Life Stories
John Anthony Chanin
John Anthony Chanin (1968 BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics) died on 17 February 2025 aged 74.
John came to Keble from Bancroft’s School – then a direct grant grammar near his home in Woodford Green – matriculating at the age of 17 and graduating with a First well before he was 21, gathering a scholarship en route after a distinction in prelims. In other words, he was effortlessly clever, and would often be found playing and winning highly competitive games of Bridge, Chess, Risk or Diplomacy. An uncharacteristic venture into physical sport saw him coxing the college 6th VIII in 1970 Summer Eights, (see A Larkin) for which he was qualified more by stature than navigational skill.
After graduating John read for an MA in Sociology at Sussex and it was generally assumed that a stellar academic career beckoned, but instead he veered into local government and his next course of study was Housing Management at Hackney Technical College. He spent the rest of his working life as a local authority housing policy analyst in Islington, Newham, Birmingham, Southend and Walthamstow. For many years he was active in the Labour Party and served a term on Hackney Council from 1982 to 1986. In later life he lived in Mosley in Birmingham.
After retirement John spent much of his time travelling to exotic destinations as far-flung as Kashgar, Azerbaijan, Easter Island, Borneo and Colombia. During his third visit to India in November he suffered a heart attack and although repatriated to hospital in England he did not recover.
Kindly provided by a College contemporary