James Cobban

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Sir James Macdonald Cobban, CBE (14 September 1910–19 April 1999) was an English educator and headmaster, as well as a prominent lay leader in the Church of England. He was the headmaster of Abingdon School from 1947 to 1970, and is largely credited with bringing that school from relative obscurity to national recognition in Britain.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Marriage and children 2 Religious views 3 Works 4 References

[edit] Biography

Cobban was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and received his early education at Pocklington School in Yorkshire. By all accounts, he knew he was suited to an educator's life from an early age. He was granted a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read Classics and had great success. Cobban received a double first in the Classical Tripos examinations, receiving the Thirwell Medal and Gladstone Prize and receiving marks second only to his contemporary Enoch Powell. Cobban continued his education at the University of Vienna in 1932, where he witnessed a Jewish student being chased by a gang of young Nazis wielding cudgels, an experience which Cobban described in his memoir as "seared in my mind".

In 1933, Cobban took a position teaching Latin and Greek at King Edward VI School, Southampton. While there, he wrote a Latin reader, Civis Romanus, which was widely used in the latter half of the 20th century [1]. In 1936 he took a post at Dulwich College, where he worked until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, Cobban served with the Directorate of Military Intelligence and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. An outbreak of appendicitis during the run-up to D-Day prevented his participation in the Normandy invasion, and he arrived in France six days after the Allied landing. Much of Cobban's responsibilities before and after the invasion were in planning for the occupation of Germany. When that became a reality, Cobban was assigned to help organise local governments in Germany on a democratic basis. In his memoir, he fondly recalls working alongside German civil servants, occasionally using Latin as a common tongue when his German and their English failed.

In 1946, Cobban briefly returned to Dulwich before arriving at Abingdon as Headmaster in 1947.

[edit] Marriage and children

Cobban married Lorna Marlow in 1942, and had four daughters (Mary, Diana, Hilary, and Helena) and one son (John, who died at the age of two from a fall.) Lorna died of bronchiectasis in 1961, leaving James to raise his four daughters on his own (although his sister later gave up her own career as an educator to assist in their raising).

[edit] Religious views

Cobban was a lifelong member of the Church of England, and in later life a prominent lay leader. He served in the General Synod for fifteen years, and for three years served as its chairman — the highest position a layman can hold in the Church of England. In his retirement, Cobban preached and officiated at a group of six parishes in Dorset from 1986 to 1997.

In the epigraph of his memoir, One Small Head, he wrote, "I may not be a very good Christian, but I cannot imagine any life without the Christian church."

[edit] Works

• Civis Romanus, a collection of readings for beginning students of Latin co-written with Ronald Colebourn, continuously in print from 1936–1986 and recently reprinted. ISBN 0-86516-569-6.
• Senate & Provinces, 78 - 49 B.B., (Cambridge University Press, 1935). Now out-of-print.
• One Small Head, privately printed memoir, 1998. Now out-of-print.

[edit] References

• Anderson, Eric. "Obituary: Sir James Cobban", The Independent, April 28, 1999.
• Cobban, James (1998). in Helena Cobban, ed.: One Small Head. privately published, 117. 
• "Sir James Cobban; obituary", The Times of London, April 26, 1999.