Academia Sparrow was elected Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1929, winning a prize fellowship the same year
H. L. A. Hart sat (unsuccessfully) for the first time, as he did for a second time a year later. He became Warden of All Souls (1952–77) in an election in which he famously defeated
A. L. Rowse. He was also a Fellow of
Winchester (1951–81) and an Honorary Fellow of
New College (1956–1992). In Oxford he was well known as a book-collector and bibliographer, and became President of the
Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles, in which role he influenced a generation of Oxford bookmen. He was appointed an Officer of the
Order of the British Empire (OBE). Sparrow held the
Sandars Readership in Bibliography in 1963 and lectured on "The inscription and the book." Sparrow was homosexual, and ironically, became most known beyond Oxford for an article he wrote in 1962 for the literary magazine
Encounter on ''
Lady Chatterley's Lover'', following the obscenity trial. He sought to point out that the climatic sexual scene in the novel involved buggery, a fact that neither judge nor jury at the book's trial had been aware of, due to Lawrence's vague description, therefore suggesting the verdict at the trial may not have been in the book's favour had they known. Sparrow wrote that he found the novel "extremely distasteful", and also argued that anal intercourse formed an approved part of Lawrence's "sexual creed". Due to the fact these aspects of the novel, and of Lawrence, were not then commonly accepted, the article provoked a storm of academic debate, to which Sparrow replied in two published letters that were as prolix on the matter as his original article.
Law Sparrow was called to the
Bar at the
Middle Temple (1931, Honorary Bencher 1952), practising in the
Chancery Division (1931–39, 1946–51). ==Personal life==