Family and School
The trajectory of David Foxon's life was from a family background of provincial nonconformity, through public school, war-time intelligence, and Magdalen College, Oxford, to the British Museum Library, and finally to university teaching at Queen's Ontario and Oxford. The Foxon family had been stocking weavers; Foxon's grandfather kept a couple of weaving-frames in his cottage. He had eleven children, of whom Walter, Foxon's father, was the youngest. After leaving school at twelve, Walter went to work in a stocking factory, but his intelligence and gift for preaching were recognized at Chapel and he was encouraged to go in for the Methodist ministry. He trained at Didsbury College in Manchester, and married Susan Fairweather, the daughter of a well-todo circuit steward in Clitheroe, Lancashire, whom he met when visiting the town to take services. Walter Foxon enjoyed a high reputation as a preacher (`a good preacher, slightly old-fashioned' was his son's verdict), and at one point in his career he turned down the prestigious post at Spurgeon's Tabernacle in South London. Susan Foxon, a firm advocate of women's rights and of total abstinence, was an active pamphleteer and campaigner. Walter Foxon's ability to attract and hold crowds led to his appointment to ministries at a series of seaside towns. David was born at Paignton on 9 January 1923 (he was an only child), and his parents' subsequent homes were at Bournemouth, St Anne's on Sea, Finchley, Blackpool, and Newquay, where, after a spell as President of the District, Walter Foxon retired.
David Foxon did not share his father's religious beliefs, but he profoundly admired his father's compassion and sense of social responsibility. Looking back over his life, he believed that some attitudes from his early years—perhaps more recognizably Quaker than Methodist—had stayed with him: a liking for simple and direct truth-telling, with a corresponding anxiety to avoid equivocation and economy with the truth; a distaste for the hypocrisy (particularly over sexual matters) that for much of the century oiled the machinery of daily living; and a dislike of violence and conflict. The first two of these attitudes can be seen directly in his career as a scholar in his lucid, if mild-mannered,
exposure of the frauds of T. J. Wise and in his investigation of the history of pornography while the subject was largely taboo. The third attitude might possibly have led to his being a conscientious objector during the Second World War, a potential crisis from which a sympathetic headmaster rescued him by recommending him for intelligence work at Bletchley Park. Foxon also profited from his Methodist background by being brought up in a culture of improvised preaching. He took public speaking as a matter of course, enjoyed it, and throughout his academic career he was able to speak without notes and hold an audience.
School, Kingswood near Bath, was a Methodist foundation, one of whose aims was to provide for the education of the sons of itinerant preachers.[8] Foxon spoke of it with affection as a civilized society, tolerant and humane, with a strong record of academic achievement. E. P. Thompson, the historian (`a bit of an exotic'), and A. N. Flew, the philosopher, were Foxon's contemporaries there. The school had resources that particularly appealed to Foxon, including a fine and wellstocked new library. It also had an outstanding headmaster in A. B. Sackett.[9] Foxon was sixteen when World War II broke out, and it was clear that if the war continued he would be called up for active service when he was eighteen. Sackett, knowing and understanding Foxon's scruples, recommended him to the Government Code and Cypher School, which at the outbreak of war had moved from London to Bletchley Park, where it was known as War Station X, or Room 47 Foreign Office, or Government Communications Headquarters.[10] But before going to Bletchley in 1942 Foxon had secured his place at Magdalen College, Oxford. The choice of course was difficult for him. He had performed at a high level in the School Certificate in all subjects and he might have specialized in science or mathematics, but it was traditional for the brightest boys at Kingswood to take classics and Foxon sat the Oxford scholarship exam for Literae Humaniores (Greats). It was C. S. Lewis, a member of the interviewing panel, who suggested that on the basis of his general essay he would be better suited to English, and he sat for an English scholarship successfully the following year. He had to wait until 1946 before he could take up his place.
