Tlh draft word count Tlhpref Preface tlhp Prologue tlh1 A dream childhood tlh2 At home in Oxford tlh3

A house in Winchester tlh4 Senior privileges tlh5 Glorious Balliol tlh6 Greater love tlh7 Found and lost tlh8 The pursuit of learning tlh9 All Souls and archaeology tlh10 Philosophy, Palestine and politics tlh11 Portrait of a marriage tlh12 Adult education tlh13 Home and country tlh14 War and peace tlh15 Lost causes tlh16 Wandering scholar tlh17 A marvellous year tlh18 History in the making tlh 19 To Ghana with love tlh20 Alma mater tlh21 Novel ways tlh22 Decline and fall tlhepi Epilogue Running total Free radical Prologue Dorothy Forster Smith, a sheltered 22-year-old, felt shy and apprehensive as she drew up to Barmoor Castle in Northumberland late in the afternoon of Tuesday, 4 August 1908. She was responding to an invitation from Violet Hodgkin, an older family friend more of her parents generation than her own. Dorothy could still recall from twelve years earlier an alarming experience of going from her familys holiday home in Bamburgh village to lunch alone with Violet in the splendid Keep of Bamburgh Castle that the Hodgkins had earlier inhabited. They had sat at each end of what seemed yards of table and were waited on by a butler or footman. 6976 6786 4892 7059 9959 6609 6673 6248 7503 13355 18029 21450 4882 8229 8704 16380 12605 7672 11471 22145 13799 7796 11441 c. 242,618 acks history 1908-1918 1919-1923 1925-27 1927-28 1928-29 1930-1930 1931-14 July 1931 15 July 1931-12 September 1932 10 October 1932-30 December 1933 9 January 1934-17 September 1936 17 September 1936-29 December 1937 Jan1938-Dec 1938 Jan1939-Dec 1939 Jan 1940- Sep1945 Oct 1945-May 1952 June 1952-Dec 1956 Jan 1957-Dec 1957 Jan 1958-Dec 1960 Jan 1961-Dec 1964 Jan 1965-Dec1970 Jan 1971-Dec 1975 Jan 1976-Mar 1982 March-May 1982

Dorothys immediate family were once more on holiday at Bamburgh, some sixteen miles from Barmoor. She went on the train from Belford to Beal and was met by a groom driving a smart dogcart. They took the Lowick road into Barmoor Castles long drive, to find the Hodgkin family at tea on the lawn although the day was cold for August. She knew little of this battlemented country-houses history: that a defensive border tower had been built near Lowick and the Kyloe Crags some eight centuries earlier after the Norman Conquest. In the late 18th century that tower had become the property of a branch of the Sitwell family, whose architect, John Patterson, a pupil of Adam, transformed it into a commodious country mansion. Dorothy saw only the splendid results: the pillared doorway leading to a large circular hall, lit by a glass roof two storeys above, and a main tower of four storeys. *** Barmoor Castle since 26 January 1899 had been the rented home of the Quaker Thomas Hodgkin, semi-retired banker turned historian and antiquarian, and of his wife, Lucy Anna Fox. The Sitwell family remained close at hand in the dower house on the estate, but the younger Sitwells tended to be at their London house. The Hodgkins in the castle had space to house or entertain their six surviving children (one son, John Alfred Hodgkin, had died in infancy in 1872). They had previously lodged in the even more impressive Bamburgh Castle on its basalt outcrop overlooking the North Sea with inspiring views of Holy Island and the Cheviot Hills. Their new home was inland and high above sea level: Holy Island and the Cheviot Hills could still be seen within a short walk through the fine trees and spreading lawns around the house. Visitors were almost invariably taken to a spot at the edge of the grounds where from what was known as the sunset seat they could see the Cheviots slumbering in the sunshine. Hodgkin had celebrated his move to Barmoor Castle by inviting a bookbinder from London to help select from his library a thousand volumes for rebinding. He went on to have additional bookcases built in at Barmoor since the newly bound books were only a modest proportion of his extensive collection. This expensive exercise was a mark of Hodgkins business success and scholarly passion. In the mid-17th century the Hodgkin ancestors belonged to the Cotswolds yeomanry. They were among the early adherents to the doctrine preached by George Fox and the Society of Friends of Truth, or Quakers (originally a pejorative later accepted as a proud ascription). A John Hodgkin moved south to London to earn a living as a writing master and private tutor and by 1815 was settled in Tottenham. He had a large house and garden in Bruce Grove. The Grove was virtually a Quaker enclave whose mansions included the London winter home of Luke Howard, a manufacturing chemist best remembered for devising the classification and naming of cloud formations such as nimbus and cumulus. The writing masters eldest surviving son was the medical doctor Thomas Hodgkin who died in 1866 and is remembered for describing the disease of the lymph nodes still known as Hodgkins disease. The next son, the conveyancing barrister John Hodgkin, married as the first of his three wives a daughter of Luke Howard. Their child Thomas was born at 14 Bruce Grove on 29 July 1831. The boy - known as tumbling Tommy in childhood - was a prize student whose progress was marred by ill health. He intended to follow his fathers profession and in late 1852 entered the chambers in New Square, Lincolns Inn, of Bevan Braithwaite. Early in 1853 the legal studies came to an end when Thomas had an

epileptic seizure in Braithwaites chambers. He was carried back to his step-mothers care in Tottenham. To recuperate he went on a walking tour of the continent with an old school friend, Alfred Waterhouse, newly qualified as an architect and keen to make a leisurely study of the architecture of France, Germany and Italy. Thomas returned to Tottenham and attempted to study topics other than law - including biblical Hebrew - but decided that for his healths sake his future life must be in the country. One option was the life of a country banker if he could gain banking experience. Cousins of the Leatham family intermarried with the Howards had a bank at Wakefield and Pontefract, the latter within three miles of the Howards country home at Ackworth. Thomas was allowed to study banking at Pontefract in the summers of 1854 and 1855 and to spend his spare time with Luke Howards circle of family and friends. The Leatham bank offered no prospect of partnership. Thomas moved on in February 1856 to a small and newish branch bank at Whitehaven in Cumberland, owned by the Head family, and with a quasi-promise of being one day admitted into the firm. Whitehaven was flourishing with fishing, ship-building, coal and iron mining and enjoyed an industrial importance that has now vanished. Thomas remarked how all day long carts moved slowly through the streets bringing the rich, slimy red ore to be shipped from one of the piers. Thomas and his sisters, Mariabella and Elizabeth, lived over the bank but his clerks pay covered only a third of the household expenses. He learned much of the craft of banking but saw no prospect of advancement in the Cumberland bank. In the autumn of 1857 he visited Falmouth, centre for a well-known Quaker family of the Foxes. He spent some time with Alfred Fox at Glendurgan where the household included six sons and six daughters. He saw his sister Elizabeths friend little Lucy, the fifth daughter, growing into womanhood and began to dream of marriage. By mid-1858 he had decided to move on from Whitehaven to enhance his prospects. He heard of an opening in Newcastle-on-Tyne where a new private bank was looking for young men with capital to take it over (for Thomas this meant a loan from his barrister father). Thomas was keen but wanted partners with local knowledge. The eventual partnership including John William Pease of Darlington began business in St Nicholas Square, Newcastle, on 14 March 1859. Thomass closest friend from student days at University College, London, the barrister Edward Fry and Mariabella Hodgkin were married. The ceremony on 6 April 1859 was held at Lewes in Sussex to which Thomass father had recently retired from Tottenham. Thomas was lodging at Ryton and sharing with his sister Elizabeth. Early in 1860 she left to marry Alfred Waterhouse, Thomass school friend and the architect companion on the recuperative continental tour. Later in 1860 Helen Fox of the Glendurgan household and Pease were married. Thomas Hodgkin and Lucy Anna Fox were married on 7 August 1861 in the Quaker Meeting-house at Falmouth. The banking partners became brothers-in-law. The banking venture was hugely successful. By 1866 Thomas was able to build a mansion designed by Waterhouse at Benwell, then two miles to the west of Newcastle (but now absorbed into the citys sprawl). John and Helen Peases grand house, Pendower, was at Benwell. Thomas and Lucys Benwelldene home was nearby. On 19 March 1869 their first child, Lucy Violet, was born; (followed by John Alfred in 1871);

followed by Edward (Teddy) on 20 September 1872; Elizabeth (Lily) on 22 November 1873; Ellen (Nelly) on 16 May 1875; Robert (Robin) on 24 April 1877; and George on 22 August 1880. Thomas pursued historical scholarship and writing alongside professional banking. He had twin passions in Italy and Northumberland. In 1879 Violet aged ten helped spot a howler in the proofs of the first volume of Italy and her invaders for the Clarendon Press in Oxford. She assisted on the full work, a labour of twenty-six years running to eight main volumes, some with several parts. In 1883 Thomas made one of his many visits to Rome and his first to Bamburgh, where he wrote: Faulty as the restoration of the castle is in many points, it helps me to imagine the great Castle-palace of Ida which must always have crowned the same basaltic rock. On 30 June 1886 he was to his immense pride invited to Oxford to receive the honorary degree of DCL. Lucy Anna Hodgkin and Violet Hodgkin travelled up from Exeter to meet Thomas travelling from Newcastle. They stayed in Bradmore Road, Oxford, with Professor Henry Pelham and his wife in what Violet found a cool, shady house. On 21 October 1893 Dr Hodgkin completed the formal sale of Benwelldene as a blind asylum. He was about to be without a home for himself, wife and young family plus a library of some five thousand books. During a train journey on 23 October he had a chance meeting with a trustee for the Durham Bishop Crewe estates. Dr Hodgkin made an offer on 3 November to rent the Keep of Bamburgh Castle for five years. This offer was accepted on 6 November, and then came an offer from the Newcastle industrialist William Armstrong to buy the castle outright. A compromise was reached that for a month in each year of the tenancy the Hodgkins would exchange with the Armstrong house in Jesmond Dene. In January 1894 Dr Hodgkin put up at a Bamburgh village inn to begin sorting his books for shelving in the Castle. By 30 May 1894 the Hodgkins were installed for their five year stay at the Keep in the castle courtyard of Bamburgh Castle. The eldest son, Thomas Edward (Teddy) born in 1872 and named for his paternal uncle by marriage, Edward Fry, went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He took a first in 1894 and on 10 June 1895 joined the family bank, becoming a partner in December 1898 and announcing his engagement to Catharine Wilson. Dr Hodgkin had been spending more time on his writing and phased himself out of regular work for the bank so that by 1899 he was effectively retired, except for attention to the private ledger. As the lease on the Keep was expiring, the family moved to a house in the village so that their furniture, books and papers could be sorted and packed for the migration to Barmoor. The second daughter, Lily, on 30 August 1900 married a Trinity College, Cambridge contemporary of Edwards, Herbert Gresford-Jones, who was then a Church of England vicar in Liverpool. Their son, Michael, was born on 21 October 1901. The third Hodgkin daughter, Nelly, was educated at home but went on to Somerville College, Oxford. On 8 July 1902 she and Robert Carr Bosanquet married. He was also a Cambridge Trinity friend of Edwards and the elder son of a prominent neighbouring family, the Bosanquets of Rock Hall. They set up home in Athens where Carr B was director of the British School of Archaeology. In 1905 Carr B succeeded to the family estate. He returned to Britain to take a newly established chair of classical archaeology in the University of Liverpool.

