John Traill Christie (18 October 1899 - 8 September 1980) was headmaster of Repton School (1932 - 37) and Westminster School (1937 - 50), before becoming Principal of Jesus College, Oxford (1949 - 67).[1]
Christie married Lucie Catherine, only daughter of Thomas Philip Le Fanu; they had two daughters.[2] The elder was Catherine (born 1935); the younger, Jane (born 1936) married Henry Galton Darwin.
Author Roald Dahl attended Repton from 1929, where, according to Boy: Tales of Childhood,[3] a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster Geoffrey Fisher, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown,[4] the caning took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton and Christie, in fact, was the headmaster concerned.
Hugh Lloyd-Jones, a British classical scholar who became Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, recounted that, during his years as a student at Westminster School, he had been interested in Modern History before being converted to Classics by Christie.[5]