Here is one:
McTaggart wore his eccentricities with pride. He rode a tricycle. He walked “with a curious shuffle, back to the wall, as if expecting a sudden kick from behind,” a fact that may or may not be explained by his having been bullied at boarding school. He saluted every cat he met. His dissertation for a fellowship at Trinity, later published as Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic; had elicited from that older Apostle, Henry Sidgwick, the remark; “I can see that this is nonsense, but what I want to know is whether it is the right kind of nonsense.” Apparently, it was.
That is from Nikhil Krishnan, A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy and War at Oxford 1900-1960. Another recent book dealing with both philosophy and war at Oxford is M.W. Rowe’s very thorough J.L. Austin: Philosopher & D-Day Intelligence Officer. Here is that book’s best weird philosopher anecdote:
Robert Paul Wolff noted Quine’s frequent lack of small talk, and his tactics for brushing off unwanted questioners, but his deeper doubts were crystallized by an incident some years later:
“Quine obviously had a sensual side to his nature to complement his intellect, as his attractive second wife and his love of food and jazz attested. But I always thought there was some element of humanity missing from his makeup that gave him a rather cold aura. Quine had just returned from a trip to Germany — this was not fifteen years after the war remember — and he was describing a tour he had taken of SS torture chambers. He exhibited an eerie fascination with the technical efficiency of the facility that struck me as devoid of any real human appreciation of its demonic purpose.”
But at Oxford, Quine was perfectly charming, and his erudition and accomplishments — besides logic and jazz, he was an expert on maps, widely travelled, and said to speak eight languages — ensured considerable social success…
As for the broader book, I had not known the extent to which Austin was a significant and highly successful intelligence officer. It is a very good book if you are interested in hundreds of pages on this topic.
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