The second surviving son, Robin went to Seabank preparatory school at Alnmouth in 1897 and to Repton in September 1891. He spent only two terms there and suffered from what the family termed a delicate chest. A doctor advised that he go to a school farther south. Robin in 1892 transferred to Leighton Park in Reading. This was a new Quaker school financed out of the closure of another Quaker school with which the family was connected in the Bruce Grove, Tottenham, neighbourhood. He spent four years there along with other cousins of the Hodgkin clan and latterly with the companionship of his younger brother George, as had been the case at Seabank. George followed Edward to Cambridge when he went up to Trinity College in 1898 and despite a severe attack of influenza took a first in the natural science tripos. His eyesight was found to be weakened, and as the condition worsened he embarked in 1901 on a long journey that a doctor prescribed - to Greece, Egypt and Palestine. George travelled in 1902 to New Zealand on a scientific project and became increasingly involved in Quakerism. In pursuit of open-air employment he spent three years in Sunderland studying civil engineering. When the training was completed he was appointed assistant inspector of piers and harbours in the Isle of Man. *** Dorothy Smiths family had strong links with Northumberland on her mothers side. Mary Florence Baird was born on 3 December 1855 in Newcastle-on-Tyne as the first of seven daughters of a minor Northumbrian landowner and unsuccessful barrister John Forster. The Forsters were a widespread Northumbrian clan but John Forster descended from a line that was living in Bamburgh village in the mid-18th century. He had taken the name Baird on succeeding to property at Bowmont, and in 1854 Baird had married Emily Jane Brinton, from a prosperous Kidderminster family of carpet-makers. John Baird changed homes frequently and found the lure of foreign travel irresistible. As Baird travelled for the sake of his health and opportunities for water-colours and painting, Mary and her sisters were trooped around the continent and had a patchy formal education. In the early 1860s Baird would also take the family to Bamburgh and rent the Wynding House from Miss Thomassin Darling. She was an elder sister to Grace Darling, the heroic daughter of the Longstone lighthouse keeper who had helped save nine lives from the Forfarshire wrecked in a huge storm of 1838. In summer and autumn the Baird children enjoyed the sands of Bamburgh (as Marys descendants continue to do a hundred and thirty years later as an unbroken tradition into the fifth generation). Baird had no gainful employment but a large family and an extravagant life style. Throughout life Mary retained from her childhood an anxiety, or complex, a haunting fear from a casual remark of her fathers that the money would not last. By comparison with the Bairds, Dorothys father, Arthur Lionel Smith (A.L. as he was usually known) came from genuinely straitened circumstances. A.L.s father, William Henry Smith was a civil engineer and one of 22 children, of whom 19 survived to maturity. He was of English stock but born and raised in Ireland. W.H. Smith worked on Marc Isambard Brunels innovative and perilous project of cutting a tunnel under the Thames in London. He was married in 1843 to Alice Elizabeth Strutt from an Essex family proficient in the arts. She was brought up in Italy where her father, the painter, etcher and portraitist Jacob George Strutt, had settled but continued to send an occasional landscape to the Royal Academy.

The engineer and the artists daughter set up home in the Holborn district of London (in Great Coram Street and later Red Lion Square). They had five children. The first was a boy, William. The second son, Arthur Lionel, was born on 4 December 1850. Another son, Reginald, died as an infant in a cholera epidemic. W.H. Smith died too, at the early age of 37, leaving Alice a widow with four surviving children. A family friend arranged a presentation for A.L. for Christs Hospital, aged six (preferring him to William, precisely because he was so young). William went away to sea and Alice Smith with two small daughters, Mary and Miriam, went to Rome where her brother, in their fathers footsteps, was making a reputation as a painter. Alice Smith remarried in 1859, an American, Freeman Silke. They moved to Chicago with her daughters and were later to have two more daughters of their own, Alcmena and Lucy. A.L. was left to fend for himself in the harsh environment of some eight hundred boys at Christs Hospital in London, where food was scanty and playing fields non-existent. On a paved playground a form of hockey was one of the favourite games and a basis for A.L.s lifelong enthusiasm for the game (along with ice-skating, as another passion). He lived entirely at the school for six years, suffering three bouts of rheumatic fever, but he read voraciously and distinguished himself academically. In November 1868 he was awarded an exhibition to Balliol and came into residence in October 1869. In June 1871 he took a first in classical moderations. The success came in time for his first reunion with his mother since his early childhood. Freeman Silke in poor health travelled from Chicago to Rome and died of consumption. The twice widowed Alice Silke had as the young Alice Strutt been friendly with Emily Brintons eldest sister, Martha Eliza Brinton. Martha had gone on in 1845 to make a successful marriage to a Halifax carpet manufacturer and philanthropist, Frank Crossley. His carpet firm was the largest in the world in his day, employing more than 5,000 workers and collecting royalties from other manufacturers for a patented and innovative loom. Crossley was a Yorkshire M.P. from 1852 until his death in 1872 and had been created a baronet in 1863. It was arranged for A.L. Smith to hold a reunion with his mother, Alice Silke, and to meet his two half-sisters at the home of Lady Crossley. Mrs Silke and her daughters soon returned to Chicago. After their departure Lady Crossley kept a hugely benevolent eye on A. L. She provided him with a home in the vacations at Somerleyton, an enchanting country house in Suffolk. She even provided modest employment for A.L. in coaching her only child. He was an Eton schoolboy, Savile Brinton Crossley, and at 14 was only a few years younger than his new mentor. Balliol College followed this lead by finding more pupils for A.L. Lord Lymington became the first of an array of lordlings and princelings who helped A.L. make ends meet. Lady Crossley continued to subsidise A.L. at Balliol and he went on from his first in greats in 1873 to a year in the history school and a second in 1874. He was elected to an open fellowship at Oxfords Trinity College, tenable for seven years but ceasing on marriage. By November 1876 he had moved on to London lodgings in South Kensington as he read for the bar. Savile Brinton Crossley was Mary Bairds first cousin and she made occasional summer visits to Somerleyton (since her Aunt Frank, Lady Crossley, saw in Mary a potential spouse for Savile). Mary had met A.L. and gone sailing in Saviles yacht with her cousin and his tutor or on coach drives through the Suffolk countryside. They met again in Oxford when Lady Crossley was invited to an Oxford Commemoration, in those days

spread over several days of dancing and entertainment. In the autumn of 1877 Mary Baird and A.L. Smith became engaged. The Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett a legendary holder of that appointment, arranged for A.L. to be offered a tutorship in modern history at Balliol for 1879 when the Trinity fellowship lapsed on marriage. The engaged couple chose a future home in the new residential area growing up in North Oxford. The address was 7 Crick Road. They called it Somerley in recognition of the Crossley house where they had met, and of new subventions for the furnishing from Lady Crossley. They were married on 25 June 1879 at Teddington where the Bairds had settled. Marys relatives were numerous but on A.L.s side he had in addition to friends only his maternal uncle, Charles Strutt. He was known as the Solitary Relative for astonishingly turning up from Australia on the wedding day. The Smiths spent their honeymoon on and about the River Thames, essentially in a tiny outrigged skiff with overnight stops at riverside inns. A.L. rowed and Mrs A.L. steered. They went on to Canterbury (A.L. typically examining) and visited other friends before settling in the new Oxford house and Balliol about 1 October 1879. In the summer of 1880 Mrs A.L. was well into pregnancy when Jowett proposed that A.L. take the young Lord Weymouth to the continent to be coached for Balliol entrance. A.L. explained that a child was due in August, but was urged to go abroad anyway. The first-born, a son, was born in Baden Baden in Germany on 19 August 1880 after Mrs A.L. endured a prolonged and dangerous labour. By chance the vicar who had officiated at their wedding was in Baden Baden and on hand to baptise the child as Arthur Lionel Forster Smith. The next six children were daughters born less dramatically in the Crick Road house: Gertrude on 1 March 1882; Mary on12 June 1884; Dorothy on1 March 1886; Miriam on 14 February 1888; Margaret on 10 May 1890; and Rosalind on 20 September 1892. Jowett continued to plant potential Balliol entrants on the Smiths despite their cramped accommodation. He planned and offered a larger official tutors residence that was being built on a plot of land known as the Masters Field. The new house was close to completion in 1893 when Mrs A.L., with memories of Bamburgh holidays from her childhood, had the idea of taking the family there. A.L. was attracted by the archaeological and historical interest of Northumberland. The Smith family took the long journey to Bamburgh in August 1893 returning at the end of September for the final move to the new house, the Kings Mound. Their delight in the new surroundings was marred when on the day of the move they received news of Jowetts death - on 1 October 1893. Mrs A.L.s Aunt Frank, the patron to A.L., Lady Crossley, had died on 21 August 1891 leaving her niece a significant legacy from the Crossley fortune. This was to be put to good use as part payment towards the purchase and enlargement of a permanent holiday home in Bamburgh. St Aidans on the village street just at the foot of Bamburgh Castle was a relatively small, but as it proved, very elastic house. St Aidans had to find space for the family, a handful of servants and several students. A cunning but incautious builder constructed two additional tiny bedrooms in the gables of St Aidans. These became known as the matchboxes more for their scant size than the real fire risk they represented. The house could be let in the early summer before it was needed by the Smiths.

The Smith family was continuing to expand. A seventh daughter Barbara was born on 24 February 1896 after a three and a half years interval since the preceding child. The other girls were old enough to be bridesmaids at family weddings. This they did memorably at the London wedding in 1896 of their mothers younger sister, the actress Dorothea Baird. Dorothea (Dolly) had created the role of Trilby in the original hugely successful production and her marriage to Harry Irving, actor son of the great Sir Henry Irving, brought crowds to line the wedding route. The bridal carriages set off from the London home in Tavistock Square of Marys favourite sister, Emily Baird married to a journalist, E.T. Cook (later Sir Edward), who became editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, then the Westminster Gazette and finally of the Daily News. They were childless and took the keenest interest in their Smith nieces and nephews, especially the eldest daughter, Gertrude (named after another Baird sister, Gertrude who had died when barely seventeen). A ninth Smith child and second son, Hubert, was born in Oxford on 12 August 1899. This, however, was Bamburgh time and the baby when two weeks old was whisked off to be baptised in Bamburgh Church. This was the last child in a sequence sometimes categorised as seven sister roses with a brother thorn at each end, although the beautiful daughters were known in some less courtly undergraduate circles as the Smithereens. **** By the summer of 1894 the Hodgkin and Smith families from their disparate origins had converged on Bamburgh. The families met, but almost literally according to the Victorian hymn - with the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate. The encounter was consolidated in 1895 when Robin Hodgkin joined the procession of young men being coached by A.L. for Balliol entrance and lodged with the Smiths in their Oxford home, by now the Kings Mound. Robin was successful and came into residence in Balliol in 1896. His closest Balliol friend was Richard Douglas (Dick) Denman, tutored by A.L. Smith. Robin and Dick went on to share Oxford lodgings and Dick was a frequent visitor to the Hodgkin household. They made an adventurous journey to Russia, working their passage in a cargo steamer to St. Petersburgh and travelling roughly and economically down the Volga to the Black Sea. Another Balliol contemporary was the music prodigy, Donald Tovey, who in 1894 had gone up to Balliol as the first holder of the Lewis Nettleship memorial scholarship in music and graduated in 1898. On the male side at least, the Victorian network of philoprogenitive families and rippling circles of school and university friends was encapsulated in the Balliol hockey club. Hockey was introduced to Balliol by A.L. Smith in the early 1890s, by tradition as an import from the sands of Bamburgh although the Christs Hospital experience would also have played a part. For the season of 1897-1898 the eleven-man team captained by Robin Hodgkin included A.L. Smith and R.D. Denman. Another player as half-back was Francis Urquhart, who after Smith coaching for entrance to Balliol had won an exhibition in modern history and come into residence in October 1890. He shone with a sleekness that by 1892 won him the nickname Sligger. The Hodgkin household and Robin were much affected by the outbreak of the Boer war in 1899. Robin graduated in that year taking a first in history, and joined Queens College, Oxford, as a history lecturer (being elected a fellow in 1904). He also volunteered for service with the Northumberland Fusiliers. This was contrary to the

