Identity area
Reference code
Watson/7/3
Unique identifier
Title
Date(s)
- 1969 - 2011 (Creation)
Level of description
Subseries
Extent and medium
1 file; paper
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
George Grimes Watson was born in Brisbane, Australia, on 13 October 1927. He was educated at Brisbane Boys' College and the University of Queensland, where he graduated in 1948 with a degree in English. He secured a scholarship for a second degree and received an English degree from Trinity College, Oxford in 1950; he worked for the European Commission as an interpreter before becoming a lecturer in English at Cambridge in 1959 and a Fellow of St John's College in 1961. He remained at St John's until his death on 2 August 2013.
Watson edited 'The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature'. As well as producing wide-ranging literary and cultural criticism, he was involved in leftist politics, campaigning as a Liberal candidate in 1959 and 1979 and working as Editor for the Unservile State Group; his political writing often critiques socialism from a liberal perspective.
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
This subseries collects, in approximately chronological order, invitations, menus and seating plans for meals presumably attended by George Watson. Items will ultimately be catalogued individually; for now, a list follows.
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Prime Minister’s Dinner (Singapore), 13 December 1969
Centenary Dinner (Rutherford College), 30 October 1971
St Catherine’s Day dinner (Balliol College, Oxford), 25 November 1972
Cosin Feast (Peterhouse, Cambridge), 2 November 1973
Dinner on the Retirement of Hugh Sykes Davies and Robin Orr (St John’s), 27 September 1976
Dinner for Richard Beadle & Celia Wright and David & Mangala Frost (St John’s), 26 November 1976
Dinner for Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb (The Master's Lodge, Christ's College, Cambridge), 25 February [1981?]
Reception on the retirement of Frank Kermode (Queens’ College, Cambridge), 29 September 1982
Princess Cruises dinner (‘Sun Princess’), 22 December 1982
Luncheon on the Conferment of Honorary Degrees, 9 June 1983
The English Association Luncheon (St Ermin’s Hotel, London), 18 June 1983
Twenty-Eighth Annual Dinner of the British Academy (The Middle Temple, London), 12 July 1984
Buffet lunch commemorating the 450th anniversary of the death of Bishop John Fisher (St John’s), 8 June 1985
Dinner for Peter and Sheila Stern (St John’s), 17 May 1986
Adam Smith Institute reception (London), 18 September 1986
Birthday lunch for Richard Duncan-Jones (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge?), c 14 September [1987?]
Lunch (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge), 2 July 1988
St Catherine’s Day dinner (Balliol College, Oxford), 25 November 1988
C.S. Lewis Dinner (Magdalene College, Cambridge), 27 November 1998
Luncheon to celebrate the 90th birthday of Dr Frank Smithies (St John’s), 10 March 2002
Luncheon to celebrate the 90th birthdays of Dr George Clifford Evans and Sir Maurice Wilkes (St John’s), 4 July 2003
Audit Dinner (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), 6 December 2003
Reception to mark the opening of the exhibition ‘Living at This Hour: John Milton 1608-2008’ (Cambridge University Library), 14 January 2008
Lunch (St John’s), 12 March 2011