This volume by the late Richard Symonds (1918-2006; Scholar of Corpus, 1936-9) is the sequel to his two previous books about the history of Corpus Christi College, Oxford: The Fox, the Bees and the Pelican: Worthies and Noteworthies of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (2002) and Daring to be Wise: More worthies and Noteworthies of Corpus Christi College (2004).
Like its predecessors, it provides lively sketches of past members of the College over several centuries. There are accounts of Nicholas Udall from the sixteenth century, controversial headmaster of Eton and Westminster and author of one of the earliest English comedies; Edward Pocock, seventeenth-century Professor of both Arabic and Hebrew at Oxford and perhaps the greatest English Orientalist; William Buckland from the first half of the nineteenth century, eccentric great pioneer and dinosaur hunter; Thomas Fowler, genial and beloved late Victorian President of Corpus and Vice-Chancellor; and Sir Richard Livingston, a successor in both offices and indefatigable champion of Plato and the Greeks in the first half of the twentieth century.