Discipline of the Society of Friends and brought severance from the Quakers. Dr Hodgkin showed understanding in the comment that the proposition against using physical force for the maintenance of right ought to be accepted by unwarped conviction and not forced by external authority. He remained close to his son, with the shared interest in history and the insight into Oxford life brought to him through Robins career. In 1903 Dick Denman brought his fiance to stay at Barmoor with Dr Hodgkin and his family. She was Helen Christian Sutherland, born 24 February 1881, as the daughter of Thomas Sutherland, who had famously worked his way up from a junior clerkship with the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Navigation Company to become its chairman in 1881. Sutherland had at the prime of his success married Alice Macnaught, daughter of a clergyman and granddaughter of a wealthy Liverpool physician. Helen was educated at a boarding school in Barnet and at the Convent of the Assumption in Paris. She was small in physique and shy in character and had not enjoyed the role of society girl her mother expected of her. Dick introduced Helen to the Smith family at the Kings Mound. Helen and Dick on 11 February 1904 were married, with Dicks Oxford contemporary and precocious novelist John Buchan as best man. The Denmans set up house in London in Swan Walk, Chelsea, and Dick, who had political ambitions, became private secretary to a Cabinet minister, the Postmaster General, Lord Buxton. The older Smith children were beginning to scatter from the Kings Mound. Lionel had a brilliant all-round record at Rugby School and Balliol College. His sporting talent (including being capped for England in hockey against Wales on 7 March 1903) meant that he slipped to a second in greats (where a first had been expected). He went on to a reading party at Sliggers chalet in Switzerland to read for a new school and returned to Oxford to a first in history in 1904. This success was sealed with election in November 1904 to a fellowship at All Souls along with Frederick Barrington-Ward. Another friend of Lionels, the Balliol science don Harold Hartley, was wooing the Gertrude Smith. Gertrude and Harold were married on 23 June 1906. Mary (known as Molly) had gone to Cambridge in 1902 on a history scholarship at Girton College. Dorothy entered Oxford High School in 1893 and spent eleven years there emerging in 1904. She had spent two years in the sixth form and was awarded an exhibition to Holloway College. She decided not to take it up in favour of an earlier ambition for nursing training (although this may have been out of deference to constraints on the Smith family finances). She spent a year as a daughter at home being too young to go away for the training she had chosen. In October 1905 at the age of nineteen she became a probationer at the Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital. The under matron conveniently was a sister of Hudson Shaw, A.L.s friend appointed a Balliol fellow in 1890 to lecture in Yorkshire in the university extension movement. The hospital experience was tough and unpalatable and in April 1906 she gave notice to quit and went back home to Oxford. Late in 1906 Dick Denman wrote to A.L. asking if one of his daughters could come and help for some weeks with the preparation of a concert series Donald Tovey and he were planning for Chelsea Town Hall. Gertrude was married, Molly at Cambridge, so Dorothy, next in line and unemployed, was designated. She was a one-finger typist, with little experience of managing money and no musical knowledge. She felt unfitted but stayed with Helen and Dick in Chelsea, and helped in selling concert tickets, dealing with

programmes and printers and Town Hall staff for Toveys series of chamber music concerts held in February and March 1907. The Denman marriage was not succeeding. However an unsuccessful pass from Dick to the innocent Dorothy Smith had the effect only of binding Dorothy and Helen Denman into what became a lifelong friendship. In the summer of 1907 Aunt Dolly Irving on holiday at Bamburgh set Dorothy off on a new false start. She clutched one of Dorothys hands and remarked they were just the right kind to do massage. Mrs A.L. responded immediately and by October 1907 Dorothy Smith was back in London (lodging in a Ladies Club in Bayswater) for a three-month course of instruction in massage. Dorothy passed an examination to become a certificated masseuse. She returned to Oxford to an occasional patient recommended by the Smith family doctor. Meanwhile A.L.s financial situation was partly eased with the award in 1906 of a Jowett fellowship under a scheme devised by a Balliol undergraduate contemporary (Jim Hozier become Lord Newlands) to improve the emoluments of Balliol dons. A condition of the endowment was that A.L. be one of the two initial beneficiaries. More money meant less pressure on A.L.s time. He used the slice of freedom to help the Workers Educational Association, founded in 1903 by Albert Mansbridge to support the higher education of working men. A.L. was nominated in 1907 to the joint committee of WEA and Oxford representatives to examine how this could be implemented in Oxford. In the A.L. Smith dynasty a new generation was beginning as the first grandchild came with the birth of Gertrude and Harold Hartleys daughter, Diana, on 18 January 1908. The baby when aged five months was among the family group at the wedding on 6 June 1908 of Molly to Frederick Barrington-Ward, who was using his All Souls fellowship as a springboard to a career as a barrister. The bridegroom was the eldest of nine children and the bride the third of nine children so a strong contingent from both sides could troop across the Masters Field. Dorothy and her spinster sisters were bridesmaids. By the end of July it was time for them to travel to Bamburgh for the now established summer holiday, and for Dorothy to take up Violet Hodgkins unexpected invitation. *** On Dorothy Smiths first afternoon at Barmoor in August 1908 the tea party she encountered comprised Dr Hodgkin, two daughters, one son and a family friend. Dr Hodgkin had just turned 77. Violet, the eldest child, was unmarried, but mindful of a painful broken engagement. This was to another of Edwards Trinity College contemporaries, Malcolm Corrie Powell, whose subsequent marriage to Olive Hannay on 11 May 1904 had begun to fail within weeks. Lily was already married to one future bishop and young mother to another. Robin was a bachelor at 31. The house guest was a friend of Violets, Paula Schuster, who would provide hospitality in London for Hodgkin visits. George, as yet unmarried, was away at his work on the Isle of Man. Between tea and dinner Robin took Dorothy for a spin in his small car to look for cream cheeses in the Wooler shops (without success) and to enjoy views of the Cheviots under the rain clouds. Violet was a reluctant third in the expedition. She had been unable to persuade other members of the party to go and she felt that being in the small cars tonneau joggled her appendix. Horse-drawn carriages were still the principal means of local outings, and the railway for most journeys. Dorothy was conscious of the luxury and spaciousness of Barmoor as she climbed to the main rooms on the first floor by a long but easy staircase. The staircase had a prominent

brass bar along the top of the banisters to make sliding down them impossible. The staircase curled up through four storeys of the castle. It would have been dangerous for anyone to attempt to slide down, and this was a house that welcomed many child visitors. On the first floor was Dr Hodgkins study or library; then the oval saloon with no exterior walls and lit by a glass roof; then a drawing room opening out of it with conventional windows and ceiling. The staircase carried on up to bedrooms, and closets. Only a best visitors room and the top floor nursery had bathrooms attached, and most bedrooms were served by hip baths and huge cans of hot water. A quiet dinner was followed by Dr Hodgkin reading aloud from Robert Southeys narrative poem Thalaba the Destroyer. Dorothy could retire to bed by ten in a room where a lamp had already been lit by one of the servants. On Wednesday morning, 5 August, with unsummery raging wind, Dorothy had a clearer picture of the prosperous establishment when family, guests and servants assembled for daily prayers before breakfast. A long file of staff came in and took up places by the chairs set in the oval saloon. The door was opened by Thomas Littlefair, who served as butler for 30 years, and the procession was headed by the cook, Mrs Drury, who served the family for a similar term. They were followed by two lady's maids, then two or three housemaids, and young kitchen and scullery maids, and at least two footmen. Dr Hodgkin had other outdoor staff, such as John Cornwall, a devoted gardener, and William Chapman, the coachman for 35 years, with whom there was friendly rivalry over who could claim the higher score of grandsons and granddaughters. After prayers and breakfast Dorothy went to read in the garden. Violet took breakfast in bed in her round room in the centre tower over Barmoors outer hall and had instructed Dorothy to come up and see her. Violet had been suffering since her youth from increasing deafness, but was also a hypochondriac, and could be most selfishly demanding. Dorothy, who was apparently unaware of hidden reasons for her invitation to Barmoor, funked the encounter. After lunch Robin took Dorothy in the car to Berwick where they shopped unsuccessfully for salmon but succeeded this time in buying cream cheeses. Robin was purposely reluctant to talk much while driving and troubled by the cars sparking plug and rear lamp. They returned through a wind that was sufficient to break the Hodgkin family habit of having as many meals as possible out of doors. They took tea indoors. Lilys young son, Michael, was brought from the nurseries to meet the adults for a while, then it was Violets turn to read aloud. After dinner Dr Hodgkin completed the Thalaba reading, at a hard gallop, according to Violets diary. On Thursday morning, 6 August, Dr Hodgkin left on an early train to London. Violet received a warning of a mumps scare at the Cots, the former coastguard cottages at Budle Bay taken by the Hodgkins for modest seaside rests. The warning came from Margaret Edina Duckworth married in 1889 to the barrister Henry Newbolt, recently retired to become a gentleman of letters and a well-liked poet. The Newbolts had become regular summer visitors. Violet with Dr Hodgkins secretary, Miss Robertson was driven over there to investigate. Also at the cottages was Robert Bridges, retired from medicine in favour of literature and on the way to becoming poet laureate. Violet had been a bridesmaid at the Bridges marriage in 1884 to a Hodgkin cousin, Monica, the daughter of Alfred Waterhouse and Elizabeth. Robin and Dorothy went on to Bamburgh where Dorothy had a few minutes with her own family who were setting off for an expedition to Dunstanburgh. She returned to Barmoor where the sun blazed out in the early afternoon.

Violet, wanting to be alone, sent them off for a picnic in the carriage after lunch. On return Dorothy and Violet chatted about Helen and Dick Denman. Dorothy mentioned that she was intending to leave next day. Violet speedily passed this news on to Robin. They dined outside on the lawn: Violet seated between Lily and Paula, Robin and Dorothy making up the table. After dinner all five were going to see the sunset. Violet and Paula slipped away to another part of the garden. Lily went into the house, soon to be joined by Viola and Paula for what seemed a long wait. Robin invited Dorothy to go through the patch of woodland beyond the Barmoor rose beds to the sunset seat at the edge of the wood. There Robin asked Dorothy to marry him, but this was to her astonishment and consternation. She was unaware that Violets invitation was at Robins request and part of a plot patched up by Robin in Oxford a month earlier. Robin had already at Violets instigation talked to Dr Hodgkin about the intended marriage on the Wednesday evening after the hard gallop through Southey. Dorothy responded to the proposal with ambiguous floods of tears. They returned to the house and Robin sent Violet a note Do go to Dorothy. Violet went to Dorothys room, found her in great distress and tried to calm and comfort her. She then went to Robins room and found him less consolable so gave him veronal to help him sleep. All three spent a troubled night. On Friday morning, 7 August, Violet was awake by 6.30 in the morning and soon despatching Robin to drive in his car to Bamburgh to seek the belated consent of Dorothys parents for the engagement. Violet went so far as to sacrifice her early morning tea to Robin. She sent for more from the kitchen and later gave the senior household staff an explanation of this break in routine signifying a momentous occasion. Robin made a halt at Wooler for breakfast, then drove towards Bamburgh, pausing an hour on the moor to ponder the scene and his future. He called on the Smith house, then lunched at the cottages with the Newbolt family. He made a second call at St Aidans to complete his task of securing Smith parental approval for the marriage proposal. Meanwhile Violet determined that Dorothy was to be given a deliberately dull day to quiet her nerves. She was set to picking lavender and making sachets, and spent a while playing with Lilys seven-year-old son Michael. Robin returned at teatime to a more relaxed household. Robin and Dorothy talked among the roses in the evening and were more at ease. On Saturday morning, 8 August, Paula returned to London, and Robin drove Dorothy over to Bamburgh to see her mother, and her immediately older and younger sisters. He left Dorothy with the Smiths and went to lunch with the Newbolts at the cottages. In the evening Robin drove her back to Barmoor to see his mother who was returning that day from a family visit. Robins car would not start when it was time to meet Lucy Anna Hodgkins train, so she was met by a brougham and a bicycle. Dorothy was charmed by Mrs Hodgkin who treated her as if it was all settled that she would be a daughter-in-law. Dorothy told Robin she was afraid of being alone with him. On Sunday morning, 9 August, Dorothy accompanied Robin and his mother to church. In the afternoon Robin and Dorothy sat talking in the heather on the moors and Dorothy hesitantly agreed to a trial engagement. Before she returned to the shelter of the Smith family she permitted one kiss. Chapter 1 A dream childhood

