Lionel Robbins

(22 November 1898 - 15 May 1984)

The rocks of the breakwater in the photograph make up The Cobb, the wall of the man-made (in the 13th century) harbour at Lyme Regis, Dorset.  Lionel and Iris Robbins bought a cottage on the seafront in 1959, which they used for weekends and holidays.  The view from his study  (where he wrote the Robbins Report on Higher Education) looks out over the beach and sea and round westwards to the Cobb.  The walks he would take as breaks in his writing were along the promenade and round the Cobb and back.   His wife took that walk by herself early one morning a few weeks after his death in the summer of 1984 and scattered his ashes in the sea.

Photograph by Bass Fishing Physicist (Wikimedia Commons)

Rocks at the end of The Cobb—photograph courtesy of Susan Howson