A central figure in the life of the College, Bill served as Vice-President from 1980 to 1984. His journalistic background led him to co-found the College’s Press Fellowship Programme in 1982, serving as its Director for fourteen years during which time Wolfson hosted Press Fellows from more than twenty countries.
Bill began his career as a journalist on the Wolverhampton Express & Star, which he joined on graduating from Oxford. He then moved to The Times, where he was Africa Correspondent and Commonwealth Staff Correspondent in the early 1960s, covering the period of rapid de-colonisation. He was a frequent broadcaster with the BBC World Service and Africa Service in the 1960s, and with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire in the 1990s. In 1983 Bill was awarded the MBE for services to journalism.
Bill was Head of the University Careers Service from his arrival in Cambridge in 1968 until 1992, following four years as Careers Advisor at Oxford, and played an active part on the national scene, serving for a period as Chairman of the national association of careers services. He was University Advisor on Public Relations from 1992 to 1996, having been much involved in establishing in 1990 the University’s first Press Office. In 1992, he became Secretary of The Cambridge Society, and editor of its magazine Cambridge, until the end of 2003.
For more than ten years Bill was also a non-service member of selection boards for the police, fire and prison services. Outside Cambridge, Bill served for many years as a Trustee of the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, which awards grants for medical, social and religious projects with a focus on the prevention of human suffering.
Bill's family has requested that those wishing to make a gift in his memory should do so to Wolfson College using the form below.