An acquaintanceship of nearly a decade between the young historian, Robin Hodgkin, now teaching at Queens College, Oxford, and Dorothy, one of the many daughters of his Balliol mentor A.L. Smith, flowered swiftly into romance in the Northumbria countryside. Once an engagement was agreed in early August 1908 and approved by both families Robin was swift to action. He took Dorothy on a shopping expedition to Edinburgh on 14 August and chose for her an expensive diamond cluster engagement ring. Dorothy was hoping for leisurely preparation for a spring wedding. Robin urged that they be married before Christmas. With four of the Hodgkins about to embark on a visit to Quaker communities in New Zealand and Australia an early wedding was set for 15 December. By the first week of September Robin had made a rapid dash to Oxford to find a house. Dorothy was chary of suburban North Oxfords neo-Gothic. She was content with Robins acquisition of Mendip House on Headington Hill, then almost rural and a good bicycle ride from the universitys spires and domes below. The house had dining and drawing rooms, five bedrooms and a study-library. It stood in an acre of grounds, with lawns, shrubbery and kitchen garden - so Knight, the gardener, was taken on with the purchase. The engaged couple made day trips to London to choose good furniture - shopping made easier by a subvention from Robins banker older brother. Dorothy startled bystanders by appearing in a Kensington store window to try out a large and comfortable sofa that became the first purchase for Mendip House. The luxury must have been something of a change from Dorothys previous homes categorised by an older sister as very spartan beds hard, and blankets and sheets none too good. Wedding gifts too helped furnish Mendip House - one Balliol fellow, Jimmy Palmer departing England on 29 October on becoming Bishop of Bombay, contributed six Chippendale chairs. A fellow of Queens, Albert Augustus David, conducted the service in St Cross Church, Holywell, with the assistance of the bridegrooms cleric brother-in-law Herbert GresfordJones. The marriage followed a pattern set by Dorothys two older sisters, except that the winter ceremony lacked the family procession across the Masters Field of the June weddings. The bridesmaids were Dorothys four younger sisters and the Hodgkin familys friend, Celia Newbolt. The pages were Robins nephew, Charles Bosanquet, and the last of the Smith children, Hubert, substituting for another of Robins nephews, Michael, as there was illness in the Gresford-Jones house. Even the initial honeymoon destination was the same for Dorothy as for her sisters. This was Rose Cottage at South Stoke, Oxfordshire, the riverside country home of her widower uncle, Sir Edward Cook, a former newspaper editor now engaged with Alexander Wedderburn on the 38-volume library edition of John Ruskins Works. Sir Edward warned that a December sojourn would be less attractive than a visit in June. The honeymoon was continued to Mentone on the French Riviera, but transmuted abruptly when Dorothy found she had measles. Mrs A.L.s help was speedily invoked and she arrived to nurse Dorothy. Mrs A.L. was becoming used to a combined role of mother and grandmother. Her own last child was born in 1899 but she had become a grandmother in January 1908 with the birth of Gertrude and Harold Hartleys daughter, Diana (known in the family as Dina). Her second grandchild was Molly and Fred Barrington-Wards daughter, Sylvia, born on 24 June 1909. Dorothy Hodgkin became pregnant in the autumn of 1909. The Kensington

sofa had found a place at Mendip House in Robins study-library at the head of the back stairs. Dorothy would lie there in the evenings and make long robes and flannels for the unborn child. On Low Sunday, 3 April 1910, the baby was born at 3.45 in the afternoon: a boy weighing in at six and a quarter pounds and initially with a mop of rich red hair. The baby at birth had already ten aunts and ten uncles (fifteen by blood) and his advent was the signal for another procession of relatives - to inspect, admire and adore. First in the queue came the maternal grandmother, Mrs A.L. who moved into Mendip House for the babys arrival. Then came the father, Robin. They were followed by the paternal grandmother, Lucy Anna, and grandfather, the banker and historian Dr Thomas Hodgkin. The Hodgkin grandparents returned to Northumberland and their place at the cradle was taken by their eldest daughter, Violet Hodgkin, and by Helen Denman, an intimate friend of Violet and Dorothy. Missing from the procession was the paternal grandfather, the patriarchal Balliol don A.L. Smith. He was a reluctant traveller but had agreed to take Hilary term of 1910 as a sabbatical to deliver a lecture series at New Yorks Columbia University. This would also provide an opportunity to spend a week in Chicago with his nearly ninety-year-old mother, Alice Elizabeth Silke, whom he had not seen for almost forty years - and then only briefly. He could reunite with sisters he had not met for half a century. Mrs A.L., tempted by the prospect that the baby due in Oxford might be her first grandson, decided to stay at home. She chose the next two unmarried daughters, Miriam (Biddy) and Margaret (Maggie), to keep their father company and to be shown off to his virtually unknown relatives. News of the Hodgkin baby was cabled to them in the United States. Maggie from Park Avenue in New York addressed a miniature letter of congratulations to the new-born. Then A.L. and his daughters sailed back to Liverpool in early May and on 17 May the baby was introduced. A christening at Queens College followed on 6 June performed by the veteran Provost, Dr J.R. Magrath. The child, named Thomas Lionel after the two grandfathers, cried under a liberal splashing of cold water. The spectators, mostly female, included Mrs A.L., Gertrude Hartley with her two-year-old daughter, Dina, Biddy and Maggie, and nursemaids and servants from the Smith household at Balliols Kings Mound. Helen Denman, the daughter of the prosperous shipper, Sir Thomas Sutherland, was chosen as a godmother. Another Balliol don, the classics tutor, J.A. Smith, who was a close family friend but unrelated, brought a silver christening mug. Thomas was taken on 10 June to the Kings Mound when he and cousin Dina and cousin Sylvia were together for the first time. In the third week of June he was weaned and could be exposed to more ambitious expeditions. In the first week of July came the first real outing when he was taken to London to stay in Chelsea with Helen and Richard Denman, then a young political assistant. Thomas was wheeled out in Kensington Gardens and Battersea Park. The family went straight on to the Hodgkin grandparents at Barmoor Castle to begin a summer in Northumbria. The first four weeks were with Robins parents. In August Thomas was entrusted to his maternal grandmother at the Smith Bamburgh holiday home, St Aidans. Dorothy and Robin were close by at the Budle Bay cottages for a fortnight and then Dorothy had what she felt as a long fortnights separation when she and Robin went to Scotland. Dorothy devoured daily bulletins from the childs nurse and

sent Thomas picture postcards that he tried to eat. They returned to Oxford at the end of September. The new years day of 1911 had the family on the move again as they journeyed by train from Oxford to Liverpool, and on from Liverpool to the Hodgkin grandparents at Barmoor. Thomas was accompanied by his nurse. When the nurse unwrapped him from his shawl in a railway waiting room a lady bystander remarked: He looks like a snowdrop coming out of the snow. This was a well-behaved child. Dorothy was pleased to note that on the train journey back from Barmoor late in January, his uncle, the austere and fastidious scholar, all-round sportsman and hockey international, Lionel Smith, stayed in the carriage with him all the way. In the custom of the time the children of well-to-do families were essentially left in the care of the nurse or nanny. Thomass nurse was on holiday for ten days in March for part of which Robin was also away. Dorothy was delighted to spend a whole week at the Kings Mound in sole charge of her son. The spell was broken when the nurse rejoined them in London where Dorothy and Robin were staying with Dorothys sister Molly Barrington-Ward at 2 Douro Place, Kensington. Thomass first birthday, on 3 April 1911, was made into an occasion. Robin came early for a childrens tea party and a sugary cake with one candle - Sylvia and Thomas both spat out the sugar. Presents poured in: including a frock, a swing, a box of bricks, a silver knife, a toy car and a wooden tea-set. The childrens nannies joined in: from Thomass an enamel cup, saucer and plate, and from Sylvias a squeaking hen. Thomas was now four times his birth weight and could show seven or eight teeth. The childhood companionship with Sylvia was developing. She spent the first fortnight of June at Mendip House that included on 6 June a baby party on the lawn for Dina Hartley and half a dozen other Oxford children. A donkey was provided as part of the entertainment, but Tommy, as he was becoming known, was engrossed with his push horse Dobbin. Sligger, the elegant Balliol don, Francis Urquhart, sent belated apologies for missing the party on a Louvre postcard of Michelangelos Virgin and Child. Three days later Dorothy and Robin gave a garden party for their own adult circle where Tommy was much in demand to be seen. He was also taking his first faltering steps at walking and by the end of Sylvias visit had grasped the art. The end of Oxfords summer term signalled a round of holiday visits. The middle weeks of July were spent at Ottershaw, Surrey. They took a night train to Northumberland in time for the celebrations at Barmoor on 29 July for Dr Hodgkins eightieth birthday. Dorothy, Robin and Tommy spent the month of August at the rented Lifeboat House in Bamburgh. Tommy played delightedly on the sands, often with young cousins. On 7 August came more magnificent celebrations at Barmoor for the golden wedding of Lucy Anna Hodgkin and Dr Hodgkin. Tommy shared in the precious shower. Lucy Hodgkin gave him a gold penholder. His childless godmother, Helen Denman, becoming known as Aunt Helen gave him a gold sovereign. For September and early October Dorothy, Robin and Tommy returned to the well-appointed luxury of Barmoor. Violet, who suffered from severe deafness, asked Dorothy what she felt was Tommys future. The proud mother replied that he would be an epoch maker. Violet was startled as she thought Dorothy had said teapot maker. The trio returned to Mendip House on 10 October, and blessedly in Dorothys view the nurse took her holiday in the last fortnight of October. Robin and Dorothy had another

opportunity to know their child better. The Christmas vacation brought nannys turn to be in sole charge. On Christmas day Dorothy and Robin took Tommy to a family gathering at the Kings Mound. The parents went away for nearly three weeks away in Switzerland. They were joined by Robins younger brother, George. It was thought that a regime of skating and ski-ing would help restore his failing health. Nanny stayed on with the child for a fortnight at the Kings Mound, then trundled Tommy off to a weekend with her own sister, a Mrs Baker in Cambridge, and a four-day visit to Hodgkin relatives, Anna and Ivor Tuckett at Punchardon Hall [where ??] and their young son, Cedric (Ceddie). The family was reunited at Kings Cross station on 13 January 1912. The pattern was forming of routine periods at Mendip House in term time and long, leisurely visits in the university vacation. Tommys second birthday on 3 April 1912 was celebrated en famille at Barmoor and a stay with Molly in Kensington followed. Sylvia and Tommy were little impressed by an outing to the London Zoo, but Kensington Gardens held its appeal despite what Tommy remarked as an absence of pretty flowers. A ten-day holiday break for the nanny in May gave Dorothy yet another welcomed opportunity to find out more about her sons personality. She tried out on him an English version of Heinrich Hoffmanns Struwwelpeter, Shock-head Peter, that had been amusing (or appalling) children in England for half a century. Tommy took to it and after several readings to him had some of it by heart. At the end of the month he was taken to an Oxford military parade and like any child was thrilled by the sight of soldiers on horseback. Meanwhile George Hodgkin was wooing his cousin, Mary Wilson. They became engaged on 15 July 1912. Tommy was at Bamburgh again for August and becoming more aware of surroundings. When he admired the great Bamburgh Castle he was told that Daddy had lived there as a child. He only half understood and confused this intimation with a vague sense of the pomp of Queens College in Oxford. He spent September and early October at Barmoor as in the previous year. Again nannys October fortnight break gave Dorothy a brief chance to be a full-time mother. The family had a London fortnight in December 1912 with friends in Victoria, and as in 1911 were somewhat dispersed at Christmas time. Tommy with his nanny went to the Smith family gathering at the Kings Mound. Robin went to his father at Barmoor, where Christmas was celebrated in the accepted style of patrician paternalism. A hundred children gathered at a Christmas tree in the village club house. Dr Hodgkin called out the name of each child and handed out a gift cut from the tree by one of his sons. Dr Hodgkin wrote on Christmas day to his sister, Lady Fry, that his physical strength was failing. For the new year of 1913 Dorothy, Robin and Tommy were together again at Mendip House to the apparent relief and pleasure of the child. They entertained their Tuckett relatives, and Ceddy shared Tommys nursery. Gertrude and Harold Hartley had a son, Christopher (Cubby), born on 31 January 1913. Dr Hodgkin in Northumberland had virtually abandoned the family custom of taking meals out of doors as often as possible. The lease on Barmoor Castle was coming to an end. He was growing tired of the darkness and cold of northern winters and looking for sunnier surroundings. He was drawn to the Falmouth of Lucy Annas Fox family origins. He and his wife and eldest daughter took for a trial month of March 1913 Treworgan, a house standing on the coast about four miles west of Falmouth.

