{"id":24,"date":"2013-09-18T11:46:37","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/srfb\/?p=24"},"modified":"2013-09-18T11:46:37","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:46:37","slug":"the-task-in-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/2013\/09\/18\/the-task-in-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"The task in hand…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 My immediate priorities are twofold.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u00a0gathering and assimilation of relevant material for the purpose of applying for funding to facilitate\u00a0my visiting American archives (e.g. the papers of Philip Young, lawyer turned Lend-Lease administrator and a close\u00a0associate of CRF, are in the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas).\u00a0 Fairey was sent to the States by Beaverbrook,\u00a0a friend in so far as ‘The Beaver’ could be friends with anyone; and the press baron was\u00a0very much in my mind on holiday as\u00a0he is the collaborationist PM in the novel I read, C.J. Sansom’s disturbingly counterfactual novel Dominion<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Sansom’s highly convincing portrayal of Britain in 1952\u00a0as 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\u00a0football not rugby), the only inaccuracy I\u00a0came across was Sir John Colville as Churchill’s principal adjutant.\u00a0 Yes,\u00a0Jock Colville did become\u00a0a loyal Churchillian, but not in May 1940 when he was\u00a0an admirer of Chamberlain for whom he served as private secretary, and he was deeply alarmed at the prospect of\u00a0the maverick First Lord becoming PM and not the Foreign Secretary: the novel is premised on Halifax\u00a0succeeding Chamberlain and consequently signing the ‘Treaty of Berlin’ with Hitler, and so in this alternative scenario Colville would not have\u00a0found himself seduced by the newly installed Churchill’s eccentricities and charisma.\u00a0 The second and ongoing priority is to reconstruct CRF’s early life, and this in the short term entails\u00a0clarifying details regarding his education prior to entering Finsbury Technical College.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 My next visit to London will entail visiting theMetropolitan Archives where I hope to find more about CRF’s tutelage\u00a0at Finsbury Technical College under the distinguished physicist Silvanus Thompson.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I still have to address\u00a0the familiar\u00a0demands of the University at the start of a new academic year, whether\u00a0attending 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),\u00a0liaising 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 My immediate priorities are twofold.\u00a0 Firstly, I need to complete preliminary work on the British Air Commission in Washington, 1940-46, which … <\/p>\n

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