1. Early Life and Education
Maurice Bowra's early life was marked by a unique international upbringing before he settled into his formal education in England.
1.1. Birth and Boyhood
Bowra was born on 8 April 1898 in Jiujiang, China, to English parents. His father, Cecil Arthur Verner Bowra (1869-1947), was an employee of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. His paternal grandfather, Edward Charles Bowra, had also worked for the Chinese Customs, having previously served in the Ever Victorious Army under "Chinese Gordon". Soon after Maurice's birth, his father was transferred to the treaty port of Yingkou (then known as Niuzhuang), and the family resided there for the first five years of Bowra's life. During the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900, when Bowra was two years old, he was evacuated to Japan along with his mother, elder brother Edward, and other European women and children for safety.
In 1903, the family returned to Britain, traveling via Japan and the United States, and settled in the Kent countryside. Bowra later recalled that he had been fluent in Mandarin Chinese as a child but forgot the language after moving to Britain. In February 1905, his parents returned to China, leaving Maurice and his brother in the care of their paternal grandmother, who lived with her second husband, a clergyman, in Putney. During this period, the boys received tuition from Ella Dell, sister of the writer Ethel M. Dell. They also attended a preparatory school in Putney, where Maurice excelled in all subjects except arithmetic. His classical education began there with lessons from Cecil Botting, a master at St Paul's School and father of the writer Antonia White.
In 1909, the Bowra brothers embarked on a journey across Europe and Russia by train to visit their parents in Mukden, China. During this visit, they also saw the site of the Battle of Mukden and had an encounter with Lord Kitchener. Their return journey was made in the company of their father, taking them through Hong Kong, Colombo, Suez, Naples, and Algiers.
1.2. Cheltenham College
Bowra became a boarder at Cheltenham College in April 1910. He found aspects of the school, such as outdoor games and the OTC, unenjoyable. Nevertheless, he demonstrated strong academic abilities, winning a scholarship in the internal exams held in June 1911. His particular aptitude for classics became evident, and the school provided him with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin. In his final two years, during the sixth form, Bowra grew bored with his school work but used his time to acquire sufficient French to read poets like Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire. He also studied a bilingual edition of Dante's Divina Commedia and began learning German. After leaving, Bowra maintained a connection with Cheltenham College, playing a key role in the appointment of Cecil Day-Lewis as a master there and serving on its governing body from 1943 to 1965.
2. World War I
By 1916, Bowra's father had become the Chief Secretary of the Chinese Customs and resided in Beijing with a household of thirty servants. In January of that year, Bowra's mother came to England to visit her sons, both of whom were preparing for active service in the Army. In May, Bowra traveled with his mother to China, journeying through Norway, Sweden, and Russia. While in Beijing, he visited the Great Wall of China and the Ming Tombs, and witnessed the funeral of Yuan Shikai.
Bowra left Beijing in September and spent three weeks in St Petersburg (then known as Petrograd) as a guest of Robert Wilton on his way back to England. During this period, he acquired a working knowledge of Russian and attended operas featuring the renowned bass Feodor Chaliapin.
Upon his return to Britain, Bowra began training with the OTC in Oxford before being called up and sent to the Royal Army Cadet School in March 1917. He served in the Royal Field Artillery on active service in France from September 1917. He saw action in major engagements such as the Battle of Passchendaele and the Battle of Cambrai. In 1918, he participated in the resistance against the Ludendorff Offensive and the subsequent Allied counter-offensive. Throughout his military service, he continued to read extensively, including both contemporary poets and classical Greek and Latin authors.
The war left a profound and lasting impact on Bowra, instilling in him a lifelong hatred of war and military strategists. He rarely spoke of his wartime experiences, once telling Cyril Connolly, "Whatever you hear about the war, remember it was far worse: inconceivably bloody - nobody who wasn't there can imagine what it was like." Anthony Powell noted that Bowra's wartime experiences "played a profound part in his thoughts and inner life." Powell recounted an instance when a cruise ship Bowra was on held a ceremony to place a wreath in the sea as it passed the Dardanelles, and Bowra was so deeply affected that he retreated to his cabin. Following the Second World War, Bowra showed considerable empathy and accommodation towards returning servicemen who wished to study at Oxford, telling one applicant concerned about their deficiency in Latin, "No matter, war service counts as Latin." This stance reflected a compassionate understanding of the sacrifices made by those who served.
3. Oxford University Undergraduate Years
In 1919, Bowra took up a scholarship he had won to New College, Oxford. He quickly distinguished himself academically, achieving a first class in Honour Moderations in 1920 and a first class, with formal congratulations, in Literae Humaniores in 1922.