They motored down there with a series of family visits on the way: a Hodgkin sibling in Darlington, the young Gresford Jones household in Sheffield. Dr Hodgkin consoled himself for feeling unwell by spending many hours on a very difficult jig-saw puzzle. Violet stayed on in Sheffield to give a lecture on Australia. Dr Hodgkin warmed to the sunshine of Treworgan and could even manage the steep path through pine trees to the sea shore and sandy bay. He was joined by his daughter, Nelly Bosanquet, and two of her children. He read to his grandson, Charles Bosanquet, who approaching his tenth birthday made an eager and attentive listener. On Sunday 2 March Dr Hodgkin read at morning family prayers, then called for a carriage to attend meeting. Lucy Anna was in the carriage but before Dr Hodgkin could join her he collapsed and died. On 5 March Dorothy and Robin took Tommy to Falmouth to the Fox familys Glendurgan seat for a month-long visit. Dr Hodgkin was buried on 6 March with Fox and Hodgkin family retainers among the bearers. For Tommy this journey meant three weeks with another playmate cousin, a Bosanquet daughter whom Tommy called Helen Di, and a quiet celebration at Glendurgan of his third birthday on 3 April. The children played well provided that Tommy could take the lead. He shared a week of his nannys holiday with her and her sister in Cambridge. The nanny could then enjoy a week of genuine holiday as Dorothy and Robin took Tommy for a weeks stay with the Smith family at the Kings Mound in Oxford. George Hodgkin and Mary Wilson were married in the Friends Meeting House at Bournville on 10 April 1913. After a west country honeymoon they settled in a modest house in Banbury. The end of April saw the Hodgkin nucleus back at Mendip House where building works were in progress. They returned to Barmoor Castle for the latter half of June and early July, but Robins mother and spinster sister had decided to keep Treworgan as their future home. Tommy was bedecked in a home made white satin suit to be a page for the wedding on 29 July 1913 of his maternal aunt Maggie to an extraordinary Balliol graduate, John Gordon Jameson, the son of Lord Ardwall. A snap proposal had come from Jameson after he had been godfather at the baptism of Gertrude and Harold Hartleys son Christopher (Cubby) in March of that year. Tommy had been excited at his prospective role, but this took an unexpected turn. As the bridal procession started one of the bridesmaids by accident stuck a flower in his eye. Tommy reached his mothers row in tears and Dorothy smuggled him into her pew, where he spent most of the service drying his eyes on her handkerchief. In August he was taking an interest in writing, largely self-taught, and could write most of the alphabet. In the household there had been much talk of another child expected, a wee babba. A cot was ready and Tommy began to look into it each morning. Mendip House was the setting for the birth on 25 August 1913 of the Hodgkins second child, a boy later christened Edward Christian (Teddy). Tommy loved the new baby and only occasionally rued the rival for his mothers attention. Tommy spent much of September without his parents as his nanny took him to Seaview in the Isle of Wight to stay with his aunt and uncle, Molly and Fred Barrington-Ward. Again his cousin Sylvia was a stimulating companion. Tommy was learning to paddle and even to bathe in the sea. He was showing a precocious interest in theology and his mother records him as asking: Is God black in Africa? What if there wasnt God? ... Back in Oxford he was in November taken by Dorothy to a childrens folk dancing class where songs and games were encouraged. He was miserably shy at first but was bribed

by his mother to persist, and began to enjoy the group - again when he could take the lead. In December he began to be enthusiastic and adept at jig-saw puzzles - a family fad. On 8 December Dorothy took him to his first really big childrens party - a gathering of some fifty to sixty children in the Masonic Rooms. The children were given a Punch and Judy show. Tommy reacted initially, like many children before and since, with what his mother saw as misery and terror. He buried his face in his mothers clothes and refused to watch. She coaxed him into taking a peep and he began to take interest, albeit with a running fire of comments on the performance in an uncomfortably loud voice. For Christmas Sylvia reappeared as a companion for a fortnights visit to Mendip House. She brought a fund of carols and hymns and passed her liking for these on to Tommy. He also followed her example in consuming the supposedly wholesome Oxo, Force and Post Toasties. George and Mary Hodgkin had their first child, a boy named Alan, on 5 February 1914. In the early weeks of 1914 Tommy was showing a fractiousness that his mother nicknamed Grumbling Joe, but the episode seemed to be over by the eve of his fourth birthday. Dorothy and Robin were away in Italy in March and April, leaving Tommy in Oxford and missing the fourth birthday on 3 April. Tommy celebrated with his cousins Dina and Cubby Hartley to lunch and tea, the customary cakes and candles and numerous presents. The Jamesons first child, a daughter named Mary Margaret, was born on 25 May 1914. The assassination occurred at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 of the heir to the Austrian throne. This portentous event was somehow overshadowed by preparations for a summer visit to Lucy Anna Hodgkin at Falmouth. This replaced a visit to Cromer that had been in prospect before the Treworgan invitation was made. Treworgan in July brought happy long afternoons on the beach for two small boys, their mother and grandmother. The mood changed when Britain on 4 August 1914 declared war on Germany. Lucy Anna and Dorothy were staying with the children and the nanny at the Polullian Hotel. Tommy was old enough to be troubled about the war and wanted to know why God hat let it come. He tried to follow the war news. The national anxiety was distressful for Robin in a specific way, as his convictions differed from those of his actively Quaker mother and sister, and his younger brother, George, who was adamantly against the war. Robin spent the last part of the long vacation with the YMCA at an embarkation camp in the New Forest. Robin returned to Queens College, Oxford, for the Michaelmas term and watched the numbers dwindling as more and more were accepted for military service. His severance from the Quakers had stemmed from his volunteer membership of the Northumberland Fusiliers at the time of the Boer War. He applied to rejoin his old battalion. He was accepted and posted in December to battalion headquarters at Alnwick. At his first medical, he was classed as unfit for foreign service: he was to serve on the home front. Dorothy adjusted to the new conditions of wartime and tried to keep the family as close together as circumstances would permit. She spent January and February 1915 at Hope Villa in Alnwick. Tommy took well to the change of scene and was keenly interested in military matters. He offered to tell his mother all the stripes and stars, from drummer boy to field marshal. George and Mary Hodgkin had their second child, a boy named Robert Allason, on 12 February 1916. In March and April they were at 12 Tankerville Terrace, Newcastle, that he seemed to find more agreeable than Alnwick, though Dorothy conjectured that he might be

homesick for his Mendip toys. Nanny announced a plan of marrying on Leap Year Day in 1916, and it was expected that Tommy would by then be attending school. Tommy celebrated his fifth birthday on 3 April 1915 with five other children to tea, a birthday cake, Easter Eggs and games. Among the presents from his parents was a wristwatch as he had taught himself to tell the time. At the end of April Dorothy left Newcastle and returned with the children to the south. They visited the Northumberland Fusiliers in camp at Newsham and Tommy was intrigued to see Daddys dear little tent. Dorothy spent the first fortnight of May in London and Tommy went on a country visit to the Tucketts at Punchardon Hall. He spent some of the time with Ceddie Tuckett and picked up new games including the perennial noughts and crosses. Tommy was also gaining manual dexterity as he created somewhat arbitrary constructions in Meccano. Nanny took a fortnights holiday in the latter part of May, and Tommy and Teddy went to the Kings Mound, where Dina Hartley was a frequent playmate. Another member of this childrens playing circle was the toddler Mary Jameson. Robin was able to visit for two days of leave. In June 1915 Dorothy with the two boys returned to Mendip House. They were joined at the end of June by Robin for a weeks home leave, with its high point a picnic in a hayfield. On 9 August Dorothy, Tommy and Teddy went to Lucy Anna Hodgkin at Treworgan and more lovely days on the sands. He was rather spoiled at Treworgan, especially by his grandmother and the kitchen maid. Dorothy and Violet Hodgkin competed to read aloud to him, including old books that had been favourites of Robin as a child. Ceddie Tuckett was close by on a visit to Glendurgan. On 1 September Dorothy, Tommy and Teddy returned to Oxford, and found the sandpit of the Mendip House garden a poor substitute for the broad sands of Treworgans beach. Within a week Robin returned for eight days of leave. The family went into the city and had an afternoon in a punt on the river, Tommys first experience of the delights of punting. On 20 September 1915 the first experience was of school as he entered the kindergarten class of a new school opened at White Lodge, Headington. His nanny reported that he had taken well to the other school children. After a few days Dorothy found Tommy crying in bed at night, and he confessed to unhappiness at school. He was given a pep talk, and he determined to be a brave soldier about school. Tommy was soon caught up in the excitement of new words and new agility in simple arithmetic, and some rote learning that appealed to him. [Rosalind Smith married Murray Wrong, a Canadian pupil at Balliol of Smith and son of the Toronto Professor who entertained A.L. on his North American journey of 1910.] Tommys transition to school and minor independence was timely, as on 8 October 1915 Dorothy and Robins third child, a daughter, was born. Tommy showed himself fond of the new arrival but remained less engrossed than Teddy who was closer in age. Robin came home from 9 to 11 October to see his daughter and again in the following month for the childs christening on 14 November as Elizabeth (Betty), at a ceremony performed by his colleague, Canon B.H. Streeter. Dorothy had a special tenderness in her feeling for a daughter, but was able to retain her devoted interest in Tommy as the first child evolving a distinct personality. Dorothy continued to visit her intimate friend, Helen Sutherland, in Chelsea. In December and January Dorothy took Tommy on a round of brief visits. As 1915 drew to a close they were with Helen at 29 Vale Avenue for three days, accompanied by a

nursery maid, Elsie. Helen and Dorothy took Tommy on his first visit to the theatre Lewis Carrolls Alice - to which he responded with a calm pleasure. They had a brief excursion to see Westminster Abbey and an afternoon at the London Zoo - where Tommy liked the monkeys. They went on to Robins brother and sister-in-law, Edward and Catherine (at Old Ridley Stocksfield where Robin could visit them) and continued to Robins military encampment at Cambois, staying at a nearby rectory. Tommy found there Robins Christmas present to him, a tricycle with brake and chain, that turned out to be a hugely successful choice. By late January 1916 he was back in Oxford and attending a local school, with a distraction in early February when Robin appeared for a belated Christmas leave. He was taken to the Oxford Museum, mainly an anthropological collection, and came away speaking well of the skeletons and the masks. Robin was in military camp at Canterbury and a blizzard prevented him attending Tommys sixth birthday on 3 April 1916. Mendip House entertained to a birthday tea a customary trio of cousins, Dina and Cubby Hartley, Mary Jameson, and two other children. Helen Sutherland as a dutiful godmother sent for his birthday Mabel Dearmers A Childs Life of Christ. Term ended on 5 April and Tommy received his school report from the Headington School for Girls, Oxford. He scored four excellents; for his conduct it was noted Tommy is getting much more independent. Of his general progress it was recorded: He shows keen and intelligent interest. The Jamesons had their second child, a son Andrew (Andy) born on 17 April 1916 at the Kings Mound in Oxford. The school was due to reopen on 5 May but Robin on service in Kent had been exploring ways of bringing the family together again. He found lodgings at Herne Bay and by May 1916 they were settling in to a new setting with Tommy adjusting to the three small daughters of a Captain North. Dorothy tried to give him lessons at home but these were irregularly interspersed between many family outings. Tommy was content to read to himself and was showing a fondness for poetry, generally out of The Oxford Book of English Verse. He widened his circle to include children of the neighbourhood, Dorothy, Jim and Billy MacComb, aged ten, seven and five respectively, and Margaret and Richard Webster. In Oxford the Master of Balliol, J.L. Strachan-Davidson, died in the summer of 1916 and A.L. Smith was elected to succeed him. The promotion meant an awkward move from the cheerful and familiar Kings Mound to the comparatively dreary Masters Lodgings in college. Another family friend, Sligger, became the senior fellow and was elected Dean of Balliol. These events were remote from Dorothys immediate anxieties in Herne Bay where in August and September all the children had whooping-cough. By October 1916 Tommy was pronounced clear of infection and he resumed regular kindergarten schooling at a tiny establishment about a hundred yards from home. This essentially provided for half a dozen children in the neighbourhood: the MacComb playmates and a couple of others. He made strong progress in his reading - Couldnt be better was his teachers verdict on general progress. Tommy received his first school prize on the breaking up day of the Alexandra School, Herne Bay, whose principals were a C.M. Graham and AE. Tunbridge. Tommy had also reached the age of scepticism about Father Christmas. Robin was on hand to fill Tommys stocking on Christmas eve. Tommy woke up in time to see this and to confirm the loss of illusion.

Tommy returned to his kindergarten in mid-January 1917. Mrs A.L. in Oxford was delighted to find the Masters Lodgings enlivened by the birth there on 2 February 1917 of another grandson: Charles born to Rosalind and Murray Wrong. In Herne Bay in February Tommy had an attack of German measles (without the rash) or influenza and four or five days of high temperature. He was becoming a reader of childrens weekly comics, for preference Rainbow and Puck. This did not entirely please Dorothy who thought the publications foolish but harmless. In the Easter vacation the family were back in Oxford, on a visit to the Smith parents in their new Balliol setting. Tommy enjoyed exploring this new domain, especially the cellars. Aunt Barbara, the seventh Smith daughter and still single, took him to the universitys Pitt-Rivers museum (skeletons and masks), and Rosalind and Murray Wrong less high mindedly took him for his first visit to a cinema. The latter was a longawaited thrill and on the basis of the film he had seen he came back and announced: Now I know what a minx is - a girl who wants to marry a chemist. What followed provided one of the rare shadows on Tommys early childhood. He went into the Acland Home on 29 March 1917 for an operation. Dorothy in her own apprehension decided to say nothing until the morning just before they started out to the hospital. Tommy reacted well and quickly made friends with a nurse, although insisting that Dorothy come with him into the room where he was given chloroform. However he fought against the chloroform and hated it. The operation was a circumcision on medical grounds. Dorothy stayed with Tommy at the Acland Home for two days, where he was distressed at the dressings, but cheered by the company of the nurses and doctors. Then they returned to Balliol and much fond attention from the aunts, who brought sweets and games to help his recuperation. Tommy also amused himself by playing on a typewriter he found at Balliol. Dorothy preserved what she described as TOMMYS NOVEL Composed to the typewriter March 1917 (just before his 7th birthday). The traumatic effect of the operation is hard to determine. However the work of fiction relates: Once up on a time there was a lillte leetle boy who had a brother and a Sisster ....O dear o-daer dear said Lionel I must go home then he said no no said the master sternly must not go booboohohoooohohohhbb go to the smacking room at once, booboohoooooooooohhhhooooe yes you go and get a smack ing and with no chlor ophorm oh oh oh oo I thought boys Never never had a smacking with out chlorophorm ..... Tommys anxiety was compounded by a contretemps on 2 April on the return journey to Kent via London. Dorothy found it a difficult journey as Tommy had to be carried. She left him with a porter at Paddington station for a long quarter of an hour as she searched for a taxi. Tommy thought he had been abandoned by Dorothys disappearance. The misunderstanding was soon resolved, but remained in Tommys memory. They went to lunch at Molly Barrington-Wards in Kensington and returned to Herne Bay, and a subdued family party next day for Tommys seventh birthday and many presents. Tommy was taking his outings in a bath chair, but he was encouraged to resume his normal sturdy walking by the arrival on 4 April of Sylvia Barrington-Ward for a three weeks visit. Dorothy frequently read aloud to the children with occasional skipping of possibly dull passages. The current fare was adventure stories, The Coral Island, and The Three Midshipmen.

