Obituary: Robert Arthur Burgess

Bob Burgess was only 53 when he died on 30 November 1999.  He was born on 24 February 1946 in Northwich, Cheshire and educated at Sir John Deane’s Grammar School there and at University College, London.  His long-standing connection with Scotland began (and I first met him) in 1972 when, at the age of 26, he was appointed to a lectureship in the Department of Scots Law at Edinburgh University.  Even then, he was a formidable figure with two years’ experience in banking and three years’ experience in law teaching under his (already quite capacious) belt.  He spent six years in the Edinburgh Law Faculty in the course of which he obtained his PhD degree (incidentally, in the shortest time that has in the post-war period been taken from registration to graduation), instituted and taught two ground-breaking Honours courses in Tax Planning and Investment Law and did the whole of the lecturing in the large Ordinary course of Taxation.

Of his period at Edinburgh, I subsequently wrote: “As a teacher he was particularly successful at Honours level with small groups of bright and highly motivated students.  Such students often regarded Bob Burgess’s classes as the high points of their undergraduate careers.  Students at a lower level sometimes felt somewhat intimidated by him.  His standards were high and he required students even in his Ordinary course to work hard and to demonstrate a substantial measure of competence before they could expect to pass.  He held strong views on the maintenance of academic standards and he expressed those views forcibly.  There were those, a small minority, who thought that the standards which he required were too high; but everyone respected his views and found him congenial as a colleague.”

From Edinburgh he went on in 1978 to a senior lectureship, and subsequently a readership, at the University of East Anglia.  While there, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Law, a signal testimony to the confidence and trust which his colleagues there reposed in his judgment.  One of those colleagues later wrote: “He can be very forceful and outspoken.  I was at first worried that as Dean he might not have the patience to deal sensitively with staff problems: he does like to foster the image of being tough, conservative and prickly.  In fact he is very concerned about people’s feelings, though he would cringe to hear it said about him.  He has made a very successful Dean.”

During this period, Bob maintained his links with Scotland through annual railway expeditions here (he was a true railway enthusiast) and regular attendance at AGMs of the Stair Society.  In 1989 he returned to Scotland on his appointment to the Alexander Stone Chair of Business Law and Practice in the Law School of Strathclyde University.  Within next to no time he had been appointed Chairman of the School, an office he held from 1990 to 1994.  To an outsider such as myself, Bob seemed to be an outstandingly good Head of School.  He was certainly an outstandingly hospitable one to visitors.  Who could resist any favour for the Law School that Bob asked for when it became known that one of the perquisites of compliance would be an extended lunch in the Hotel School dining room?

His Law School colleagues genuinely appreciated his qualities, a fate not always enjoyed by Heads of Department.  Among the views that since his death have been communicated to me are the following: he was an ideal Head of Department, who had excellent relations with everyone; his door was always open; if you approached him with a problem or a query you always got an answer and usually got it there and then; if you approached him with a proposal on request, his preference was always to say yes rather than no; he was never a member of any clique – he would have a drink with anyone; he was a man who could make decisions; he was an excellent, efficient and decisive manager and one who knew when to delegate and whom to delegate to.

It was the recognition outwith academic life of these qualities of efficiency, decisiveness and fairness that led to his being appointed Chairman of Glasgow Royal Infirmary University NHS Trust, an office that he held from 1994 to 1997.  In the latter year health problems led him to resign from both Strathclyde Law School and the NHS Trust.

Bob Burgess was a prolific author on legal subjects, with books to his credit on perpetuities, partnership, corporate finance and the law of loans and borrowing, many going into several editions.

Bob’s was a life full of achievement, as professor, scholar, and administrator.  But the mere recitation of these achievements does not really give a true or full picture of the man.  What is perhaps most obviously missing from it is a recognition of his sense of fun.  He was a man who greatly enjoyed laughter and had a talent for generating it.  He had an impish sense of humour and greatly enjoyed pricking bubbles of pomposity wherever he detected them.  There was also the frisson of danger that was rarely absent when one was in his company.  Bob loved to make outrageous comments and then, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, watch the expressions on the faces of his companions.  And there were few things that he enjoyed more than a good-going argument when someone dared to challenge one of these opinions.  All of this was done in fun.  It was part of the excitement of being one of his friends and what those of us who were privileged to be such will miss most now that he has left us.

Bob Burgess was a devoted family man.  He is survived by his wife, Shirley (also for years a stalwart of Strathclyde Law School) and his children, James and Robbie.  His first wife, Frankie, predeceased him.

Professor Robert Black, University of Edinburgh