One summer we all went to a local circus together and Jim was inspired to show off his juggling skills in their backyard. Left top: You can see Rory and Georgia are in rapt attention...
Right top: Barbara, Jim, and David at the circus.
Left bottom: Barbara, Rory, and Georgia.
Right bottom: Barbara and me
Right top: David, Barbara, Rory, and Georgia
Lett bottom: Barbara and David looking very relaxed.
Dinner with the Bradshaws and some friends who were visiting. Georgia with the famous dog...
David pouring wine.
Barbara was a great cook and we had some great meals at their home and lots of Oxford pub visits with David while Barbara was slaving over the Aga...
The current Huxley Annual is dedicated to David. Jim was asked to write the In Memoriam.
n In Memoriam David Bradshaw
This September the Aldous Huxley Society lost one of its founding members and a frequent contributor to its annual journal with the untimely passing of Professor David Bradshaw. His wide-ranging productivity as a scholar was truly impressive.
I first met David in the summer of 1994 at the University of Muenster, where we were both presenters at the first International Aldous Huxley Conference, and where we soon hatched a plan to co-edit Huxley’s then-lost play, Now More than Ever, which we had been researching independently and which had been one of the subjects of our first email conversations. His generosity, intelligence and energy made working with him a delight, so I was very pleased when he accepted my offer to serve as co-director of what became a highly successful annual “Advanced Placement Intensive Summer Institute for Secondary School Teachers of English” at Worcester College, Oxford, on behalf of the College Board, New York. There it was a pleasure to watch David charismatically leading American and Canadian English teachers in discussions of classics such as Brave New World or Mrs Dalloway, or genially showing them some of his favorite haunts in Oxford, such as the Bodleian Library, Blackwell's famous bookstore, or sharing some nugget of literary gossip over a glass of London Pride on the riverfront garden of the bucolic pub he favoured, The Trout.
I first met David in the summer of 1994 at the University of Muenster, where we were both presenters at the first International Aldous Huxley Conference, and where we soon hatched a plan to co-edit Huxley’s then-lost play, Now More than Ever, which we had been researching independently and which had been one of the subjects of our first email conversations. His generosity, intelligence and energy made working with him a delight, so I was very pleased when he accepted my offer to serve as co-director of what became a highly successful annual “Advanced Placement Intensive Summer Institute for Secondary School Teachers of English” at Worcester College, Oxford, on behalf of the College Board, New York. There it was a pleasure to watch David charismatically leading American and Canadian English teachers in discussions of classics such as Brave New World or Mrs Dalloway, or genially showing them some of his favorite haunts in Oxford, such as the Bodleian Library, Blackwell's famous bookstore, or sharing some nugget of literary gossip over a glass of London Pride on the riverfront garden of the bucolic pub he favoured, The Trout.
One recurrent adjective in addition to “brilliant” that students and colleagues used in the many touching online tributes to him was “funny.” I can vouch for his wit and warmth, qualities that he carried with him from the classroom to his own hearth. Another is "generous". He and Barbara hosted my wife and me on the three occasions when we visited the Oxford area, and it was in their Summertown home where we came to appreciate David as a warm host and devoted family man. One brief email to me from 1997 typifies his supportive, kindly nature and shows how he made time for his family, even on a busy working holiday in the University of Georgia system:
“Dear Jim, Good work on the MS; Cathy [our librarian contact at a major Texas research library] is a gem, is she not?...I’m at UGeorgia, Athens, but on Wednesday and Thursday I am to lecture at Georgia Tech, Atlanta. We went to Savannah on Friday and Rory and Barbara helped fly a Piper Cherokee yesterday over St. Simon’s Island.”
He was also a tireless researcher—in fact he introduced me to a lively British slang term that he applied to himself—‘under the kosh’—we North Americans might use the more shopworn “under the gun”—and while it is true that he habitually took on much work and pressure, yet his industry and trail-blazing research made all the effort worthwhile, given his publication of many unknown works, and impeccably-edited scholarly editions, not only by Huxley but other modernist luminaries such as Virginia Woolf and Evelyn Waugh.
Jonathan Bate, Provost of Worcester College, where David had served as Chair of Oxford’s Faculty of English, very aptly described him as “funny, collegial and so full of vitality, as well as being a great teacher and scholar critic.” One of his young research associates on the ambitious “Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh Project”, which David had chaired, tellingly captures one of his defining traits as she recounts how, talking with David during their first meeting, she tripped over a door frame in the senior common room, landing face down in front of two startled dons. David helped her to her feet, and then broke out with her into hearty laughter, and later, “dissolving into giggles” when they met again during the afternoon’s serious business. David was like that—confident, yet always down-to-earth; kindly, he made others feel at ease, and happy to be with him.
His knowledge and wit certainly made him a highly sought-after public speaker, and, happily, we can still get a glimpse of his ability to elucidate and celebrate great works of modern literature by listening to or viewing some of David’s appearances on various radio and television documentaries:—as a guest on two episodes of the BBC Radio series “In Our Time” (“Brave New World”), first broadcast on 9 April 2009 and “Decline and Fall”, 21 February 2013,— both of which can be downloaded at the BBC website for “In Our Time” as MP3 podcasts. He also can be seen on the 1993 BBC television documentary “Aldous Huxley: Darkness and Light.”
Martin Stannard, his co-investigator on the Waugh Project, perhaps describes him best: “Brilliant, witty, learned, intellectually subversive, he was always a joy. During his last months, emails laced with gallows humour would leave me amazed at his resilience...One never left him without feeling enlivened, and longing for the next encounter.”
We will miss him.
