Cyril Alington

Dr Alington was the second son of the Rev. Henry Giles Alington, an inspector of schools, and his wife Jane Margaret Booth (d. 1910), daughter of Rev. Thomas Willingham Booth. His father came from a long line of clerics, a branch of the landed gentry Alington family of Little Barford Manor House, St Neots, Huntingdonshire, and was descended from the Alingtons of Horseheath, an ancient Cambridgeshire family, from which also descended the Barons Alington.[1] He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1896. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1901.

Alington's educational career began as a sixth-form master at Marlborough College in 1896. He moved to Eton College in 1899, but left to become headmaster of Shrewsbury School in 1908. In 1917 he returned to Eton to succeed his brother-in-law, Edward Lyttelton, as headmaster; he remained there until his retirement from teaching in 1933. He served as chairman of the Headmasters' Conference, 1924–25. At Eton, a building which houses much of the English department is now named after him, as is Shrewsbury's school hall.

From 1933 to 1951 Alington served as Dean of Durham. He had become a Doctor of Divinity at Oxford in 1917 and received other honours: he was chaplain to the King from 1921 until 1933; he was made an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford in 1926, and an honorary DCL at Durham University in 1937. He received the freedom of the City of Durham in 1949.

He appeared on the cover of Time magazine on 29 June 1931. "An accomplished classicist, a witty writer especially of light verse, and a priest of orthodox convictions ..."[2]

In 1904, Alington married Hester Margaret Lyttelton (CBE; died 1958), the youngest daughter of George Lyttelton, 4th Baron Lyttelton. The couple had four daughters and two sons. Their eldest daughter, Kathleen, died at the age of 30, and their youngest son Patrick Alington was killed in World War II at Salerno in 1943. Their eldest son, Giles Alington, became Dean and Senior Tutor of University College, Oxford. The three surviving daughters all married Etonians. Lavinia married Sir Roger Mynors, academic and classical scholar; Elizabeth married Sir Alec Douglas-Home, British prime minister; and Joan married Rev. John Wilkes, Master in College and later housemaster at Eton, Warden of Radley College and later vicar of Marlow. Alington died at the age of 82 and was buried at Durham Cathedral, where there is a memorial in the north transept.

Alington wrote more than 50 books, including works on religion, biography, history, poetry, and a series of detective novels. He also wrote several popular hymns, including Good Christian Men, Rejoice and Sing (recently altered to Good Christians All, Rejoice and Sing), Ye that know The Lord is gracious and The Lord of Hosts Our King Shall Be which is used as the epigraph to Nevil Shute's novel In the Wet. (Shute was a pupil at Shrewsbury.)

The New Standard Encyclopedia and World Atlas 1932

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Burke's Landed Gentry, edited by Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, 18th edition, London, 1972, volume 3, p. 11.