One of his seventh birthday presents from Dorothy and Robin was a stamp album and his young uncle Hubert Smith gave him a good selection of his swaps. Geography had become a favourite subject at school, although it was hard to determine. When the Alexandra Schools term ended on 25 July 1917, Hodgkin of Class II was first in most subjects, albeit in pupil groups ranging from four to nine in number. This was his last term. The family left Herne Bay for Tadworth in August and Robins family at Treworgan in September. They then moved to London, as Robins military service took him to the War Office. In October Tommy went to the Norland Place School in Holland Park Avenue, a full-sized establishment of some 250 pupils and taking boys up to the age of 12. The move to London brought him closer to the Barrington-Wards. Tommy continued to read voraciously and would borrow books from Sylvia and other London neighbours. When his nanny (Nurse Eliza Spalding) was ill, he made his first visit alone from home to spend two days at 2 Douro Place with the Barrington-Wards. Nannys condition, that turned out to be mental illness, meant her severance from the family. It was a loss Tommy felt keenly and for some time afterwards his eyes would fill with tears if he had to mention her name. The family settled in at 65 Bedford Gardens, Campden Hill, W8. Robin would leave the house before nine in the morning and return about eight in the evening. Dorothy enjoyed being within reach of her sisters Molly and Biddy and close to London friends. Tommys school was to hand. He spent his first term in Class IIIA, a young form for his age but this had been his parents request to ease the transition. He did well and was promoted to a higher form at the end of the first term. The school report noted: Tommy is an intelligent little boy and he has done very good work this term. On 3 April 1918 Tommy celebrated his eighth birthday with a properly iced cake.-The Easter holidays brought visits from three cousins, Michael Gresford Jones, Margaret Jameson and Violet Bosanquet. Tommy and a visitor were taken on a round including St Pauls Cathedral, Madame Tussauds waxworks, the Zoological gardens, and Maskelyne and Cooks conjuring entertainment, When Robin took the boys to the Tower of London, Tommy had covered the main sights popular at the time. He had minor health problems at this time: a recurrent indigestion successfully treated by Mollys doctor brother-in-law, Lance Barrington-Ward, with three weeks of paraffining. Tommy had another encounter with anaesthetic when given gas for a minor snip to be made in the under muscle of his top lip that was pulling his two front teeth apart. He returned to school on 8 May 1918, this time to Lower IV, where he was among the youngest in the form. A distinct personality was just beginning to emerge through the conventional process of socialisation. Dorothy noted that Tommy was always entering into long conversations with people on buses or trams or in shops. She and Robin would hear him speaking most friendly farewells with complete strangers after about half an hours ride. George and Mary Hodgkins third child, a boy named George Keith, was born on 30 May 1918. George, an absolutist conscientious objector to the war, was in Mesopotamia on a mission to distribute a relief fund to Armenians. The summer break brought a fresh round of family visits for Dorothy and Robins children. The last week of June was spent at Balliol where Tommy could race round the Fellows Garden on his tricycle. Dina Hartley would visit or he would walk round to visit

the Hartleys. For Robin and Dorothy the week brought news on 26 June that George Hodgkin had died of dysentery at Baghdad on 24 June after only a few days of illness. George left Mary Wilson Hodgkin widowed with their three sons, the youngest less than a month old. For Robin Georges death was a tremendous sorrow. They were close in age and shared babyhood, childhood and schooling. Robin had taken care of George at school and comforted him when he was bullied. He felt George almost like a child of his. When Robin had sacrificed much to be a soldier in the First World War, George as an absolutist was long expecting to go to prison rather than be one. In the recent period the brothers had become closer together, despite Robins War Office position. When George was called to London to appear before the Pelham Committee, he stayed with Robin. They would walk together to an underground station and separate for their respective destinations - of War Office and objectors tribunal. George on his final sea voyage wrote and sealed letters to be given to each of his sons at different ages as they grew to manhood, in case he should not return. At Treworgan in the early days of July cloudless weather allowed Dorothy and her children to spend most of the daytime on the beach and in the garden. Robin came to spend a fortnights leave from 13 to 29 July but the weather broke into frequent rain. As indoor activities became necessary for the children, Tommys interest in stamps was rekindled. Dorothy and her children, and one domestic helper, spent August at Cornwall farm cottages instead of country houses. They remained within walking distance of beaches and even of Treworgan. Tommy could walk by himself to visit his grandmother and his aunt Violet Hodgkin when she came to Treworgan in August. With Robin he had begun studying family genealogies. Support continued in this from Violet, who also tutored him in the reading of Roman History. In mid-September 1918 they were at Balliol being entertained by the Jameson family and the young Jameson cousins. Dorothy took her children on 23 September to a new home in London at 79 Ladbroke Road, and Tommy returned to his Norland Place School. He was in a new form and began Latin and hockey, the latter a favourite sport of his Smith grandfather. On 11 November 1918 an armistice was signed in World War I and signalled that Britain would be returning to peacetime norms. Robin was waiting for his War Office appointment to end. Tommy said goodbye to the Norland Place School. The Christmas holidays brought two theatre outings and two parties. Tommy was spending his pocket money on stamps to such an extent that a house rule was made that he save a shilling out of every half-crown. Chapter 2 At home in Oxford In January 1919 the family made their way back to Oxford. In mid-January Tommy joined the Lynam familys Oxford Preparatory School in Bardwell Road. Dorothy went with him to school prayers on the first day and sang Fight the good fight. She watched Tommy break loose to mix with the other boys, and found it hard to go home and leave him in a tearful state. Tommy found the second day even harder owing to teasing from other boys, but he gradually settled in. Robin was in his closing days at the War Office in Whitehall and recalling a gaffe of his own early schooldays sent fatherly counsel to Tommy to respond only Hodgkin when asked his name at a boys school. Robin was

soon demobilised and could rejoin the family in Oxford where the universitys work load was becoming heavier than in the years before the War. Queens along with other colleges was taking in more undergraduates than before and a larger proportion were reading for the History School. Robin took a long lease on a house at 20 Bradmore Road, formerly the home of his fathers friend Dr. Henry Pelham, a historian and former President of Trinity. The house was precisely in suburban North Oxfords neo-Gothic style that Dorothy had eschewed and succeeded in avoiding on marriage. The consolation was that the house inside was roomy and comfortable, and stood only five minutes walk from the Parks, the river, and schools for the children. The house provided several reception rooms, half a dozen main bedrooms including the younger childrens nursery, and four more servants bedrooms, although one of these was given over to Tommy. Cook reigned over a dark semibasement kitchen. Tommy was placed in Miss Bagguleys class IIIa, and was about one and a half years below the average age of the 14 boys in his form. He made a good beginning and came top in French and second in English in the first fortnight. He was also adept at Latin. Not only fond parents but teachers too soon dubbed him the most promising boy in the form. In the wider world post-war political alignments were taking shape. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the English Zionist Federation, invited Dorothys father, A.L. Smith, to be a signatory to a declaration support for the reconstitution of Palestine as a National Home for the Jewish people. Smith declined on 17 March 1919 on the prescient grounds that he did not know how much unsettlement of the existing non-Jewish population was implied in the terms a national home and a Jewish Commonwealth. Tommys Easter holiday task was the reading of Kingsleys Heroes and he returned to school at the end of April. The end of the First World War was celebrated with a peace day on 12 July 1919. In Oxford it was pouring wet but this did not deter Dorothy and her sister Barbara taking Tommy through the pelting rain to see the decorations. By the end of the school year in July Tommy had moved up another form and came out top. From the prize giving he brought away prizes for his Latin and for Divinity. The Latin prize was a slim volume of Songs of the Blue Dragon, poems in celebration of boats owned and skippered by the schools headmaster, C.C. Lynam. The boating ethos was so strong that soon the Oxford Preparatory School became known as the Dragon School. In the summer of 1919 Tommy went to a fancy dress party at school in home made costume as an Anglo Saxon, with a tunic, short cloak and cross-gartered stockings, and the lid of a coal scuttle serving as a shield. Robin was thinking about Tommys secondary education and in correspondence with Rugby (where Dorothys older brother, Lionel Smith, had been a pupil) to seek a place in School House for 1923. The prospects were not good. Hodgkins Ruby interlocutor was the A.A. David who had officiated at Dorothy and Robins wedding in 1908. He was warning in a letter of 14 July 1919 that there would be no ordinary vacancy four years hence. Tommy would have a chance of a nomination if he showed himself up to or close to scholarship standard. David promised to commend him to his successor if he gave up the house. Meanwhile Robin was hedging his bets by putting Tommys name down for 1923 with Arthur G. Bather, housemaster of Winchester Colleges Sunnyside house. Rugby was willing to put Tommy down as a possible for the School House list for January 1924.

Tommy had other concerns as the beginning of the summer holidays was marked the arrival of a green bicycle as a gift from his paternal grandmother, Lucy Anna Hodgkin. Robin taught him the first elements of bicycle riding, albeit with an old fashioned technique of mounting by the step (this later caused mild derision at the Dragon School where other boys mounted by the pedal). Tommy remained a keen but uncertain cyclist for some weeks, and family bicycle outings became a fashion. Robin carried Teddy on a cushion on his crossbar, and Betty rode on a cushion in Dorothys carrier. The new bicycle went north with the Hodgkin family who were spending the summer months of August and September at Northumbrias Budle Bay in the Heather Cottages owned by Robins older brother, Edward. These cottages offered sparse conditions so that Tommy had to take turns at fetching water and share in unwonted domestic chores of washing up and making beds. However the cottages were within easy visiting distance of the familiar Bamburgh resort where Dorothys sisters Gertrude and Rosalind were on holiday with their young children. The children gathered to play as pirates on a stranded boat. Tommy went golf caddying for the first time for his parents. The one mishap of the summer came when Tommy forgot how to use his bicycle brakes as he came down Spindlestone Hill at Bamburgh. He fell off and cut knees, hands and face. Robin tenderly put Tommy on the saddle of his bicycle and wheeled him to the doctors, driving off the flies attracted to the open cuts. The doctor bandaged Tommy up and the child remained for two nights of rest at the Smith holiday house, St Aidans. The return of peace had given Robin the opportunity to know his children better. He and Tommy shared the interest in genealogy that had been encouraged by Violet Hodgkin the year before. Robin as a historian could help with additional sources for the complex family tree Tommy was confecting that perversely linked him to a biblical Adam and a classically mythological Zeus. Robin had an interesting line in more recent family mythology and anecdotes about the broad network of Quaker kin: such as the ten little Fowler girls, his cousins and the daughters of the only man besides Dick Whittington to be three times Lord Mayor of London. Stamp collecting and the pursuit of genealogy helped fill in the autumn term after he had done an hour or so a day of school preparation at home. He had been promoted again and had excellent reports although teachers complained of untidiness and poor handwriting. The Christmas holidays saw Tommy in the awkward transition from childhood to youth. The holiday task was to read Scotts Ivanhoe, but there were parties too. Dorothy and Robin with Gertrude and Harold Hartley gave a party in Balliol Hall, with a Punch and Judy show and dancing. After much discussion and argument for and against more adult attire Tommy blossomed out into Etons, with the untailed jacket and waistcoat handed down from his cousin Charles Bosanquet. Tommy, although dressed for dancing, had not yet acquired the skill. The family resolved that he must learn to dance before the next Christmas. In the spring term of 1920 Tommy encountered hockey the sport that had so enthused his Smith grandfather but the stamp collection remained an absorbing interest. Dorothy continued her custom of reading aloud to him before bed and she chose childrens adventures: Robinson Crusoe, A journey to the Centre of the Earth, Alan Quartermain, various stories by Henty, and Pickwick Papers. She varied the fare with a popular science book on The Romance of modern Astronomy. In February Robin heard from Arthur Bather at Winchester that Sunnyside, where Tommy was listed for a

