E.W. (‘Wilf’) Taylor

E.W. Taylor – 1922-2013

Many of our older readership, especially those who attended courses at the (Old) Royal Naval College, Greenwich during the period 1965-87, will remember with affection Ernest Wilfred Taylor who worked at the college during this period as a senior, later principal, lecturer in the Department of History and International Affairs and who died peacefully on 12 August 2013 at the age of 90.  He taught on all the non-nuclear courses in the Royal Naval College from the SDOGC for newly promoted sub-lieutenants via the LGC for lieutenants in mid-term to the RNSC for lieutenant commanders and those of equivalent rank in the Army and RAF directly engaged on staff training.  In his teaching, he specialised on China and the Far East generally but also spread his wide expertise over a number of other topics in the realm of international politics.

He was a first class lecturer and tutor, but his skills went far beyond the purely academic.  As a former naval instructor officer, he had a range of presentational skills and much of his time was devoted to supervising and ‘critique-ing’ student presentations emphasising the importance of clarity, accuracy and stimulus.  Away from the lecture room, he was a ‘dab’ hand both on the tennis court and on the college stage, performing over the years in many and varied productions.

After retiring in 1987, he continued to live in Dulwich where he remained active for many years continuing with his amateur dramatics and serving for a time as the Secretary of the Dulwich Society.  Both to the latter and to the Royal Naval College and its students, his loyalty and devotion were absolute and unalloyed.  He had a gift of relating to virtually all his students and making them feel that their intellectual/academic progress was genuinely important to him.  He was very much ‘a man for all seasons’.  It will be a long time before the Royal Navy sees quite his like again.