The Vice-Chancellor in Office

Abstract

Sir Roger Stevens announced in 1968 that he would resign as Vice-Chancellor a year before the formal date of his retirement. The latter half of his period of office had been scarred by the political posturing, the demos and sit-ins of the leaders of the students’ Union. The beginning of Lord Boyle’s time as Vice-Chancellor was similarly disturbed by this detritus of the 1960s. But whereas Sir Roger Stevens had been deeply upset by it, Lord Boyle dealt with it with a singular blend of Franciscan charity and inner lack of stress, opening the doors of his office to the invading sitters and then negotiating their leaders into the ground: evidence, if it were needed, of the superiority of a real politician to a diplomat, however skilled, when it is a question of managing a turmoil or a mob.