George Alfred Kolkhorst

George Alfred ('Colonel') Kolkhorst (1897–1958) was an Oxford don, a lecturer and Reader in Spanish.

Life

Kolkhorst was the son of an engineer, and was brought up in Chile. His family then moved to Portugal. In the later part of World War I he was in Galicia, Spain on official work.[1]

A member of Exeter College, Oxford, he was appointed University Lecturer in Spanish in 1921 and Reader in Spanish in 1931, holding office until his death in 1958. He used to wear a cube of sugar on a string around his neck "to sweeten my conversation", and was universally known among Oxford undergraduates as "Colonel" Kolkhorst — allegedly because he looked and behaved so utterly unlike a colonel.[2]

His friendship with John Betjeman led to his inclusion in Summoned by Bells, Betjeman's verse autobiography.

gollark: In the sort of "modern" tech-mod packs I use energy is not really a huge problem unless you're pretty earlygame or need to do ridiculously large-scale stuff.
gollark: For that sort of thing I would probably just hook up automation and/or many blast furnaces.
gollark: Especially GT:NH.
gollark: GregTech, from what I've heard, seems very hard.
gollark: There isn't time gating like that, although you need several billion RF stored and/or several tens of kRF/t of production to start up a reactor.

References
  • Noel Annan, The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses (London: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 138.

Notes
  1. "P. E. Russell, George Alfred Kolkhorst, 1897–1958". Bulletin of Hispanic Studies. 36: 51–52. doi:10.1080/1475382592000336051.
  2. John Betjeman: Summoned by Bells, p.84 says: "We called you 'Colonel' just because you were,/Though tall, so little like one."



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