“That Tipsy Don”: Sir Raymond Carr (1919-2015)

In an obituary last week, the Daily Telegraph announced the death of Sir Raymond Carr, Professor of History and Warden of St. Antony’s College at Oxford. His special area of study was Spain, and he is said to have been to that country what his contemporaries Richard Cobb and Mack Smith were to France and Italy, respectively. He was also socially ambitious and in 1950 married, Sara, the daughter of Algernon Strickland and Lady Mary Charteris, a friend of Evelyn Waugh. This marriage prompted Waugh to comment (quoted by the Telegraph) in a 1963 letter to Ann Fleming on “that tipsy don who married Mary Strickland’s girl. Carr? Ker? Kerr?” (Letters, p. 677.) This refers to Carr’s somewhat rackety social life that was sufficiently notorious to have come to Waugh’s attention, but, according to the Telegraph, this was “only one side of a multifaceted character.”

Share
This entry was posted in Academia, Letters, Miscellaneous and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.