Kirjahaku

If Hollywood wanted to make a film about Oxford University, the casting team would have to find someone to play Jeremy Catto. Born in 1939, this composite of Goodbye Mr Chips, Porterhouse Blue, and C.P. Snow was the quintessential Oxford don. A gifted teacher, noted scholar, and devoted college man, he enjoyed the most extraordinary network and seemed to know everyone: he was friends with Bryan Ferry, became Harold Macmillan’s drinking companion, taught Princess Margaret her family’s history, had a part to play in General Pinochet’s extradition trial and was even rumoured to be a spy. But he was no mere caricature. Over four decades, he shaped the minds and characters of generations of men and women who went on to prominent roles at Westminster, in the City, in the Church, and in the world of academia. In 2018, his memorial service was attended by over 500 people and his death marked the end of an era in British social, political and academic life.

On 9 February 1933, barely ten days after Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany, the Oxford Union, the internationally renowned student debating society, sent shockwaves around the world when its members declared that they would, in no circumstances, fight for King and Country. The Oxford Oath, as it became known, led to furious newspaper editorials, unleashed a political storm that lasted for several weeks, and triggered similar debates at other universities around the world. The individuals present at the Oxford debate – including, among others, Michael Foot, Dean Rusk and Terence Rattigan – were future stars in their own right, but they were also typical of their generation: young and idealistic, they had grown up in the shadow of the First World War and some of them became pacifists at a time when the world appeared to be falling apart. King and Country tells the full story of the debate, examines attitudes towards pacifism and appeasement in Britain between the wars, and seeks to understand this fascinating period of history through the eyes of a generation that said no to war.