Blasts from the Past: Remembering Roger Lockyer

Historian and former King’s pupil Roger Lockyer (OK 1946) attended his first Pride parade in London in 2017. It was fifty years after the Sexual Offences Act 1967 had partially decriminalised homosexual relationships. A short film clip on the BBC website shows Roger and his husband Percy Steven: they stand, holding their flags, in a sea of colour and activity. Roger looks around, happy but slightly amazed. For a man born in 1927, things had certainly changed.

Roger started in the junior school at King’s in 1938, having been awarded a scholarship by Surrey County Council. He travelled from Carshalton, where he and his family were living, to Wimbledon six days a week (Saturday school was still a thing then). Before long, the war started and Roger, like everyone , had to navigate the changes this brought about. Yet he threw himself into school life with impressive enthusiasm. He was a house prefect and a school prefect; a senior librarian and honorary secretary of the Union; a member of the Music Society committee and the school choir; honorary secretary of the Dramatic Society and an editor of the school magazine. He was a sergeant in the JTC, a member of the Bisley shooting party and was awarded athletics colours. He played rugby not only for the school’s 1st XV but also for Rosslyn Park Home Counties XV and Sutton Public Schools XV.

Yet a comment in a school magazine about Roger’s lack of seriousness on the rugby pitch suggests that he was never precious about his many achievements.

Academically, Roger was drawn to history, even though it was not taken as seriously as classics or mathematics at King’s at that time. He later recalled spending time with history master Hubert Greenwood, sheltering from bombs:

‘[In] 1944, flying bombs were falling, and senior boys used to take it in turns to do fire watching. I spent a number of nights in what was then the junior school, along with HG, and was impressed by the fact that he kept awake the whole time while allowing me to doze off. We took refuge in the cellars of the old house, where we found relics of the First World War, and would sit opposite each other while we read out and discussed Acton’s Lectures in Modern History. Looking back on this from fifty years later, I think it was one of the best possible preparations and I shall always be grateful to HG for introducing me to these superb essays.’

Roger won another Surrey scholarship to read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, taking up his place after two years of mandatory national service. He left Cambridge with a first in 1951 and moved into teaching. He was appointed head of history at Lancing College in 1954, leaving in 1961, the year before Robin Reeve (teacher and later headmaster at King’s) started there.

Roger moved from the school sector to higher education, becoming a senior lecturer in history at Royal Holloway College, University of London. It was where he would spend the rest of his career, retiring in 1983 as an emeritus reader. He published several books, the best known of which are Tudor and Stuart Britain 1471–1714 and Habsburg and Bourbon Europe 1470–1720.

It was his biography of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, however, that Stan Houston (former head of history at King’s) later singled out for praise:

‘Both elegant and persuasively revisionist, this book scraped away much of the grime that had smeared Buckingham’s reputation … Roger’s work permanently enriched our understanding of Jacobean politics and culture, as well as the country’s place in the Europe of its time.’

For many years, while forging a successful career, Roger kept his private life separate. Although from his national service days onwards he had a wide circle of gay friends, there was no denying the very real dangers he and others faced. Roger could later joke about the fact that his friend Jeremy Wolfenden gave Roger’s name when signing into gay clubs but, had his sexual orientation been made public, he could have lost his job or been sent to prison. (An interesting side note: Jeremy Wolfenden’s father, Lord Wolfenden—whose 1957 report recommended decriminalising homosexuality—opened the new dining hall at King’s in 1967, the same year the Sexual Offences Act was passed.)

In 1966, Roger met theatre director Percy Steven at a party. For 39 years they lived as if married, never imagining that one day this might be possible. And then it was. Or almost was. In December 2005, they entered into a civil partnership on the first day it became legal in the UK. In 2014, they were among the first couples to enter into a same-sex marriage. By this point, after decades together, it was not so much about making a declaration of love as recognising a principle: those inheritance and kin rights that heterosexual married couples could take for granted had been denied to them and many of their friends for too long.

‘I remember distinctly,’ Roger said, ‘walking down the street after the ceremony thinking: “I am as legal a person as anybody else. I am a full citizen at last.” It was a wonderful feeling.’

The photographs of Roger and Percy at Westminster Register Office, looking so happy and so clearly still in love, catapulted them into the limelight. Their story resonated deeply with many. Pictures of them celebrating with champagne appeared in multiple publications and they became–quite unintentionally–known around the world.

Roger died in 2017 at the age of 89; Percy passed away the following year. In an act of great generosity, in their joint will, Roger left a portion of his estate to King’s to support bursaries.

As ever, if you have memories to share, or questions to ask, please contact me at archive@kcs.org.uk.

Dr Lucy Inglis
School Archivist