The task in hand…

To date blog entries have been intermittent, the most recent gap being a consequence of spending time on holiday in France, but with the start of the academic year the project really takes off.  My immediate priorities are twofold.  Firstly, I need to complete preliminary work on the British Air Commission in Washington, 1940-46, which Sir Richard Fairey (CRF) was deputy director of until 1942, after which he was director for nearly three years.  This will be the focus of my research in the United States in a year’s time when I am on research leave, and the present gathering and assimilation of relevant material for the purpose of applying for funding to facilitate my visiting American archives (e.g. the papers of Philip Young, lawyer turned Lend-Lease administrator and a close associate of CRF, are in the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas).  Fairey was sent to the States by Beaverbrook, a friend in so far as ‘The Beaver’ could be friends with anyone; and the press baron was very much in my mind on holiday as he is the collaborationist PM in the novel I read, C.J. Sansom’s disturbingly counterfactual novel Dominion.  Sansom’s highly convincing portrayal of Britain in 1952 as a near client state of Nazi Germany is the creation of someone who has really done their homework – apart from minor errors (e.g. Eton’s main winter sport is football not rugby), the only inaccuracy I came across was Sir John Colville as Churchill’s principal adjutant.  Yes, Jock Colville did become a loyal Churchillian, but not in May 1940 when he was an admirer of Chamberlain for whom he served as private secretary, and he was deeply alarmed at the prospect of the maverick First Lord becoming PM and not the Foreign Secretary: the novel is premised on Halifax succeeding Chamberlain and consequently signing the ‘Treaty of Berlin’ with Hitler, and so in this alternative scenario Colville would not have found himself seduced by the newly installed Churchill’s eccentricities and charisma.  The second and ongoing priority is to reconstruct CRF’s early life, and this in the short term entails clarifying details regarding his education prior to entering Finsbury Technical College.  He attended Hendon Preparatory College prior to a year or so at Merchants Taylor School, before spending a number of years at the precursor of today’s Ardingly College, the Sussex public school near Haywards Heath.  Ardingly’s archivist Andrea King has been extremely helpful, and I now need to approach her counterpart at Merchants Taylor to see if the latter’s records confirm exactly when Fairey was on the school roll.  My next visit to London will entail visiting theMetropolitan Archives where I hope to find more about CRF’s tutelage at Finsbury Technical College under the distinguished physicist Silvanus Thompson.  Meanwhile, I still have to address the familiar demands of the University at the start of a new academic year, whether attending committee and board meetings, providing a briefing on recruitment at the History away day (plus as usual delivering colleagues to the venue in the mini-bus), liaising with PGRs, briefing the PT member of staff taking over my undergraduate teaching, and umpteen other matters which I hope will fall away by October and allow me to focus upon the task in hand.