Clive Holmes, who died a week ago today: a tribute from Grant Tapsell pasted from the LMH website

 

Clive Holmes: A Personal Appreciation by former student and colleague Grant Tapsell

 

No one ever sat in a chair more vigorously than Clive. I can see him now, poised on the edge of his seat whilst teaching, leaning forward, arm outstretched, ready at any moment to leap up and fetch a book down from the shelves. The air crackled with energy. It also tended to be full of the sound of laughter, whether about the intellectual blunders of leading figures in the field, student scandals, or recent events in college. Clive was the main reason I applied to LMH, prompted by a wise schoolteacher, and I always offered up thanks for the brilliant advice - even if Clive christened me 'Eeyore' within about five minutes of my arrival. It is immensely hard to accept that such a vital and vibrant figure is no longer here. The reality is that we were lucky to have him for so long: a cancer diagnosis in 2001 led to debilitating treatment and substantial surgery. He lived his life thereafter with immense determination, even when in recent years his physical problems multiplied manifold. There was a tremendous motor within him, powering him on and sustaining him to live a full life long after others would have retreated to their homes.

Clive was a truly exceptional tutor with a boundless capacity to inspire those he taught. He balanced a forensic scepticism with a warm regard for anyone who was 'sensitive' - a favourite word - to the nuances of the evidence. Overstating a case was crass, but failing to make any case at all was worse. It was refreshing to be taught by someone so immune to fashionable impulses within the profession: Clive had absolutely no interest in the pursuit of novelty for its own sake. He hated bullies and held show-boaters in thinly-veiled contempt. He was a pessimist who forced himself to play the role of an optimist for the benefit of his students; a man of deep passions who successfully restrained a powerful temper except under the greatest provocation. He was a mesmerising lecturer, who interacted with his audience to mould his message in the delivery, even though he got up impossibly early to re-write his lectures from scratch every time he gave them. He possessed the skills of an academic alchemist, contriving to turn the most boring subjects - fen drainage, the legal system, heraldry - into golden topics of interest. He was also unusual in the sense that he was a brilliant tutorial teacher without being particularly dewy-eyed about Oxford college life. He was a Faculty man, giving freely of his time to be a chair of examiners, a vigorous schools liaison officer, and a brilliant organiser of the admissions exercise. His gifts as a graduate supervisor were extensions of his wider tutorial brilliance: he truly cared about his students, and balanced the most searching critiques of their written work with adamantine support for their projects, careers, and lives.

In the twenty-eight years between our first and last meeting he was one of the central points in my universe and a key part of what made LMH and Oxford extraordinary, memorable, and inspirational for me. I know that many others would say the same. I will miss the bone-crushing hugs, irreverent lunches, and wise counsel. I think of him ringing me to tell me my Finals results; attending my wedding; chatting with my son. I regret all the questions I never got round to asking, and the British reserve that prevented me from ever truly articulating what he meant to me. I hope he knew. Clive enriched the lives of his students and more truly embodied what is to be an Oxford tutor than anyone else I have ever met.

Grant Tapsell (1995; Fellow 2011-)