Alleyn Club Newsletter 2013

and derelict spaces, as well as West End theatres, in search of new productions. He wrote a review of everything he saw for his personal archive and his assessments were frequently scathing, but always informative and very funny. A related interest was textual analysis and he would spend many hours in the Rare Book room of the British Library examining different versions of texts by Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘Save the Rose Theatre’ campaign to save the historic site on Bankside. Naturally shy, he was very much a loner and was not an easy person to get to know. But those who did take time to get to know him better were rewarded by generosity, loyalty, kindness and a fine wit. He was an assiduous correspondent and his letters, postcards and emails were unfailingly informative, wicked and amusing. An operation on his leg shortly before retirement was not wholly successful in curing a limp which had developed after an earlier accident. His mobility worsened and he found it increasingly difficult to pursue his interests and meet with friends, and his disability became a constant source of distress and regret. He died at home in Charlton and is survived by several cousins. Olwen Terris, Alan Stevens and Robert Holden contributed significantly to this obituary.

Caius College, Cambridge, he and Paul Aitchison stayed on at Dulwich until the summer term to do further A levels. They also dissected and mounted the skeleton of a male badger whose body had been brought in to school as road kill by a junior pupil. The completed skeleton was displayed in one of the specimen cabinets in the Biology corridor of the Science block. After his first year of Physiology and Zoology at Cambridge, Brian decided to switch to Medicine and he qualified in 1970 after three clinical years at The Middlesex Hospital. He was appointed Consultant Geriatrician at the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital in 1978 and he built up the Department of Medicine for the Elderly from a fragmented to a fully amalgamated district geriatric service by 1985. Retirement in 2006 was overshadowed by a diagnosis of cancer of the colon, but he lived as normal a life as possible between episodes of illness and treatment. He married Margaret in January 1971 on an off-duty weekend, since pre- registration housemen were not allowed holidays in those days. They had three children who were all with him when he died at home. Geoffrey Robinson was born in Farnborough while his father was serving in the RAF. He was evacuated during the Second World War with a luggage label pinned to him, a memory which he claimed in later life caused his aversion to wearing identification badges at conferences and meetings. He came to Dulwich from Dalmain Road School in Forest Hill and was in Drake house. After leaving the College, he won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an English degree in 1963 and was later awarded an MA. When he left Cambridge, he first worked in the library of City University, London, but he joined the British Standards Institution (BSI) in 1970, where he spent the rest of his working life, retiring in 2003. He worked closely on the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) library classification system, where his attention to detail, precise use of language, wide general knowledge and desire for clarity and order served the BSI very well. He was responsible for the vast majority of the revision work for at least three consecutive editions of the UDC. He was also a meticulous and highly efficient Secretary of the BSI Documentation Standards Committee. The theatre was Geoffrey’s life-long passion, particularly the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He would visit back rooms of pubs Geoffrey Robinson (1952-60) 26.06.1941 – 04.08.2012

Robert David Round (1976-83) 30.11.1964 – 02.11.2011

Rob Round came to the College from Lynton Prep School in Ewell, Surrey. At Dulwich he enjoyed Science and was also often found helping out in the school library. Outside school he joined

the British Pistol Club at Bisley and went on to represent the country at pistol shooting. After his time at the College, he went to Reading University to study for a degree in Food Technology. On graduation, he joined Tate & Lyle before moving on to Silver Spoon, a division of British Sugar, firstly in Norwich and then in Peterborough. In a busy life travelling around the country to the many food research laboratories, he worked on the taste and formula for many well-known food syrups used today. He still found time for shooting, regularly marshalling at competitions at Bisley, and also archery, coarse fishing, scuba diving, and he was also an active member of Bretton Baptist Church and the Pactrac Triathlon Club. During a period of declining health caused by pulmonary fibrosis, he still visited his friends and family with oxygen tank in tow, while waiting for a lung transplant.

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