vacancy in 1923, was being handed over to a Malcolm Robertson, who would do his best to fulfil Bathers commitments. During a visit by Violet Hodgkin to Oxford in March aunt and nephew went grubbing in second hand bookshops together, and found two immense bibles that Violet bought. One was an illustrated family bible with space to record the births, marriages and deaths of a large family, such as the Hodgkin and Smith clans provided. Tommys gifts for his tenth birthday on 3 April included carpentry tools and strips of wood. The Easter holiday task was to read Kidnapped. During the Easter holidays Dorothy took Tommy with her on a weeks visit to London, to stay with Helen. They crammed in entertainment: Coriolanus, The Young Visiters, The Magic Flute, Maskelyne and Devant, the South Kensington Museum, and the National Gallery. Tommy spent a guinea of his birthday money on a splendid new stamp album. The summer term of 1920 was interrupted by some five weeks of quarantine for measles, though Tommy escaped the infection and was again top of his form. He was developing an interest in cricket. At the end of term he collected a form prize, shared an arithmetic prize, and took another prize for the Christmas holiday task on Ivanhoe. Teachers continued to lament his poor handwriting. He was learning to swim and by August was deemed to have passed a test of 15 strokes that brought a five-shilling reward. The summer holiday books read aloud were David Copperfield, Under the Red Robe, The Dove in the Eagles Nest, and Westward Ho. An August visit to Treworgan brought lots of bathing, car excursions, and some sea fishing. The holiday continued in September at Clifton Villa, Perranporth, with sands promising for digging. In the autumn term rugby was the prevailing school sport and hockey was deferred to family scratch games in the Christmas holiday. In Oxford Balliol provided a focus for the Christmas festivity, but after Christmas Dorothy took Tommy and Teddy to London to stay with Helen. A holiday task on Macaulays Essay on Clive was something of a burden amidst another round of entertainment: Peter Pan, A Midsummer Nights Dream, and Teddy Tail. For twelfth night on 6 January 1921 Tommy and Teddy attended an afternoon fancy dress party at the invitation of another Dragon School pupil, Hugh Lowenthal. This was a forced rather than natural friendship as the Lowenthal parents were neighbours of Helen Sutherland (formerly Denman) in Vale Avenue, Chelsea, and part of her circle. The Hodgkin boys were decked in black velvet as Princes in the Tower. On return to school Tommy had yet another promotion into a higher form and continued to add to his tally of good reports. The family celebrated his eleventh birthday on 3 April 1921 by a day in London: the morning at the Zoo, lunch at the Pop, afternoon Mme Tussauds, then tea and shopping. Robins gift was a model steam engine. Father and son took a long cycle ride in the holidays to Charlbury, where they stayed the night at a pub. In the summer term of 1921 Tommy though not adept practised indefatigably at cricket. He would also bowl by himself in the garden and graduated to bowling overhand. Robin gave many hours of parental assistance and encouragement, but Tommy did not shine. He bought a scoring book and watched all the school matches with this prop. He garnered mathematics and classics prizes but in the form order was only second. For the summer holidays of 1921 from late July to mid-September the Hodgkins took the Crewe Lodgings, a part of Bamburgh Castle. Aunts, uncles and cousins on both sides of the family were on hand in Bamburgh or nearby. It was time for Mr and Mrs A.L. Smith to arrange another wedding feast: this time for their fourth daughter, Miriam (Biddy),

who had been away from home for some years in London working for the Invalid Childrens Aid Association in Shoreditch. The bridegroom was not a Balliol man, but a Cambridge graduate, Major Reader Bullard, of the Levant Consular Service. He was a man of humble East End origins who had come into the Smith circle in late 1920 with an introduction from Lionel Smith on a tour of duty in Baghdad. He was marrying Biddy on 18 August 1921 after a short engagement in what was planned as a quiet and homely event for family and village friends in the Bamburgh church. However Newcastle press photographers turned out in force to capture the image of the bride and attendants fulfilling the local custom of jumping over a petting stool placed for the occasion at the churchyard gate. The Smith wedding was soon followed by a Hodgkin bereavement as the beneficent banker, Edward Hodgkin, died on 10 September, a few days short of his forty ninth birthday. Tommy was taken with Dorothy and his aunt Violet on 14 September to bid farewell to Edward at Bywell Churchyard. During the summer golf had suddenly become the rage for Tommy and this was reinforced when Sylvia Barrington-Ward joined the family in mid-August in time for the wedding. Tommy and Sylvia established a makeshift golf course of their own in the Inner Ward of the Castle, and found several opportunities to play on the eighteen-hole Bamburgh course. Tommy gradually assembled an array of four clubs, and a bag as gifts or casts-off. Robin provided the first of the clubs, an old-fashioned lofting-iron that he had won in a competition at his preparatory school, in the late eighteen eighties, although the club was believed to have been forged in 1869. Interspersed with golf were the usual Bamburgh activities of shell collecting, bicycling, bathing, hockey on the sands, a wide ranging hide and seek over the sandhills, and evening episodes of dancing and singing and parlour games and charades. More elaborate than the games was a theatrical performance of a melodrama, The Parsons Vengeance, largely composed by Tommy and performed by young members of the house party. Tommy played the eponymous 17th century parson in costume including an evening collar worn back to front, long black stockings borrowed from Sylvia, and a black velvet tammy borrowed from his sister, Betty. When school resumed the even tenor of the Hodgkin household was disturbed by serious illness affecting A.L. Smith. He was in London in October 1921 for an operation and in Brighton for convalescence. Mrs A.L. mobilised her family, including Lionel for whom a routine leave from Baghdad was extended into an invalidity leave that was partly filled in by a couple of terms of teaching at Harrow School. Dorothy spent some time with Helen in London to see A.L. Robin kept an eye on the children in Oxford. Hugh Lowenthal, known to Tommy as Glumptash, was entertained to lunch and tea at 20 Bradmore Road. As Robin took the boys around Oxford colleges four undergraduates were regaled with an impromptu play. More formal opportunities for acting came at the Dragon School where Tommy had been elected a prefect. A.L. and Mrs. A.L. returned to Oxford a few days before the wedding of their daughter Barbara to Hugh Cairns [details]on 24 November 1921. This was at St Cross, where other Smith weddings had taken place, but the usual crowd of relatives and colleagues was swelled by an array of mothers and babies from the infant welfare centre where Mrs A.L. and various of her daughters gave much voluntary time and support. The new year of 1922 saw Tommy with his mother as guests of Helen at 29 Vale Avenue in Chelsea, although Tommys London treats were interrupted by a bout of influenza. He

recovered in time to return for the beginning of term on 19 January to the Dragon School where he had reached the top form and the top set for mathematics and English. Tommy was cast as Lucentio in the Dragon Schools production of The Taming of the Shrew and had to woo Bianca played by Lesbia Cochrane. Tommys best school friend, Pat Cotter, played Hortensio. Tommy was equipped with careful notes when to kiss Biancas hand or hair. The real incentive came from the schoolmaster Skipper Lynam who somewhat to Tommy's indignation stood in the wings holding up the shilling pieces he had promised for good love-making. In Tommys love-making elfin detachment was observed by one commentator. The latter added that Tommy spoke beautifully and enjoyed himself enormously, and recalled Tommys uncle, Hubert Smith, playing the same role almost a decade earlier. Tommys Hodgkin aunt Violet, already in her fifties, was married on 14 February to John Holdsworth, of Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, and spent some time in New Zealand before returning to Falmouth to be close to her mother. On the same Sunday a son, to be named Charles Matthew Bullard, was born in the Masters Lodgings at Balliol College to Miriam and Reader Bullard. The school term was cut short in March by an epidemic of mumps. The Easter holidays brought Tommys first travel abroad when the family (and Helen Sutherland) spent a fortnight at Varengeville near Dieppe that included an expedition to Rouen with its cathedral and churches. Dorothy was still reading aloud to Tommy and had chosen The Last Days of Pompeii. Robin and Dorothy for Tommys twelfth birthday on 3 April 1922 gave him a cricket net and a new bat. Tommy resumed the previous summers prolonged sessions of bowling, but to little effect. Tommys summer term was again interrupted by some three weeks of illness, this time measles that he had and passed on to his sister Betty. He still took five prizes at the summer awards although a year below the average age of the classics sixth form. The family went off light-heartedly on 24 July for Treworgan for a six weeks visit to the Hodgkin clan. Robin was disturbed in mid-August to hear from Malcolm Robertson, the new housemaster of Winchesters Sunnyside house, that Tommy was not high enough on the applications list for 1923 to have any likelihood of a place. Robertsons assumption was that Tommy would be likely to win a scholarship. Robin was not so sure, was most unwilling to put pressure on Tommy and keen to have the option of a place in Robertsons house that he thought he had secured in his earlier correspondence with Arthur Bather. Robin asked if Winchester had such things as headmasters nominations for boys who did well in the examination without actually winning a scholarship. Robertson was concerned that in the two years he had been housemaster he had heard nothing from Robin Hodgkin, but did by mid-September confirm that he would accept a nomination. The Hodgkin spent the last week of their summer holiday in a tiny hotel within a mile of the tenth hole of the Mullion Golf Course. The whole family plunged into golf and would usually play two rounds a day. Tommy seemed game for a third round. He was partnered by the Dragon School teacher G.C. Vassall (Cheese) in a match against his father and his aunt Violet. Dorothys reading aloud continued and the book had become Dombey and Son. On 20 September the Dragon School reassembled. Tommy was head of the dayboys, was doing well at most subjects. He was able to invite Pat Cotter, a boarder because his father was a vicar in Stepney, to spend many Sundays with the Hodgkin household. Hugh Lowenthal had gone from the Dragon School to College at Winchester. Isabella

Lowenthal wrote in November 1922 to Dorothy to invited Tommy for an acting party in the first days of the new year. Meanwhile as Tommy celebrated the Christmas of 1922 with several Oxford dances, his presents included a clockwork Pullman train. The Bradmore Road nursery and landing became networks of lines and points for the holidays. Helen Sutherlands mother, Lady Sutherland, had died in July 1920 and left her substantial wealth. Her father, Sir Thomas Sutherland, had died on 1 January 1922 and left his fortune to charity. Helen was reshaping her life. She was moving from the modest house in Vale Avenue to a grander setting and had bought the lease of the house at 4 Lowndes Square. Between Lowenthal plans for a Christmas away and Hodgkin plans to visit Helen, Isabella Lowenthals hopes for a series of dances and entertainments were whittled down essentially to an acting afternoon from 4 to 7 on 8 January 1923, with a performance of The Fairy Transformed by Sproston, with Tommy cast in the part of Robin and Hugh Lowenthal as a bearded wood cutter. After Christmas Tommy went for this first visit alone, to stay with Hugh Lowenthal, and to rehearse and perform the play. The rest of the family followed to London and Tommy rejoined them at Helens. He told his mother that he had enjoyed visiting the Lowenthals but had not slept well (and recounted to his brother his astonishment that Hugh washed behind his ears every day). With Helen the Hodgkins were almost bombarded with treats: in the theatre Private Secretary, Hansel and Gretel and Maskelyne, and the circus at Olympia. The hurried holiday dramatics were replaced with intensive preparation and rehearsal for the Dragon School production on 20 January 1923 of Twelfth Night, with Tommy in a striking tow wig as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Pat Cotter as Sir Toby Belch. Hodgkins excellent elocution was noted in the reviews. Tommy was also noted, in The Draconian of April 1923, for the contribution he had made to a speech competition with a precocious attack on the Arabella B. Buckley history textbook favoured by the school. He complained that the book was dull and overloaded with facts: My wish is that all the copies of her venomous history book should be burned in a huge bonfire on the School field. Tommys teachers were both amused and impressed and after this rhetorical intervention the school experimented with other sources for the teaching of history. On 1 March the Hodgkins took delivery of a new car and this came into use as they roamed far afield for Sunday picnics. Among Tommys thirteenth birthday presents on 3 April 1923 was a steam engine from Robin. The birthday party was followed almost immediately by Tommys departure for London for his second visit without the family. Pat Cotter met him at Paddington for what was planned as a long weekend with Cotters family in the Poplar Rectory. They went to Madame Tussauds and had planned a Saturday evening theatre outing to Tons of Money. Tommy came down with a temperature and after telephone consultations on the Sunday between the two mothers, Dorothy came up to London on the Monday, 8 April. She took Tommy by car to Helens where he made a quick recovery. Dorothy took him to Charlbury to rejoin Robin, Teddy and Betty, then back again to London for an overnight stay with Helen. Helen then saw Tommy off by train from Waterloo as he went to Cornwall on 17 April to another school friends and to a farm at Trebetherick near Wadebridge for a week of special coaching by Dragon School teachers. The Dragon School sixth formers were preparing for the vital round of public school entrance examinations.

