Ruskin To-Day is an informal organisation that exists to celebrate the life and ideas of the artist, critic and social reformer John Ruskin (1819-1900). It brings together the activities of the many different societies, academic institutions and individuals who share an interest in Ruskin and in the many different aspects of his work. This website serves as a noticeboard to draw attention to the many Ruskinian events that take place across the world.
IN MEMORIAM
CLIVE WILMER
Poet, Ruskin scholar and former Master of the Guild of St George
Died Cambridge, 13th March 2025
A PERSONAL TRIBUTE BY DR STUART EAGLES
Remembering Clive Wilmer
Clive Wilmer
(10 February 1945—13 March 2025)
Poet, Cambridge academic, critic,
Master of Ruskin’s Guild of St George (2009—2019),
and my friend
I was both shocked and saddened to learn on Friday morning that my friend, Clive Wilmer, had died suddenly the previous day. A month earlier he had sent me a birthday card. Not for the first time, it’s theme was provided by the well-loved, long-running BBC sitcom, Only Fools and Horses. What he hadn’t known until recently was how well I knew one of the actors who appeared in that sitcom’s prequel, an extra layer of association that made his card all the more meaningful to me. We often entertained each other over the years with chatter about television and radio comedy, sharing a love of the work of John Sullivan, and the writing partners Galton & Simpson and Ian La Frenais & Dick Clement.
A week after my own birthday I sent him a shot glass with which to toast his 80th. “Don’t rub it in,” he joked. We both agreed to drink to that. And we marvelled at how many other great people celebrated their birthdays in February: James Joyce and David Jason (both on the 2nd), Charles Dickens (on the 7th), Charles Darwin (on the 12th)—and, most importantly to both of us, John Ruskin (on the 8th).
Of all Clive’s many qualities as a fine human being, it is his sense of humour that I will miss most, and especially his shoulder-chugging chuckle. He often made me laugh-out-loud with his wit, and he was good enough to tolerate my own less sophisticated sense of fun. One vivid memory I have is of walking with him down the hill from Surrey Street to Sheffield Railway Station. Our conversation had begun with the delights of Dickens’s many comic characters, but we proceeded to entertain ourselves by sharing increasingly ludicrous examples of nominative determinism, some of them real, some of them unsparingly imagined. Even the dullest and most laborious string of work emails could be enlivened by amusing asides and post-scripts.
I first met Clive when he gave a paper at the Ruskin Seminar at the University of Lancaster, and by some good fortune I was invited to dine with him afterwards at Lancaster Quay. We shared a taxi back to campus, and I told him that my copy of his Penguin edition of Unto this Last and Other Writings was so well-read it was falling to pieces. He must have heard praise for that volume a thousand times, but he seemed genuinely touched when I said how often I had consulted his masterly introduction and the dense and rich commentary supplied in the form of notes. I haven’t met any Ruskinian since who doesn’t agree how illuminating that book is. I’ve since purchased it again twice—first as a reissue, then as a mercifully more robust e-book.
At some point in the first decade of this century, Clive made a concerted effort to get a range of Ruskin’s works re-published with scholarly introductions and notes that might have taken his own work for Penguin as a model (not only his volume on Ruskin, but also another on Morris). He flattered and surprised me by asking me to take on one of the planned titles. For a number of reasons, and unusually, the project didn’t get off the ground, but the honour I had felt in receiving Clive’s invitation had meant a great deal to me.
Somehow or other, after he became Master of the Guild of St George in 2009, Clive heard that I was working on Ruskin’s reception in Russia. Mindful that the centenary of Tolstoy’s death was then approaching, he asked me if I would give the Guild’s annual Ruskin Lecture on the subject of “Ruskin and Tolstoy”. That was a nerve-wracking gig for me, but I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to share my research with an eager audience of Ruskinians gathered at the Bar Convent, in York, on an unusually cold weekend in November 2010.
Shortly after that he asked me to take on the editorship of the Guild’s annual newsletter, The Companion, with a view to turning it into a full-colour magazine registered with an ISSN. For six years I would edit, design, publish and distribute the magazine to an appreciative membership keen to have a record of the Guild’s expanding activity.
Clive’s energy and vision transformed the Guild. No sooner had he articulated one plan than he came up with another, and he had the courage and confidence to believe it was all possible. Crucially, he had the capacity to articulate his many ideas. And when he addressed audiences, in his memorably rich and deep voice, using words both carefully weighed and painstakingly considered, he was so much more than the Guild’s spokesman—though the best spokesman the Guild has ever had. Rather, he was the Guild’s poet. He drew on the vast treasury of Ruskinian heritage to shape a new legacy for the Guild in the 21st-century. His Guild of St George had a stake in the national debate, as well as an increasing global presence.
Clive not only drove the Guild’s rapidly expanding membership by reaching out ever further, but he personally wrote to every new Companion (member) of the Guild to welcome them on board. He encouraged new ways of attracting support by backing me, in my role as Secretary, in establishing the Guild online, through the development of a much more comprehensive website, and active accounts on social media. By the mid-2010s, the Guild was filming its major events and putting the recordings on YouTube.
The dizzying growth of the Guild’s activity is hard to summarise. Some of it augmented what had gone before by widening its scope and ambition. For example, the programme of triennial exhibitions exploring the Guild’s Ruskin Collection at Sheffield was supplemnted with lectures and articles. Then Clive added a spectacular finale, with a national exhibition mounted at Two Temple Place, London, in 2019, on the bicentenary of Ruskin’s birth.
