Friends in high places

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday afternoon to see in the list of new life peerage creations on the recommendation of the Leader of the Conservative party the name of Professor Nigel Biggar. 

I first met him in October1993 when as a fresher postgraduate student I went on my first Sunday to the college communion service at 9 am. There I met the chaplain the Rev. Dr Biggar and his wife and I was rapidly drawn into the life of Oriel chapel as a communicant and then as a Bible Clerk, and then Head Bible Clerk. Until Nigel left in 1999 Chapel was a very important part of my Oriel life. Although our churchmanship might have been rather different, we nonetheless were on very friendly terms. He was a very conscientious and popular Chaplain, with a ministry that extended far beyond the regular chapel goers - sports teams would want him to preside at their annual dinners because he was good fun and genuinely interested in the lives and hopes of students.

Since he has returned to Oxford in 2007 he has become well known for taking a decided stand on a number of controversial and important issues about academic freedom, freedom of speech and the validity of historical interpretation as well as about the Just War theory and the ethics of military action. This has not always made him popular in the academic community but he has stood his ground and received considerable acclaim for his constancy. He has set out these ideas in a very readable article in the Daily Telegraph which can be seen at It’s time to come off the fence: I’m a conservative

Although there are some points of detail with which I would venture to disagree with him, on all his fundamental points I would be essentially in agreement with him. When I first met him I think would have seen him as liberal, yet conservative in a non-political sense, which is very much what he describes himself as being at the time. Now we clearly share a veneration for the thought of Edmund Burke as the voice of post-1784, and certainly post-1789, conservatism, and indeed, Conservatism. In some ways I am more conservative or, if you like, traditionalist, yet we share much common ground.

I recall him speaking of his doctoral work on the moral life of individuals in the public and political world, and of his admiration for historical figures who witnessed at great personal cost to their understanding of the truth. In those respects he himself is a living witness to those traditions.