Retirement and Personal Life
Clothier gradually became detached from public affairs, although he did occasionally write letters to newspapers. To the Daily Telegraph he criticised the phrase 'shoot-to-kill' on the basis that implied that it was possible to 'shoot-to-wing', an idea only applicable to the Wild West.
Medicine was important to Clothier both professionally and personally. He was elected an Honorary Anesthetist, Honorary Pharmacist and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He prefaced the third edition of The Oxford Textbook of Medicine, which became the first chapter of the fourth edition. The heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub first operated on Clothier in 1976 and continued to care for him over many years. Clothier supported Harefield Hospital at which Yacoub practised and even occasionally acted as a theatre attendant. He drafted papers which saved the hospital from closure. New research laboratories at the hospital were opened in 2002 by Prince Michael of Kent and named in Clothier's honour.
Clothier retained a love of flying, taking up gliding after he gained his pilot's licence. He was also an enthusiastic sailor and enjoyed reading the novels of Joseph Conrad. Clothier's musical abilities ranged beyond playing the piano: he constructed a clavichord and a bentside spinet and played both. Clothier was fluent in French, Italian and also spoke German, making speeches in all three. When addressing a conference in Sweden during his time as Ombudsman, Clothier considered it polite to address the delegates in the hosts' language, purchased a textbook and then gave a five-minute speech in Swedish.
Clothier, who modestly remarked that he had "a second-class first-class brain", died in May 2010.
Read more about this topic: Cecil Clothier
Famous quotes containing the words retirement and, retirement, personal and/or life:
“Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man’s enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)
“He who comes into Assemblies only to gratifie his Curiosity, and not to make a Figure, enjoys the Pleasures of Retirement in a[n] ...exquisite Degree.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)