RIP, Miss Etchells.
Ruth Etchells was Vice-Principal of Trevelyan College when I arrived there in 1973, and my department tutor in my first year as well. She was an unceasing delight in both capacities, as a teacher and tutor and as a woman.
I was thus very sad to see her obituary in the Grauniad today. She was a delightful, warm, funny woman with a rigorous approach to literature which taught me a great deal, a willingness to be an iconoclast on occasions (I will never forget the tutorial in her car on the way to see some eighteenth-century tomb memorials near Raby Castle!) and unfailing loving-kindness to all her students. She went on to be the first woman Principal of St John's College - the first woman in charge of any Anglican ordination college, which is what the Cranmer Hall portion of John's does to this day - and a huge influence in the Church of England. Her love of the Church was profound, but she never forced religion on any student; instead she demonstrated all that was best about Christianity through her daily life.
Years after I left there was a founding meeting of the alumnae society (My college was only founded in 1968, though the University is one of the oldest in England); I said something in the discussion, and she instantly recognised my voice - not bad, considering how many students had passed through her office in that period!
The obituary mentions the run-in Mo Mowlam had with the Bursar (Lt Col D A Brown, Retd.) after she painted her walls and ceiling black, and the way Miss Etchells took Mo's side. I recall such incidents too, if on a slightly less grand scale. Most of all I recall the aftermath of that same car-tutorial, when we returned to College too late for lunch, and she arranged for the kitchens to prepare me scrambled eggs and warm milk, because I had suffered from travel-sickness on the way back. She deconstructed all the errors in my Jane Austen essay on the way there, firmly but kindly, and tended me on the return.
Rest in peace, Ruth. A loss to us all.
I was thus very sad to see her obituary in the Grauniad today. She was a delightful, warm, funny woman with a rigorous approach to literature which taught me a great deal, a willingness to be an iconoclast on occasions (I will never forget the tutorial in her car on the way to see some eighteenth-century tomb memorials near Raby Castle!) and unfailing loving-kindness to all her students. She went on to be the first woman Principal of St John's College - the first woman in charge of any Anglican ordination college, which is what the Cranmer Hall portion of John's does to this day - and a huge influence in the Church of England. Her love of the Church was profound, but she never forced religion on any student; instead she demonstrated all that was best about Christianity through her daily life.
Years after I left there was a founding meeting of the alumnae society (My college was only founded in 1968, though the University is one of the oldest in England); I said something in the discussion, and she instantly recognised my voice - not bad, considering how many students had passed through her office in that period!
The obituary mentions the run-in Mo Mowlam had with the Bursar (Lt Col D A Brown, Retd.) after she painted her walls and ceiling black, and the way Miss Etchells took Mo's side. I recall such incidents too, if on a slightly less grand scale. Most of all I recall the aftermath of that same car-tutorial, when we returned to College too late for lunch, and she arranged for the kitchens to prepare me scrambled eggs and warm milk, because I had suffered from travel-sickness on the way back. She deconstructed all the errors in my Jane Austen essay on the way there, firmly but kindly, and tended me on the return.
Rest in peace, Ruth. A loss to us all.