Merely Departed: Obits at This School Aren't to Die For King's College Alumni Expect a Roasting

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 31, 2005 | MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

[billorites]

For 45 years now, Cambridge University's King's College has been dryly breaking the unwritten rule that universities do not speak ill of dead alumni.

When the obituarists deem it appropriate, the obits provide a brutal examination of the failings and peccadilloes of the alumni of England's most hallowed educational institution.

Says Libby Ahluwalia, a King's College grad and high-school religion teacher, who currently writes the obits for the report: "I don't think we write the kind of thing where we say, 'This man was horrible.' "

After a pause, she adds, "… very often."

Tell that to the late Simon Arthur Noel Raven, a novelist and television writer who entered King's in 1948 and whose writing, according to his obituary in the 2003 Annual Report, "some described as 'smut for its own sake.' "

At boarding school, "eventually his long-suffering headmaster had enough of his complete disregard for the school moral code and he was expelled in 1945 for what was euphemistically called 'the usual thing.' " Mr. Raven nevertheless secured admission to Cambridge, where, "although his preference was for boys and young men," he dabbled in heterosexuality and sired a child by a fellow student, the alumni report said. "He agreed to marry her to placate her family, on the understanding that he would never have to live with her."

They divorced eventually, and he paid for their son's education. "He did not always, however, give [the boy's mother] the help that she needed. Famously, she once wired him when she was desperately short of cash, saying 'Wife and baby starving send money soonest.' He characteristically replied 'Sorry no money suggest eat baby.' "

It's safe to say that such an obituary would never see print in an alumni magazine from an American university...

[billorites]

Snort, guffaw...