Best laid plans…

Even before getting home from running the marathon in Boston and  then visiting my faculty’s partner institution in Ontario, Huron University College/Western University (a vast campus on the edge of London, a city far larger than I had envisaged located at the very heart of Anglophone Canada), I was aware that my plans for a swift return to Fairey would not materialise.  As well as marking/moderation and fulfilling a couple of magazine commitments, May was taken up with researching and writing a report for the University, thereby negating any prospect of research on CRF’s papers presently on loan from Yeovilton and drafting a preliminary account of my man’s early life (a partially filled framework for chapter 1).  However, apart from two or three WW1 commitments over the next five weeks, belatedly I should be back to Fairey; uninterrupted across the summer through to the end of the year.  Let’s hope that these words do not come to haunt me, as my previous blog clearly has.  Tonight I give my (belated) inaugural lecture, marking the seventieth anniversary today of the death in Normandy of the soldier-poet and memoirist Keith Dougals (captain, Sherwood Rangers/Nottinghamshire Yeomanry).  There is a tie-in article in the current issue of the New Statesman and a podcast of the lecture will eventually be available via the Faculty of Humanities website.  But enough of this shameless self-promotion – I need to put on my fresh shirt, pressed suit, and suitably sombre tie.