My father, Nicol Russel, who has died aged 92, was one of "the Seven", the group of Oxford University friends that also included Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis.
Nick was born in London, son of Hunter Russel, a Royal Navy captain, and his wife, Margery (nee Rees). After Oundle school (where the entertaining Arthur Marshall was Nick's housemaster), he went to St John's College, Oxford, in 1940, to read English. This would include Anglo-Saxon taught by JRR Tolkien ("dreadful mumbler, with terrible cramped handwriting," recalled Nick). Shortly after he arrived, another St John's undergraduate, Larkin, approached Nick to recruit him to a new English Society. They very quickly discovered a shared love of jazz especially as Nick had a gramophone and Larkin didn't and dropped the English Society idea. Amis and others (including Edward "Duke" du Cann, later a Conservative minister) soon became friends.
Continue reading...