The revival of the Guild’s connection with Whitelands College at the University of Roehampton, and the May Day Festival that Ruskin had inspired there, was extended with five annual Whitelands Ruskin Lectures. As with the annual Ruskin Lecture given at the Guild’s AGM, Clive invited as many young, up-and-coming scholars as more established figures to speak , deliberately engaging a new generation of Ruskinians. Both series of lectures were published in handsomely presented, inexpensive editions alongside a growing range of pamphlets that explored various aspects of Ruskin’s legacy and the Guild’s heritage—often dealing with subjects that had been largely neglected by scholars over the years. He even had a selection of greetings cards printed to showcase items in the Ruskin Collection.
Another of the legacy projects into which Clive breathed new life was The Big Draw. The charity, which was now independent, had started out as the Campaign for Drawing, an innovation of former Master, Anthony Harris. But Clive initiated a new Guild-backed Ruskin Prize to help support the work of practicing artists. He was always personally involved in the consideration and selection of the theme for each year’s prize. I believe he attended every Private View and prize-giving, and always made an inspiring speech. The prize was something to which he was personally attached, and he told me once on a journey to Trinity Buoy Wharf that he would always make the effort to attend the events in person.
But there were far more projects and innovations that were entirely new to the Guild under Clive’s Mastership. The most obvious of these were expressions of his campaign to “dig deeper” into the Guild’s assets, by which he meant his determination fully to explore the Guild’s multi-faceted heritage in the context of the modern-day communities in which they were rooted.
The most visible of the Guild’s assets is the Ruskin Collection of treasures housed at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield. Through the Ruskin-in-Sheffield project, so imaginatively led by Ruth Nutter, the artworks, minerals, plaster-casts and other treasures were reconnected with those communities in the city with which the Guild had historic links, notably Walkley, Meersbrook, and Totley, but it also reached out to people throughout the local area and beyond it. Merely to list the sheer number and variety of activities associated with that project would leave the reader breathless—walks, talks, seminars, festivals, plaque-unveilings, tours, plays, exhibitions, websites—there was even a pop-up museum in the heart of Walkley.
A smaller project sought to achieve similar levels of engagement in the Wyre Forest. And, in a more modest way, the Guild collaborated with Natural England and the Thomas and Mary Greg Trust to reinvigorate the Guild’s wildflower meadow in Sheepscombe, Gloucestershire, and its fair-rent arts-and-crafts houses in Westmill, Hertfordshire.
This practical activity was underpinned by a serious commitment to explore Ruskin’s ideas on a philosophical level, most notably at a series of colloquia and symposia. These were often organised in collaboration with partners such as Lancaster University’s Ruskin Programme and what was then called ShareAction, on themes ranging from the economy to the environment, and education to craftsmanship. Invited experts, Guild Companions, and other interested parties (by no means mutually exclusive categories) enjoyed a range of stimulating panel discussions, floor debates and workshops. The common Ruskinian thread that bound these events together was provided by Clive’s unwavering ethical and—in important ways—spiritual commitment to social justice. The symposia were always intended by Clive to be a powerful expression of the Guild’s continuing relevance, giving it a voice on the most pressing topics of the day.
Always determined to be inclusive and to embrace the Guild’s expanding membership, the annual general meeting was expanded to include a convivial Companions’ Dinner, often with a relevant private view or local tour on the following day. A Companions’ Day—sometimes even a weekend—was also introduced for the summer months, so that members could socialise in places significant to Ruskin and/or the Guild. More than once it led participants all the way to Venice, where Clive spent time teaching in the middle years of his Mastership.
There were numerous other initiatives, many of them less obvious than those I’ve dwelt on here, but whether he and I met at Brantwood, Blackfriars or Bewdley; Oxford, Cambridge, or Sheffield; Birmingham, Hertford, or Walthamstow, Clive always gave every discussion, every project, and every event 100%.
I’ll end this summary of the Guild’s activity with reference to a more personal project of my own. A year or two before I was appointed the Guild’s Company Secretary, I was contacted by the team at 42nd Street, a mental-health charity for young people based in Ancoats, Manchester. They had read some of my work about the Ruskinian philanthropist, Thomas Coglan Horsfall, and realised that it related directly to their local heritage. Horsfall had set up his own Art Museum in the 1880s in imitation of Ruskin’s example. The charity’s cherished hope was to build a cultural hub in a derelict Victorian corner-shop adjacent to their main centre, and not far from the original site of Horsfall’s collection. I wondered if this initiative was something the Guild’s Board of Trustees might consider supporting in some way. To my delight, there was universal agreement to provide a grant to help them make what turned out to be a successful application for funding to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The Board even accepted an invitation to hold a meeting at 42nd Street, and later helped to fund some of their smaller projects. But, as so often, Clive’s commitment went further. Together with Annie Creswick Dawson and me, he attended the opening—and, as ever, made an inspiring speech.
The suggestion here is not that Clive was a one-superman-band. He was the first to admit—and ensure—that he had a good team around him. But if you flick through the pages of old issues of The Companion, with their reports of innumerable Guild events, you won’t have to look for long before your eye is arrested by the tall and commanding figure of Clive Wilmer, often in cream-coloured suit and hat, and always at the heart of things.
Clive was energetic, full of ideas, generous, encouraging, profoundly thoughtful, cheerful, and brilliant—yet unassuming and down-to-earth. He always thought the best of people and gave them the benefit of the doubt. He was incapable of cynicism. Political scepticism was leavened in him by an abundance of hopefulness. It was impossible not to like him. He earned respect, inspired loyalty, and deserved the love and affection in which he was so widely held. He will be sorely missed. More to the point, I will sorely miss him. I am only grateful that I was among those who, about eighteen months ago, were given the opportunity to pay tribute to him when he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ruskin Society of North America. On that occasion, he responded with a characteristically gracious and illuminating contribution of his own.
Rest In Peace, my friend: you made all the difference.
