Watson Combines History, Career in Public Affairs

James Steven Watson, M.A., is a 46-year-old historian from Christ Church, Oxford, who has come to Harvard for the summer to teach modern English history. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Behind him is a 600-page study of the reign of George III (Vol. XII of the Oxford History of England series). Ahead of him, he hopes, is the biography of Charles James Fox ("I am devoted to Fox").

And yet, speaking strictly professionally, Watson says that he wonders whether he has wasted a certain part of his life, whether he has failed to be the model English historian. Watson's short-coming, as his professional eye sees it, is that he has always been interested in a healthy number of non-historical subjects. "I like talking, I like teaching, but I'm not fond of writing," he admits. "I like doing things; I even like a bit of power."

Watson first began pursuing this disturbing avocation for Doing Things in 1942, when he left Oxford to join the wartime Civil Service (where, during the course of the war, he became Private Secretary to the Minister of Fuel and Power, the younger Lloyd George).

"Having been a civil servant," he says, "was probably a very good thing for me: in history, you're dealing after all with human beings in practical situations, and once you're in a few yourself, you do have a greater feeling for reality."

"MUCKING ABOUT"

But since the war Watson has, of course, returned to Oxford, and turned to politics and "mucking about" with television. In 1955 he stood (unsuccessfully) as a Labor. Party candidate for the Oxford City Council (he attributes his defeat to the Tory leanings of the college servants).

Watson has also found the time to follow up his second avocation--the Bit of Power. In 1955, and for six years thereafter, he was Censor of Christ Church, a post which he describes as "lay head of the college," and one which gave him a voice in determining Oxford's admissions policy.

So much for his wasted years. And what of his profession? He is thinking of working up a comparative constitutional study of Britain and America, and he has recently completed a History of the Salters Company of London.

A SUPERHIGHWAY

In September he is going to Iowa to teach there for four months. And then he must go back to Oxford: Christ Church needs his help to stop the government from building a superhighway through the College Meadow. And then there will also be, of course, Things to Do. And somewhere, perhaps, a little bit of Time to Waste.