In Memory of Christopher Dams, Devoted Oxfordian (1934–2026)

The DVS is sorry to announce the death of Christopher Dams at the beginning of April. He was one of the first faces members joining in the 1990s and early 2000s would see, and would always give any newcomer a warm welcome. This was especially true of the time when the Dams’ Henley-on-Thames home held the DVS library, which was rescued from a very damp garage in Oxford, restored, and carefully arranged for members to borrow from. Christopher worked hard to ensure a first visit to Henley or a DVS meeting was followed by membership and many further visits.

He and his wife Marjorie were regulars at every meeting. Christopher came because he held a number of key positions – Chair, Editor, President – at different times. Those alone tell us how important he was in promoting and developing the society over a long period. That, and finding out whether newcomers might be persuaded to speak at meetings. Having studied Italian at Cambridge, he was perhaps particularly supportive of Noemi Magri and her research. Meanwhile Marjorie came and ensured that meeting fees were paid, and any merchandise was well arranged to tempt members.

Possibly one of the most important roles Christopher had in addition to those above was in helping to launch the idea of Dating Shakespeare’s Plays. We might take that book for granted today, but at the beginning we needed someone to organize who was going to contribute something on which play; we needed an agreed framework for each play. Eventually Kevin Gilvary took over amalgamating the whole, one of the DVS’s most successful projects.

Christopher didn’t stop engaging people’s attention with the authorship issue. He has spent his most recent years at a retirement home near Bishopstoke, in Hampshire, and even there he organized talks on the topic. He was enormously pleased with the progress the whole question made – but like many of us, he wished for the day when Edward de Vere was widely recognised as the man behind the plays.

In April 2017, Christopher Dams stepped down as Honorary President of the de Vere Society, a post he had held since 2012. These are his words taken from the DVS April 2017 Newsletter which gives us an insight to his enthusiasm and commitment to the De Vere Society. He begins with the following:

            My engagement with Oxfordianism started, as for so many others, with reading Charlton Ogburn’s wonderful book, The Mysterious William Shakespeare, picked up out of curiosity in Smith’s in early 1989. I read English, French and Italian at Cambridge, but had never engaged at all with standard ‘biographies’ of Shakespeare. They did not seem to be relevant, or to cast any light on the personality or history of the playwright. Soon after reading Ogburn, I began to feel at one with Keats’ “watcher of the skies,” as the Oxfordian planet swam into my ken …

And signs off with:

… I have made far too many good friends, and had too much fun through the DVS over 25 years to [leave it now]. I am sure it will continue to flourish and eventually convince the world that ‘We are right about Shakespeare.’

See: https://deveresociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NL_V24_N2_Apr17_Redacted.pdf