Oscar Browning - universally known as O.B., and in modern times only rivalled as Cambridge's most celebrated don by his fellow Kingsman, J.M. Keynes - died in Rome in 1923 at the age of 86, having extracted from a nephew, Hugo Wortham, a promise to undertake his biography, and in return making Wortham his heir and literary executor. The biography, which appeared in 1927, earned a good deal of informed approbation. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, who as an undergraduate had been much influenced by O.B., admired it greatly. E.M. Forster, briefly O.B.'s pupil (or at least a reader of essays to him while he slumbered under an enormous red handkerchief), described it in 1934 as 'one of the best biographies of the last few years - quite unsparing and completely sympathetic'.

LRB 5 July 1984 | PDF Download