K.B. McFarlane is remembered by Alan Bennett, his former student, and the life of a Forties Oxford don is evoked in two of his letters

Alan Bennett

K.B. McFarlane was one of the most influential medieval historians of postwar Britain, but his name is unknown outside academic circles. This would have pleased him. He grew up in Dulwich, the son of a civil servant in the Admiralty. A day boy at Dulwich College, he won an open scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford and then a senior demyship at Magdalen where in 1928 he became a fellow and spent the rest of his life.

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[*] Karl Leyser was born in Düsseldorf in 1920 and sent by hit parents to England in 1936, when he entered St Paul’s School. He won a demyship to Magdalen and was briefly McFarlane’s pupil before being interned on the Isle of Man. Eventually he was released to join the Pioneer Corps, ending up as an officer in the Black Watch. At the time of McFarlane’s letter, he was awaiting embarkation for Normandy. After the war he was elected a fellow of Magdalen and in 1984 was appointed Chichele Professor of Medieval History at All Souls. He died in 1992.