Dilwyn Knox

Dilwyn Knox was the second of the four sons of Bishop Knox, of Manchester, who alternately won the first entrance scholarship of the year at Rugby and Eton. May I write a word in his memory as one who lived in the closest intimacy with him from 1897 when he entered college at Eton as the head of my election (he was afterwards captain of the school) until the last war when he left Cambridge, as it turned out for good, to take up special work for the Government? He was not one to show his light to the world, and it was in the nature of his recent work that it could not be made generally known. But we who knew him in those years recognised that he had one of the most gifted, subtle, intricate brains of his generation for anything he might choose to take up within the narrow limitations which he deliberately set for himself, whether in the obscurer regions of classical scholarship, as an inspired player (and also deviser) of card games, or in the official work, requiring exceptional qualifications, which he first undertook during the last war and continued for the Admiralty and the Foreign Office for nearly 30 years to the end of his life. As an old friend of his lately said to me, he was sceptical of most things except those which chiefly matter, that is affection and reason. It is a sad thought to his old intimates of Eton and King’s that we shall never see our beloved Dilly again.