On the whole the natural adjective to apply to Lord
Lindsay of Birker is unorthodox. Not every don at Oxford and Cam- bridge is orthodox; far from it; but Heads of Houses usually are. Lord Lindsay decidedly was not. Nor was his predecessor Jowett, theologically, but Lindsay's heterodoxy was spread over a rather wider field. He was definitely Labour in politics, and the Labour Government made him a peer. That had the effect (for he was a fairly frequent attender at the House of Lords) of increasing the number of preoccupations which Balliol sometimes thought took him away too much from Oxford. It was characteristic of his activity and enterprise that on retiring from Balliol at seventy he should set himself to build up from the foundation the new North Staffordshire University College, of which he became the first Principal in 1949. He will be remembered at Balliol as a brilliant lecturer and a brilliant preacher.
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