During his undergraduate years, Bowra was highly sociable and cultivated a wide circle of friends and acquaintances who would become prominent figures in various fields. His social circle included Cyril Radcliffe, with whom he shared lodgings, as well as Roy Harrod, Robert Boothby, L. P. Hartley, Lord David Cecil, J. B. S. Haldane, and Christopher Hollis. He also formed a close friendship with Dadie Rylands.
Bowra was influenced by several of his teachers, notably Gilbert Murray and Alic Halford Smith. However, his experience with one of his philosophy tutors, H. W. B. Joseph, was said by Isaiah Berlin to have "undermined his faith in his own intellectual capacity," suggesting a challenging academic encounter that impacted his self-perception.
4. Academic Career
Bowra's academic career at Oxford was long and distinguished, marked by significant administrative and professorial roles, and a profound influence on classical scholarship and the intellectual life of the university.
4.1. Wadham College
In 1922, with the support of the Regius Professor of Greek, Gilbert Murray, Bowra was elected a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed Dean of Wadham. When Murray's chair became vacant in 1936, Bowra and others believed he was the most likely successor. However, Murray recommended E. R. Dodds instead, citing "a certain lack of quality, precision and reality in his scholarship as a whole." Some contemporaries believed that the true reason for his rejection was a "whispering campaign" concerning Bowra's "real or imagined homosexuality," reflecting the pervasive social prejudices of the time.
Bowra became a Doctor of Letters of the University of Oxford in 1937. In 1938, the Wardenship of Wadham became vacant, and Bowra, still the Dean, was elected to the post. He held this prestigious position until 1970, when he was succeeded by Stuart Hampshire. In this election, Bowra received crucial support from his colleague Frederick Lindemann. Lindemann had initially opposed Bowra's election as a fellow of Wadham, advocating for a scientist instead, but he grew to support Bowra due to his strong and vocal opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany and the policy of appeasement. This demonstrated Bowra's clear moral stance against fascism, aligning him with progressive anti-war sentiments. The election for Warden took place on 5 October 1938, coinciding with the 1938 Oxford by-election, during which Bowra actively lent his support to the anti-appeasement candidate, Sandy Lindsay.
During the Second World War, Bowra served in the Oxford Home Guard. Despite his willingness to contribute, he was notably not offered any war work. When Isaiah Berlin attempted to secure him a position, the file was returned with the stamp "unreliable," a descriptor that some historians attribute to lingering suspicion or prejudice concerning his homosexuality, highlighting the social barriers faced by individuals at the time.
4.2. Oxford University and Other Positions
From 1946 to 1951, Bowra served as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. He famously described the election for the post as a "very enjoyable" campaign where C. S. Lewis was "outmanoeuvred so completely that he even failed in the end to be nominated," allowing Bowra to win without opposition, a victory he found "very gratifying to a vain man like myself."
Bowra spent the academic year 1948-49 at Harvard University as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry. He delivered numerous other significant lectures throughout his career, including the 1955 Andrew Lang lecture, the 1957 Earl Grey Lecture in Newcastle on "The Meaning of a Heroic Age," and the 1963 Taylorian Lecture on "Poetry and the First World War." In 1966, he delivered the prestigious Romanes Lecture.
When the post of vice-chancellor unexpectedly became vacant in 1948 due to the sudden accidental death of William Stallybrass, Bowra, being the most senior head of house, could have succeeded to the position. However, he chose to remain in the United States at Harvard. Consequently, Dean Lowe filled the post until 1951, when Bowra served his three-year term as Vice-Chancellor. During his tenure, he was known for his efficiency, handling the business of Hebdomadal Council meetings that typically occupied a whole afternoon in as little as fifteen minutes. When T. S. R. Boase was indisposed by an eye problem in 1959, Bowra returned to chair the committee, privately remarking that "jokes about his beaux yeux are not thought funny."
Bowra served as President of the British Academy from 1958 to 1962. His tenure was marked by two significant achievements: he chaired the committee that produced the Report on Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which led to a substantial grant for these purposes from HM Treasury; and he played a crucial role in establishing the British Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran. These accomplishments demonstrate his dedication to advancing scholarship and international academic cooperation.
4.3. Academic Contributions and Influence
Throughout his long career as an Oxford don, Bowra fostered connections with a substantial portion of the English literary world, interacting with many as students or colleagues. The character of Mr Samgrass in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is believed to have been modeled on Bowra. Prominent figures such as Cyril Connolly, Henry Green, Anthony Powell, and Kenneth Clark knew Bowra well during their undergraduate years. Kenneth Clark notably called Bowra "the strongest influence in my life," underscoring his profound impact on the intellectual development of his students.
