A Hero for our Time: Bernard Knox

Abstract

A Hero forour Time: Bernard Knox MARIANNE MCDONALD -Bernard Knox, who died on 22 July 2010 at the age of ninety-five,was a man who lived about as long as his beloved Sophocles, who wrote about heroes and at the same time was known for his charm and "hail-fellow, well met" personality. Knox was a hero himself and the most learned as well as congenial man one would ever be privi leged tomeet. He would be welcomed into heaven, but ifhe went sightseeing in hell?some writers likeDante had tastes like that?he could charm Satan into giving him safe passage through, and even Cerberus would need no sop. I remember a story he enjoyed telling about the time he was fightingon the side of the partisans in Italy in World War II. Towards the end of thewar, as he was out walking a bit far from his camp, he met a column ofNazi soldiers whom he was able to persuade that thewar was over and to surren der to him, because then things would go better for them. They believed him, and he marched them back to camp as his prisoners, only for them to learn that thewar was in fact not yet over. He learned how to speak well in several languages and as a youth used to hold forth inLondon's Hyde Park, de veloping skillswhich not only made him a teacher to die for, but saved his own lifeon numerous occasions. He was aman who could have taken pride inhaving made things better not only for his students, many of whom he helped throughout their lives, but also, by fighting for causes inwhich he believed, for thewhole world. He was born in 1914 in Bradford, in theWest Riding of Yorkshire, and spoke with a Bradford accent throughout his life.He was a committed Socialist because he believed in the common ARION 18.2 FALL 20I0 132 a hero for our time: bernard knox man, sowhen he attended St. John's College, Cambridge, he made friends on the basis not of social class but of heart and of quality ofmind. Knox studied classics at Cambridge. In 1936, he took his A, about which he speaks ruefully: "I had made rather a mediocre showing in the final part of the Tripos, ending up with a second class (at least, I comforted myself, I did better thanAuden, who got a third, and Housman, who failed com pletely)."1 During that time, he was too busy at Cambridge, marching in theAnti-War Movement, to take his studies seri ously while Hitler was galloping to power. Bernard's sister, Elizabeth L. Campbell, had a picture of a demonstration with students holding placards that said things like "Scholarships, not battleships." Knox and his friendDonald Maclean are there shouting slogans. Knox's sisterwrote on the back of the photograph: "Bernard studying the Classics at Cambridge." During a march on Armistice Day, 11 November 1933, they met with physical and verbal abuse, including critical com mentary of the vegetable, fruit, and egg sort, but theywere successful in leaving theirwreath on the War Memorial. The secondary school that he attended in 1926 offered cadet military training. There he learned to shoot, livewith bugle calls, and conduct combat maneuvers. However, his at titude by the time of his Cambridge years was that all war was as senseless as thewar described by Euripides inhis Tro jan Women, perhaps the greatest anti-war play everwritten. (Euripides also strikes a very modern tone?something I'm sure thatKnox appreciated?for example, inhisHelen, when he suggests thatwar was divinely instigated as a form of pop ulation control! Even in the fifthcentury bc, thatwas a mor dant take?the thought thatworld overpopulation was to be regulated bywar.) Knox was also influenced by the then cur rent novels and memoirs?from Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That to Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on theWest ern Front?as well as the poetry ofWilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg. His thinking, then,was influ enced by both ancient and modern literature. Marianne McDonald 133 In addition to all this,Knox was shaped by his family's ex perience: they...