James Cobban

Sir James Macdonald Cobban
Born	14 September 1910 Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire
Died	19 April 1999 Yeovil, Somerset
Nationality	British
Occupation	Teacher and lay leader
Known for	Headmaster of Abingdon School
Spouse(s)	Lorna Mary Marlow (1913–1961)
Children	Helena Cobban

Sir James Macdonald Cobban, KBE (1982), DL (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 the school from relative obscurity to national recognition in Britain.

Cobban was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and received his early education at Pocklington School in Yorkshire. 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. Whilst there, he wrote a Latin reader, "Civis Romanus", which was widely used in the latter half of the 20th century, selling over half a million copies. 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 attack 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. Many of Cobban's responsibilities before and after the invasion involved 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.

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