John Betjeman expressed his deep appreciation for Bowra in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells, recounting an evening spent dining with him in a passage that concludes: "I wandered back to Magdalen, certain then,/ As now, that Maurice Bowra's company / Taught me far more than all my tutors did." This highlights Bowra's ability to inspire and educate beyond formal instruction.
Despite not being religious in any conventional sense, Bowra signed the petition in favor of the Tridentine Mass (informally known as the Agatha Christie indult), demonstrating a nuanced perspective that valued tradition and cultural heritage. He also regularly attended the Church of England services in his college's chapel, a practice that further illustrated his complex relationship with spiritual and institutional customs.
5. Literary Activities
Sir Maurice Bowra's engagement with poetry was multifaceted, encompassing his roles as a discerning critic and, to a lesser extent, a poet himself.
5.1. Views on Poetry
Bowra's experiences during the First World War profoundly shaped his understanding of the value of verse. Cyril Connolly observed that Bowra "saw human life as a tragedy in which great poets were the heroes who fought back and tried to give life a meaning." This perspective underscored his belief in the transformative power of poetry. Bowra was a significant champion of Boris Pasternak, consistently lecturing on his work and repeatedly nominating him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
5.2. Personal Works
Despite his deep appreciation and critical insight into poetry, Bowra was never fully accepted as a serious poet in his own right. His poetic output primarily consisted of "sharp satires, in verse, on his friends (and sharper still on his enemies)." His friend and literary executor, John Sparrow, once commented that Bowra had "cut himself off from posterity as his prose was unreadable and his verse was unprintable." This assessment was partially revised with the 2005 publication of New Bats in Old Belfries [https://web.archive.org/web/20140425213256/https://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/~hardy/dugpubs/bats.html (archived online)], a collection of his satires on friends and enemies written between the 1920s and the 1960s.
One notable satire targeted John Betjeman, who had become visibly emotional when presented with the Duff Cooper Prize by Princess Margaret in 1958. Bowra, as chairman of the judging panel, along with Lord David Cecil and Harold Nicolson, witnessed Betjeman's reaction, which Lady Diana Cooper described as "Poor Betch was crying and too moved to find an apology for words." Bowra's satirical verse captured this moment with cutting wit:
:Green with lust and sick with shyness,
:Let me lick your lacquered toes.
:Gosh, oh gosh, your Royal Highness,
:Put your finger up my nose,
:Pin my teeth upon your dress,
:Plant my head with watercress.
:Only you can make me happy.
:Tuck me tight beneath your arm.
:Wrap me in a woollen nappy;
:Let me wet it till it's warm.
:In a plush and plated pram
:Wheel me round St James's, Ma'am.
:Let your sleek and soft galoshes
:Slide and slither on my skin.
:Swaddle me in mackintoshes
:Till I lose my sense of sin.
:Lightly plant your plimsolled heel
:Where my privy parts congeal.
The Daily Telegraph cautioned that the book, similar to strychnine, was best consumed in small doses, echoing Cecil Day-Lewis's earlier remark about Bowra himself. Two poems dedicated to Patrick Leigh Fermor were omitted from the published collection at Fermor's request but were eventually released posthumously in the Wadham Gazette in December 2011.
6. Personal Life
Beyond his academic and literary pursuits, Sir Maurice Bowra's personal life was characterized by a rich network of friendships and a distinctive outlook on the world. He was known for his sharp wit and often outspoken opinions, which contributed to his legendary status within Oxford. His social interactions were deeply intertwined with his professional life, as many of his close friends were also his colleagues or former students, forming a dynamic intellectual circle.
7. Sexuality
Sir Maurice Bowra was homosexual. As an undergraduate at Oxford in the 1920s, he was known to engage in cruising. He frequently used the term "the Homintern" to refer to the international network of gay individuals in intellectual and artistic circles, and privately humorously described his own prominent position within it, also calling it "the Immoral Front" or "the 69th International." This open acknowledgment and playful categorization of his sexual orientation, though in private, reflects a notable, if cautious, self-acceptance in a period when homosexuality was widely stigmatized and illegal.
8. Retirement and Death
Sir Maurice Bowra retired from his position as Warden of Wadham College in 1970. Following his retirement, he continued to reside in rooms within the college, which had been granted to him in exchange for a house he owned. He was made an honorary fellow of Wadham and was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Bowra died of a sudden heart attack on 4 July 1971. His cremated remains were subsequently buried in Holywell Cemetery in Oxford.
