Last comment on Braddick's biography of Christopher Hill

One of the puzzling features about Braddick's biography is his discussion of Hill's years as Master of Balliol College in the University of Oxford. Its focus is on Hill's dealings with student radicals and unrest in that college. What it does not do is to cover Hill's activities in dealing with its governing body, the Senior Common Room. Richard Cobb's correspondence (to which I have already referred) makes some serous points about Hill's deviousness and secretiveness: he "has a CABAL" (28 August, 1968). Later, Cobb observed that Hill "has always been an OPERATOR. He is DEVIOUS and as Master worked through Secret Committees, so that the Governing Body was largely disenfranchised" (Heald, Pp.35, 163). It would have been interesting to learn if these charges were true and what, if any evidence, bears on them.

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