The incomparable Max

Emerging from an unconventional childhood he became an unconventional student, and went on to be an unconventional journalist and caricaturist, whose work never quite fitted neatly into established categories.

His only novel, Zuleika Dobson, was published in 1911 as "an Oxford love story", but it is far from being the romance that this soubriquet implies. So is it satire, as has it been widely supposed? Certainly he pokes fun at the idea of the femme fatal, at the herding instinct and at the pomposity so often associated with both Oxford and Cambridge.

But true satire contains at least a hint of malice, and there is none in Zuleika Dobson.

It has also been variously described as comedy, burlesque, farce and fantasy, and it undoubtedly contains elements of all of these.

His famous caricatures, too, present a problem for those concerned with labelling everything, for, while he was adept at capturing the absurd and the pretentious, there was, again, that absence of malice in much of his work.

He was born Henry Maximilian Beerbohm on 24th August 1872, at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace in Kensington (now marked with a blue plaque). His father, Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm, was originally from Lithuania, but with German, Dutch and Slavonic ancestry. In 1830, aged only 20, Julius became a corn merchant in London, where he met and later married Constantia Draper, the daughter of a bank clerk. Together they had four children: Ernest (1850), Herbert (1852), Julius (1954) and Constance (1856). The second of these, Herbert, became the celebrated actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree.

Tragically, Constantia died in 1858, but her widower consoled himself by marrying her sister, Eliza. Max was the product of this second liaison, along with two sisters, Agnes (1865) and Dora (1868).

Little is known about his childhood, but it seems that his father and elder brothers were remote figures, and he grew up in a female-dominated environment, adored by his mother and sisters. After being educated at Charterhouse, he came up to Oxford in the autumn of 1890 to study classics at Merton College.

Oxford in the late 19th century was the Oxford of Oscar Wilde, Rex Whistler and Walter Pater; all advocates of the aesthetic movement so brilliantly lampooned by W.S. Gilbert in Patience. This suited Beerbohm's own aesthetic tendencies perfectly. He wore Oxford like a particularly well-fitting glove, glorying in his own carefully cultivated dandyishness and affectations. He rarely went to lectures, took pride in the fact that he never wore the traditional cap and gown, and eschewed most of the normal student activities, preferring instead to see himself as a detached observer.

"I was a modest good-humoured boy. It was Oxford that made me insufferable," he recalled in 1897.

During his first year at Merton, Max had the room previously used by Lord Randolph Churchill in Mob Quad. This room is now part of the study area of Merton's ancient library. Later he lodged at 19 Merton Street, in a building that he described as "scarcely bigger than a Punch and Judy show". That building, alas, is no more, having been replaced with a modern, red-brick building, now the Warden's Lodge.

While still an undergraduate, Beerbohm regularly published witty essays in famous Yellow Book. Yet he left Oxford in 1894 having failed to obtain a degree the result of complacency and idleness rather than lack of ability. Within two years he published his first literary collection, The Works of Max Beerbohm, and his first set of drawings, Caricatures of Twenty-Five Gentlemen, followed in 1897 by The Happy Hypocrite. In 1898 he took over from George Bernard Shaw as drama critic of the Saturday Review. Later works include two short story collections, The Christmas Garland (1912) and Seven Men (1919).

Throughout his life, Max looked back on his alma mater with affection and delight. It is significant that he chose Oxford as the setting for his only novel, and the narrator's enthusiastic eulogy of the city clearly mirrors Beerbohm's own feelings: "Oxford! The very sight of the word printed, or sound of it spoken, is fraught for me with most actual magic."

The novel itself is directly informed by all the places, traditions and characteristics that Max so coolly observed. The bewitching Zuleika comes to stay with her grandfather, the Warden of "St Judas College", and instantly plays havoc with the emotions of all the male undergraduates, eventually culminating in a mass suicide on the banks of the Isis. Chillingly, the book ends with Zuleika planning a similar assault on the gullible youth of Cambridge.

In 1910 Beerbohm married actress Florence Kahn, and they settled in Rapallo in Italy. Despite his caricatures of various members of the Royal family, he was given a knighthood in 1939. After his wife died in 1951, he lived with his secretary, Elizabeth Jungmann, eventually marrying her in 1956, just a few weeks before his death on 20th May at the age of 84. His body was brought back to England for burial, and his ashes now lie at St Paul's Cathedral. Fifty years on, he is still revered as one of our most eminent parodists, whose wit has yet to be surpassed.