Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997)
Sir Isaiah Berlin was born at Riga in Latvia in 1909. He came to England at the age of 11 and won a scholarship to Oxford. He was the first Jewish person ever to be elected to All Souls College, and in 1966 he became the first President of Wolfson College. His greatest works were on the history of ideas and on Russian thought, and he lectured for the BBC.
The 1921 census shows him at the age of 12 living at 8 Berrylands Road, Surbiton with his father Mendel (the Director of the Britain & Overseas Trading Company Ltd) and his mother Marie. All were then Latvian subjects, and their surname was spelt Berlyn.
Isaiah Berlin’s connection with Headington began in 1956, when he married Mrs Aline Halban (née de Gunzbourg) and went to live in her home, Headington House, with her two sons by her second marriage, Peter and Philippe Halban. Maurice Bowra wrote in a letter in 1960:
I look forward to a House of Gentlefolk in Headington, with Isaiah shooting partridges and lots of indeterminate relations staying in the house for months.
Both Stravinsky and Shostakovich later came to dinner there.
Berlin was knighted in 1957.
The index to New College archives (NCA REG/D41/246) shows that in 1959 White Lodge in Osler Road was conveyed to Sir Isaiah Berlin for £8,000.
Sir Isaiah lived in Headington House for 41 years until his death in 1997, and could occasionally be seen shopping in Somerfield.
Lady Berlin was President of the Friends of Old Headington from 1968 to 2005.
In 2005 she left Headington House for her other home, the Albany off Piccadilly in London. She died on 25 August 2014: Obituary
A blue plaque was unveiled on the right-hand gate pier of Headington House by his stepson Peter Halban on 7 June 2009, a hundred years after Sir Isaiah Berlin’s birth.
Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board:
Sir Isaiah Berlin
Below: Headington House, the largest house in Headington still in private hands:
There is a
full entry on Sir Isaiah Berlin
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ODNB online is available free to many public library users, including those in Oxfordshire:
just put your library ticket number in the “Library Card Login” box
The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library
Memorial plaque to Sir Isaiah Berlin at All Souls College, Oxford
