John Bamborough

Who is John Bamborough?

John Bamborough, was a British scholar of English literature and founding Principal of Linacre College, Oxford.

Bamborough was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree, Hertfordshire and at New College, Oxford. After serving five years in the Royal Navy during World War II he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of first New College and then Wadham College, where between 1947 and 1961 he was in succession Dean, Domestic Bursar and Senior Tutor.

Bamborough left Wadham to embark on an ambitious project that was to change the shape of the University. As recounted by a former student:

In the early 1960s, the University of Oxford was struggling to come to terms with the advent of a growing and strange new group of 'students' — graduate students, neither the undergraduates nor the dons with which it was familiar — who were often foreign to both the country and its traditions. A 'graduate' college was mooted and found a building. It needed an inspired touch: a young head, a scholar ... someone acquainted with university administration — and preferably possessing real personality.