9. Honours and Assessment
Sir Maurice Bowra received numerous honours and recognitions throughout his lifetime and posthumously, reflecting his significant contributions to academia and public life.
9.1. Awards and Titles
In addition to his degrees from the University of Oxford, Bowra was awarded honorary doctorates from a host of prestigious universities, including the University of Dublin, the University of Hull, the University of Wales, Harvard University, the Columbia University, the University of St Andrews, the University of Paris, and the University of Aix-en-Provence.
He was knighted in 1951, a testament to his standing in British academic society. Further recognition came in 1971 when he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour, one of the highest honours in the United Kingdom. Internationally, his scholarly achievements were acknowledged through his appointments as a Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur in France, a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of the Phoenix in Greece, and a recipient of the distinguished order "Pour le Mérite" in West Germany.
9.2. Commemoration and Remembrance
Bowra's legacy is further cemented by physical tributes. In 1992, Wadham College named its newly constructed building the Bowra Building in his honour, serving as a lasting memorial to his long and influential tenure as Warden. A sculpture of Bowra is also displayed within Wadham College, capturing his likeness for future generations.
10. Notable Quotations
Sir Maurice Bowra was renowned for his sharp wit and memorable, often controversial, remarks. Some of his most notable quotations include:
- "Buggers can't be choosers" (allegedly explaining his engagement, later called off, to a "plain" woman, the poet and Somerville alumna Audrey Beecham, niece of the conductor)
- "I am a man more dined against than dining" (a parody of King Lear's "more sinned against than sinning")
- "Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between Evensong and cocktails" or was "useful for filling that awkward time between tea and cocktails"
- "Splendid couple-slept with both of them" (on hearing of the engagement of a well-known literary pair)
- "Though like Our Lord and Socrates he does not publish much, he thinks and says a great deal and has had an enormous influence on our times" (about Isaiah Berlin)
- "I don't know about you, gentlemen, but in Oxford I, at least, am known by my face" (allegedly after being observed bathing naked at Parson's Pleasure and covering his face rather than his privates)
- "Where there's death, there's hope."
- When asked by an undergraduate for help with translating a passage by Guillaume Apollinaire, whom Bowra had met during the First World War: "Can't help you. Pity. Slept with him once-should have asked him then."
11. Bibliography
Sir Maurice Bowra was a prolific author and editor in the fields of classical scholarship and literary criticism. His published works include:
- Pindar's Pythian Odes (1928), co-translator with H. T. Wade-Gery
- The Oxford Book of Greek Verse (1930), co-editor with Gilbert Murray, Cyril Bailey, E. A. Barber and T. F. Higham
- Tradition and Design in the Iliad (1930)
- Ancient Greek Literature (1933)
- Pindari Carmina (1935; 2nd edition 1947)
- Greek Lyric Poetry: From Alcman to Simonides (Oxford 1936, 2nd revision 2001)
- The Oxford Book of Greek Poetry in Translation (1937), co-editor with T. F. Higham
- Early Greek Elegists (1938), the Martin Lectures at Oberlin College
- The Heritage of Symbolism (1943)
- A Book of Russian Verse (1943), editor (a collection of translations, none by Bowra)
- Sophoclean Tragedy (1944)
- From Virgil to Milton (1945)
- A Second Book of Russian Verse (1948) editor (a collection of translations, none by Bowra)
- The Creative Experiment (1949)
- The Romantic Imagination (1950)
- Heroic Poetry (1952) [https://archive.org/details/heroicpoetry030625mbp (online)]
- Problems in Greek Poetry (1953)
- Inspiration and Poetry (1955)
- Homer and His Forerunners (Thomas Nelson, 1955)
- The Greek Experience (1957) [https://archive.org/details/TheGreekExperience (online)]
- Primitive Song (1962)
- In General and Particular (1964)
- Pindar (1964)
- Classical Greece (1965)
- Landmarks in Greek Literature (1966)
- Poetry and Politics, 1900-1960 (1966), the Wiles Lectures at the Queen's University, Belfast
- Memories 1898-1939 (1966)
- The Odes of Pindar (1969, reissued 1982), translator
- On Greek Margins (1970)
- Periclean Athens (1971)
- Homer (1972)
- New Bats in Old Belfries, or Some Loose Tiles (2005), edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, with an introduction by Julian Mitchell
Bowra also contributed forewords to other works, including Voices From the Past: A Classical Anthology for the Modern Reader, edited by James and Janet Maclean Todd (1955).