A Life Story: Brigadier John Maxwell OBE

Brigadier John Maxwell OBE

Four years ago, the chapel of Magdalene College, Cambridge was packed for the funeral of one of the college’s Fellows, Sir Derek Oulton, a former Permanent Secretary, and my uncle. In its obituary, The Times described my father’s younger brother as “one of the great reforming civil servants of his generation who helped to reshape Britain’s judicial system in the Seventies and Eighties.” As a young parliamentary reporter for the Press Association in the early Eighties, I used to have the occasional lunch with my uncle in one of the House of Lords canteens. Before retiring to Cambridge and many happy years teaching at Magdalene, Derek was Permanent Secretary to Lord Chancellors Hailsham, Havers and Mackay, making him one of the cornerstones of the Lords during that period. However, as we tucked into our canteen lunch, you wouldn’t have known he was one of the top dogs. At those lunches, he was just a family man, keen to know how his nephew and godson was getting on down the committee corridor in the Commons, then how my mother and siblings were faring. At Derek’s funeral, his daughter Mary’s most abiding memory was the sight of her father’s first cousin, Brigadier John Maxwell, saluting the coffin with the words: “goodbye, old friend.” The Maxwells and Oultons are closely intertwined. My grandmother was the sister of Admiral Joe Maxwell, a naval surgeon who operated on the posterior of the Prince of Wales of the time. Derek and my father were partly brought up by Joe and his wife Dodie while their parents were abroad, meaning the similar aged Derek and John were more like brothers than cousins. John would later serve as Derek’s best man. On October 21st, four years after Derek’s funeral, it was John’s turn to be saluted by family and friends at his own funeral service in Bury St. Edmunds. Covid restrictions meant many of us were only able to watch the service on-line, but this didn’t reduce the emotional impact as we watched the cortege pass his immediate family consoling each other in their grief. As we listened to the tributes, we were made aware of aspects of John’s distinguished life and career that we had forgotten, or had never known. No-one could be unaware of his passion for cricket, but I personally had forgotten he was an Old Carthusian, now recalling how he had returned to Charterhouse for old boys’ days when I was a boy there. Some of us had also never been aware that he was an OBE, and that his middle name was Pollock. Why Pollock, we wondered. It took only a few moments of research to discover the reason. In 2001, John had written a book about his family, calling it Reviresco,the Maxwell’s motto. In it, he wrote about my great, great grandmother Elizabeth Pollock, a widow who brought up her children with a rod of iron. When her daughter Isabella was still a young girl, one of her brothers shopped her by reporting he had seen her on street corners in the company of an unsuitable young man. Her mother dispatched her to Germany where she remained for some years. Relaying this anecdote in his own family biography, From Digger to Poops, Derek also observed that Reviresco had shown how “through the Pollocks, we are all – in common with a great many other people – directly descended from Edward 1.” So for those of us who didn’t know about the Pollocks, two family biographies nestling on the bookshelf immediately enlightened us. Having established this half an hour ago, I then found myself reading pages on either side of the Pollocks material. Difficult not to when you see a photograph of your bearded great grandfather, Dr Henry Oulton, with his two eldest sons, Richard (in a sailor suit) and Harry, taken around 1885. My father was Harry and one of my brothers is called Richard. We produced a biography for him last year. It’s important, as I see it, that such books exist in a family, even if they are only read from time to time. Children may sometimes feel they know the history of their parents and don’t need to read about it. I think I felt this way about my mother until I produced a biography for her 80th birthday. Some of the diary entries and letters I unearthed during my research into her early life helped me see her in a different light. For me, it was an emotional experience. I hope my mother’s many fans will also have found new material to enthral them. This is partly why my wife and I are excited about our plans for Biographia. John Maxwell’s family will always treasure the many wonderful memories this much loved Brigadier has left behind. But when this current generation has also departed, succeeding ones will still know him through lovingly compiled books like Revirescoand From Digger to Poops.

Goodbye, old friend: Sir Derek Oulton and Brigadier John Maxwell

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