Lord David Cecil
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Lord David Cecil CH |
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| Born |
Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil 9 April 1902 Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | 1 January 1986 (aged 83) Cranborne, Dorset, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Eton College |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
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Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil, CH (9 April 1902 – 1 January 1986), was a British biographer, historian and academic. He held the style of "Lord" by courtesy, as a younger son of a marquess.
David Cecil was the youngest of the four children of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury, and the former Lady Cicely Gore (second daughter of Arthur Gore, 5th Earl of Arran). His siblings were Beatrice Edith Mildred Cecil (afterwards Baroness Harlech), Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury (1893–1972) and Mary Alice Cecil (afterwards Mary Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire). Cecil was a delicate child, suffering from a tubercular gland in his neck at the age of 8 years, and after an operation he spent a great deal of time in bed, where he developed his love of reading.
Because of his delicate health his parents sent him to Eton College later than other boys, and he survived the experience by spending one day a week in bed. After school he went on to Christ Church, Oxford, as an undergraduate.
Cecil read Modern History at Oxford and in 1924 obtained first-class honours. From 1924 to 1930 he was a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. With his first publication, The Stricken Deer (1929), a sympathetic study of the poet Cowper, he made an immediate impact as a literary historian. Studies followed on Walter Scott, early Victorian novelists and Jane Austen.
In 1939 he became a Fellow of New College, Oxford, where he remained a Fellow until 1969, when he became an Honorary Fellow.
In 1947 he became Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London, for a year; but in 1948 he returned to the University of Oxford and remained a Professor of English Literature there until 1970. There his pupils included Kingsley Amis, R. K. Sinha, John Bayley, the Milton scholar Dennis Burden, and Ludovic Kennedy; and for a time he was an associate of the literary group known as the "Inklings." Neil Powell describes Amis's relationship with him, or lack of a relationship, as follows:
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