Word: balliol
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Architecturally, Oxford's Balliol College is a Victorian Gothic pile of no great distinction; in vintage its statutes are junior to Merton and University colleges. Yet it sits at the head of Oxford's intellectual table-a proud hatchery of Prime Ministers, archbishops, cardinals and viceroys. Of Balliol's 400-odd students, 20% regularly win first-class honors on final exams-a record unmatched by any other Oxford college, not even haughty Magdalen...
This year Balliol (pronounced BALE-yul) is seven centuries old, and it celebrated the birthday in a flurry of skyrockets, French cuisine and champagne toasts. On hand were 2,000 Balliol graduates (Prime Minister Macmillan excused himself to dine with J.F.K.) from Lord Privy Seal Edward Heath to King Olaf of Norway and Boston Financier William Appleton Coolidge. Whether or not Balliol really was 700-an agreed age more than a historic fact-they cheerily drank the ancient toast, Floreat dornus de Balliolo, meaning roughly, boola, boola Balliol...
Like Harold Macmillan, Grimond is a Scot who attended Eton and won a scholarship to Oxford's austere Balliol College -and, like the Prime Minister, he is wedded to his work. Grimond's wife Laura is the daughter of Lady Violet Bonham Carter, perennial high priestess of the Liberal Party, and herself the daughter of Lord Asquith, who in 1908 became Prime Minister in the party's last elected government. (Winston Churchill was his famed First Lord of the Admiralty...
Young Heath first showed a flair for music in his early teens, when he was attending a grammar school near Broad-stairs. After six years there, he landed a coveted organ scholarship to Balliol, Oxford's most earnest college and Harold Macmillan's alma mater. Heath played the organ at chapel and conducted the choir. He majored in politics, philosophy and economics, but was torn between the law and music as a profession. In 1940 he joined the Royal Artillery as a private in the ranks, fought through four of the Six: France, Belgium, Holland and Germany...
...grandson of Lord Asquith (Liberal Prime Minister from 1908-1916), Bonham-Carter was born in 1922, educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford; he spent 1947-48 as a Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Chicago. His mother, the redoubtable Lady Violet, has played a more than active role in British politics for years and was at one time chairman of the Party before the post was assumed by Mark Bonham-Carter's brother-in-law, Jo Grimmond...