or two before CH. [My father taught there, at Macaulay, formerly known as Clapham Parochial, for many years. Did he not often give you a lift to school about a hundred years ago ?]
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Re: Independent obituary of Mark Cousins (Maine A 1957-66)

Post by harryh »

Fidésien wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 8:03 pm Howard, No. I think you are thinking of my younger brother, Peter Martin. He was at Macaulay for a year or two before CH. [My father taught there, at Macaulay, formerly known as Clapham Parochial, for many years. Did he not often give you a lift to school about a hundred years ago ?]
You are, of course, right, good sir. The odd trip, I think. Indeed your father taught me. Happy days!
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