‘I like it when my pupils run the world’: a celebration of Jeremy Catto

Jeremy Catto’s first sexual experiences were with a greengrocer’s son, but he lost interest in the boy after discovering that his family used tea bags rather than tea leaves. As a youth he marched with the Oxford branch of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, but bearing aloft a banner calling for the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France. In middle age, he caused consternation by changing into his pyjamas on an overnight flight to Singapore: ‘But it’s my bedtime!’ he cried when there were complaints. Catto, evidently, was a fine example of that quick-witted type, with a dauntless and uncompromising way of making arbitrary choices, known as the English eccentric.

David Vaiani says that he adored Catto, and it shows in this book. Early in this century he was a history undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford, with Catto as his tutor. Now, six years after Catto’s death, he has collected the reminiscences of scores of successful pupils who had Catto as their mentor. The resultant volume is grateful, tender, funny and informing – but sometimes unavoidably repetitive.

Catto was born in 1941. As a pupil at Newcastle’s Royal Grammar School, he was already a witty, energetic charmer. At the age of 17 he converted to Catholicism, and at 19 he went with a scholarship to Oxford. He had a bright career at Balliol, despite a murky incident when he was caught shoplifting at Blackwell’s bookshop. His memories of his rustication meant that when, as Dean of Oriel, he had charge of college discipline, he was notably lenient with miscreants.

In 1961, he met an American philosophy student named John Wolfe, subsequently a successful businessman. They bought a house together in Northamptonshire in 1973, and eventually entered a civil partnership.