Sir Isaiah Berlin and Headington
Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) was born in Latvia. He came to England at the age of 11 and won a scholarship to Oxford. He was the first Jew ever to be elected to All Souls College, and in 1966 he became the first President of Wolfson College. His greatest works were on the history of ideas and on Russian thought, and he lectured for the BBC.
During the second world war, Isaiah Berlin was attached as a temporary diplomat to the British Embassy in Washington, and Winston Churchill was very impressed by his reports. So when in 1944 Churchill heard that Berlin was in London, he invited him to lunch, not realizing that the visitor from the States was in fact Irving Berlin, the songwriter. Churchill was mystified when he asked Berlin what he thought was the most important thing he had ever written and he replied White Christmas: not the answer he expected from an outstanding political philosopher who had written illuminatingly on Tolstoy and Machiavelli.
Isaiah Berlin’s connection with Headington began in 1956, when he married Mrs Aline Halban (née de Gunzbourg) and went to live in her home, Headington House, with her two sons. He remained there for 41 years until his death.
Note that there is a much fuller entry on Sir Isaiah Berlin in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography