Old Scholars will be saddened to hear of the death of Roderic Dutton (YG 1960) at the end of May 2025. Roderic was at Friends' from 1953-1960. He died after a two year battle with Parkinson's. Mark Bertram (YG 1960) and Roderic's wife, Esther, have written the following account of Roderic's life.
Roderic (William) Dutton 20 January 1942 – 29 May 2025
Roderic was born in 1942, the youngest of five children, to Harold Dutton and Marjorie (née Youatt). He was brought up on the family’s farm at Wivenhoe, near Colchester, and boarded at Friends’ School Saffron Walden 1953-60. He quickly established a reputation for being sensible and reliable: indeed, his nickname was Dobbin. He was an opening batsman and spin bowler in cricket teams and a reliable back at football. He became Head Boy in his final year at school, as had his elder brother Jimmy (and his sister Susan had been Head Girl).
After leaving school, and having been awarded a Reginald Reynolds scholarship, he spent a year with Voluntary Service Overseas, teaching sciences at Yundum College in The Gambia, where he also particularly encouraged the students who played cricket. The Gambian national cricket team heard about his cricketing skills and invited him to join them for their international match against Sierra Leone as the ‘night watchman’ batsman. That team went on to win the cup and Roderic proudly (but discreetly) displayed his ‘cap’ and engraved trophy all his life. He went on to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences, shared digs in Malcolm Street, joined Societies, and had an active social and intellectual life.
After Cambridge, he worked briefly for the British Council in Libya, pending joining an archaeological project there, but he soon radically changed his mind about what he wanted of his future. Instead of digging up buried relics of the past and studying the lives of dead peoples, he realised that he was more interested in the demands and realities of the present, and the dangers of the future. He was drawn, above all else, to the idea of improving the lot of impoverished rural communities in the Middle East: this would give him a real purpose in life. In consequence, he enrolled for an MSc in economic geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, learned to speak Arabic (and later very fluently), improved his French, and gained a PhD for his research work on the colonial and post-colonial farming of wheat in the Lower Madjerda valley in Tunisia.
Roderic married Esther Haynes in 1971, on her birthday: she became a senior social worker and child care specialist. They had two sons: Jake and Joss. (Jake tragically predeceased him, but gave him a grand-daughter, Vega). They moved to Durham in 1972 when Roderic joined a multi-disciplinary team at Durham University’s Geography Department that was conducting surveys in northern Oman, sponsored and funded by Petroleum Development Oman. Seeing the scope for practical, follow-on projects that responded to the needs of rural people, Roderic spear-headed the Khabura Development Project on the hot and humid Batinah Coast, 200 km and a good four hour drive, north-west of the capital, Muscat. The focus was a 2.5-hectare farm, on which Roderic and Esther and their sons lived through the second half of the 1970s.
The farm grew irrigated fodder crops and cross-bred local goats and sheep with hardier breeds from elsewhere. The project employed specialists from the UK and Australia in many other fields, including farm machinery, weaving and beekeeping, and project managers with backgrounds as diverse as Classical Arabic and specialist dairying. Roderic’s ability to listen was warmly welcomed by the local community, who liked and trusted him, and that was keen to understand the innovations he was trialling and to adopt elements of them. Roderic characterised this process as ‘action research’. The Khabura project itself continued in other guises until 1994, when the Omani government took over the funding.
Roderic was in 1981 appointed Director of Durham University’s newly established Centre for Overseas Research and Development (CORD) with a remit to extend similar trials in Oman and other countries in the Middle East. CORD also acted as the scientific coordinator for the Royal Geographical Society’s multi-disciplinary Wahiba (now Sharqiya) Sands Project of 1985-87 for the Government of Oman. It was a pioneering geographical survey of an isolated sand sea the size of Wales, with a temporary field research centre at Al Mintirib, at the northern end of the Sands. Roderic’s applied research approach was implicit from the start: any holistic geographical survey must bring together local and international experts in earth, life and social sciences to work collaboratively with, and for, all. The final scientific results were published in 1988 by the Government of Oman as a mammoth special report in the Journal of Oman Studies.
A couple of years after that, the Royal Geographical Society was approached by Prince Hassan, then Crown Prince of Jordan, for a community-led geographical survey in north-east Jordan. Roderic was appointed one of three programme directors to mastermind what became the Jordan Badia Research and Development Programme, co-funded over the next 12 years by the Jordanian Government and two UK Departments (International Development and Environment). Roderic throughout exercised a masterly role in bringing order and focus to the massive undertaking.
Roderic retired from Durham University in 2002 and CORD closed down at the same time. During his years at the University, he had obtained grants and contracts for CORD worth over £10 million. He returned to Oman in 2007 as the field director of a project initiated by the Sultan’s request that Earthwatch Europe should develop education in the environmental field by setting up field centres, enhanced wildlife protection and student participation in the field. This work was a fitting conclusion to the career that had begun at Khabura 40 years earlier. He was appointed OBE in 2010 for his work in the Middle East.
He and Esther continued to live in Durham until his death. The hospitality of their family home in Albert Street was enjoyed and valued by friends and colleagues, old and new, as well as by others working on Roderic’s projects. Many of the latter folk, staying for prolonged periods, benefitted also from Esther’s steadfast support and encouragement. There were inherent difficulties in sustaining family life in such a career as Roderic’s but full tribute to his and Esther’s partnership has often been paid by those whose lives were enhanced by their efforts.
Roderic endured the inexorable effects of Parkinson’s Disease with dignity and grace, and died in fulfilment of his wishes at home with Esther and Joss by his side.