The Dragon Schools summer term began on 1 May, with the school entrance examinations in June. Winchesters began on 5 June with the election of selected candidates in order of merit to be made on Saturday, 9 June. In 1923 seven or so scholarships were to be offered for vacancies among the seventy places in College, though in other years there might be twice as many scholarships. For Eton College the examination of candidates for election to Kings Scholarships was held at the College from 6 June, to 8 June, and was mutually exclusive with a bid for Winchester. The Rugby School entrance final examination that year was to be held at Rugby, from Tuesday, 12 June 12, to Thursday, 14 June, with candidates for Eton and Winchester excused the qualifying examination at their home or school. The Dragon School put three candidates in for Winchester. Robin and Dorothy drove to Winchester in their car and took Cheese Vassall, Tommy and the two other Dragon schoolboys. Dorothy stayed on in Winchester during the examination, not in the same house as Tommy but managing to see him between many of the papers and to drive the candidates out to the downs in the evenings. They wandered about in search of wild flowers and talked of everything except examinations. When the examinations and interviews were over Dorothy took the contingent back to Oxford. On Saturday, 9 June, a telegram despatched in Winchester at 12.28 in the afternoon and received in Oxford just after 1 oclock brought the result: Hodgkin is eleventh on roll. Exhibitioner. Dorothy was disappointed that he had not been accepted for College at Winchester and she mentally compared Tommy with other Dragon candidates who had not been given a viva at Winchester but were awarded the top scholarships at Westminster. She and Robin considered sending Tommy off for the following weeks round of examinations at Rugby, where Lynam thought he would win a scholarship. Tommys Winchester exhibition was honorary but the headmaster, Dr Montague John Rendall, could offer a place in one of three houses in which Robin was interested. By Monday, 11 June, Robin had made up his mind that Tommy should not go in for the Rugby scholarship examination and that in the long run it would be much better for Tommy to have been an exhibitioner at Winchester rather than a scholar at Rugby. This was a collective view of family, friends and teachers, and within a week it was agreed that Tommy should go to Major Robertsons Sunnyside house, where Tommys Hodgkin cousin, Charles Bosanquet, had been. Dorothy was content with this outcome. Tommy would, however, be moving away from his closest Dragon School friends. Dick Evers was going on the second scholarship to Rugby, where his father was a housemaster. Pat Cotter, as the son of a clergyman, was going on a scholarship to Lancing. Meanwhile as Tommy had no immediate anxieties about school work the rest of the summer term was idyllic. The long hours of cricket practice in the garden had not turned him into a sportsman, but he found enjoyment as official scorer to the cricket XI, and showed no resentment of more athletic friends. He enjoyed bathing but was unsuccessful in attempts at diving. He was acclaimed on his final Speech Day at the Dragon School, and his mother noted at the time: He was weighted down with his prizes, many volumes of beautiful books, and such cheering as he took them. Dorothy was invited to give away the sports prizes, and in her speech told the children that she had not been a Dragon pupil but the next best thing a Dragons sister living just opposite the school in its Crick Road location and able to take part in many of its festivities. Tommys teachers paid warm tribute to him in their valedictory reports and A.E. Lynam as headmaster thought

Tommys originality, in a house rather than in College, would be a test of the Winchester system. The euphoria continued into the holiday months of August and September, when the Hodgkins in a family syndicate rented the fine set of rooms known as the Captains Lodging in Bamburgh Castle. They were joined by Mr and Mrs A.L. Smith, as A.L.s health had been failing and his wife was in search of understanding society and companionship for him and fresh surroundings. Others in the party were the Jamesons with their children close in age and interests to Dorothy and Robins children, and Helen Sutherland. They enjoyed being in the castle rather than under its shadow. Much golf was played and the children enjoyed the customary delights and pastimes of the Bamburgh beaches. Tommys bachelor housemaster-to-be, Major Robertson, and his hostess sister, Sheila, spent two nights with the Hodgkins at Bamburgh to deepen the acquaintanceship. At the last moment of the break Dorothy travelled down to Oxford with the children. On the next day she went on with Tommy to Winchester. He wore a bowler hat and carried an umbrella, both swiftly discarded for ever. Dorothy had tea with the Robertsons at Sunnyside and came away by the six oclock train, with a deep hurt at leaving her son. Her parting gift to Tommy was the second edition of Winchester College Notions by Three Beetleites. The book published in 1910, the year of Tommys birth, was a guide to the arcane language and customs of Wykehamists. Chapter 3 A house in Winchester Tommy arrived as one of three new boys in Sunnyside in Short Half 1923, along with Charles Hollins and Richard Wood. Immediately senior were: Uvedale Lambert, Anthony McConnel, Alex Marples, David Orr, Evelyn Shuckburgh, William Sturch, John Swayne, Randall Swingler, Richard Winn, and Ivor Powell Edwards. Tommy wrote home in his first days at Winchester: Im not homesick all the time. He was initially homesick for most of the time. He wrote home each day and sometimes twice in a day. A tone was set in a letter of 23 September 1923 within a few days of Tommys arrival: Darlingissime Mummy, Im afraid Ive been telling you exclusively (dash that blot) about my own boring self, but I want to tell you that your letter saved me from the depths of despair. This morning I woke at 5.25 & for 2 hours and 20 minutes I meditate on how ripping it would be to get back home again. Ive discovered that pitch-ups (pater mater frater soror nunky & nevy) can visit their poor miserable puny (a gentle hint) sons whenever they like. Im afraid that until a little time ago I thought I could get on for a short time without you & all the family. Ive made a huge mistake, will you forgive me? ... Masses and masses of love Your own ever-loving Tommy. Under the Winchester system a new boy was for the first two weeks a protg of a more senior member of the school and so known as a Tg (with anglicised pronunciation Teejay). Tommy was under the protection of Charles Arthur Evelyn Shuckburgh, whose family were living in Hampsteads South Park Hill. The protector was replaced by a socius contemporary chosen each term as a regular walking companion. In the wider family circle in Oxford Lionel Smith left on 15 October to return to Baghdad after a years leave in Britain. Winchester boys were allowed whole day holidays on Leave Out Days, based on the red-letter Saints days that did not fall within the first ten

days of term or on a Sunday. When Tommys first leave out day was due Dorothy and Robin drove to Winchester on 17 October and spent the night at an hotel where Tommy joined them at the earliest opportunity on the morning of 18 October, accompanied at Dorothys suggestion by Evelyn Shuckburgh, as she thought this companionship would ease the return to school. Tommy spoke in accepting terms of Winchester but Dorothy felt that he looked at the clock all the time and unwilling to her out of his sight. Lionel Smiths friend Reader (Bill or "Haji") Bullard was abroad on duty as British Consul at Jeddah and Miriam Biddy Bullard was giving birth on 18 October to their second son, named Richard Arthur. The new-born baby contracted a form of blood-poisoning, and died on 31 October at the age of two weeks. This bereavement came on the eve of Tommys second leave out to Oxford on 1 November and made it a day of sadness instead of joy. Dorothy went to London later in November for the luxury and comfort and love of Helens house, and wrote to Tommy of Christmas dance invitations and the prospect of a new year visit to Helen. By Tommys third leave out day on 30 November he seemed to Dorothy to have overcome his sadness at being away at school, and the impression was confirmed by a school report showing him in second place in a form of 26 and first in a Greek set of 20. His housemaster, Robertson, now know in the Hodgkin circle by his Winchester nickname of the Bobber, wrote to Dorothy and Robin: This report is a nice Xmas card for you both, & I should like to congratulate you on the way Tommy has settled down in the house, & really enjoyed his work & play and new friendships, I think. A.L. Smith was contemplating retirement from Balliol and for what was likely to be the last Christmas in the college, Mrs A.L. gathered a score of family guests, including the Hodgkin children among twelve grandchildren along with Hugh Cairnss parents. Tommy went into a dinner jacket for the first time. He spent a few days in London that included a dance given by Helen. He was becoming keen on dancing and more adept although Dorothy thought him still a bit stiff and pokerish. In the second term the focus of Tommys letters home shifted to stamps for his collection and consignments of sweets and cakes (cargo in Winchester notions). He had only one leave out day, on 23 February 1924, and a parental visit to Winchester on 18 March. He was writing a play in his spare time and extending his school friendships. Tommy returned to Oxford on 2 April on the eve of his fourteenth birthday, celebrated with a new bicycle. Then the family left on 4 April on a three-day car expedition to Winsford village on Exmoor. Tommys handwriting remained untidy. A science teacher commented in a school report: His work, where I can read it, seems to be quite good. Tommy was talking of dropping French and spending more time on mathematics in the next term, but the Bobber was pressing the claim of classics for at least another year. Tommy was showing an interest in clothes. During the Easter vacation he had his first suit of plus fours made in blue grey tweed by the Winchester tailor. He displayed another new interest, in buildings, and Dorothy and Tommy perused an illustrated book, A History of Gothic Architecture. In Balliol F.F. Urquhart (Sligger) was carrying much of the burden of running the college during the Masters illness. A.L. Smith died in the early hours of Saturday, 12 April, with Mary Smith at his bedside. The body was laid in a flower bedecked Balliol chapel for a communion service early on 15 April followed by a funeral service in the university church of St Marys. Tommy walked beside Dorothy and other members of the family in

the funeral procession to the burial plot in Holywell churchyard. Another mourner was a former classics tutor at Balliol, A.D. (Sandie) Lindsay, now a professor at Glasgow University, who had been sounded out whether he would be willing to return to Balliol as Master. He was a socialist, a member of the Independent Labour Party, and by the standards of the time something of an unconventional choice. He was the candidate of the junior fellows. The alternative possibilities included the Hodgkin and Smith family friend, Cyril Bailey, and Dorothys brother-in-law, Harold Hartley. Sligger declined to be a candidate and was closely involved in the smooth succession to Lindsay. Lindsay saw himself in the A.L. Smith tradition as a university extensionist and opposed to elitism. Tommy returned to Winchester at the end of April. Dorothy spent several days of May staying with Helen in Belgravia. She saw a memorable performance by Sybil Thorndike in Shaws Saint Joan and was chauffeured about London in Helens limousine, by a new chauffeur unfamiliar with London who was rather intimidated by a barrage of instructions sent by Helen down the speaking tube. The Lowenthal parents came to dine with Helen. At Winchester Tommy was collecting birds eggs for his brother Teddy. This pursuit and church architecture provided a purpose to long bicycle rides into the countryside. His usual companions were Evelyn Shuckburgh, Randall Swingler, and Uvedale Lambert, who were also keen on eggs and churches, plus Charles Hollins who was less enthusiastic. Hollins had chosen Tommy as socius under the Winchester system of pairing, because Richard Wood was already matched and Hodgkin was the only other new boy in the house. The fortuitous relationship persisted. In school Tommy was equipping himself for cricket and reporting home on batting and bowling averages. Robin and Dorothy went to Winchester on 31 May to attend the opening of the War Memorial Cloisters. Early in June Tommy injured his hands and knee in a fall from his bicycle. He showed signs of distress when he went home to Oxford for a leave out day on 10 June. By mid-June he was in the to rest his injured leg for three days. He was cut off from his store of cake and toffee but the matron combined treatment of the injury with a supply of acid drops. In convalescent days he played croquet and card games with other boys in the sick room. Robin and Dorothy returned to Winchester that month for the Eton and Winchester cricket match. They had left it late to find hotel accommodation and spent the Saturday night of 28 June in a tent on the Downs with Teddy and Betty. They spent the Saturday and Sunday with Tommy. The weekend included a picnic in the hay to which Tommy and Randall Swingler arrived in top hats and black coats. Winchester provided no more leave out days that summer term. Dorothy on 1 July took Teddy and Betty for a long days outing to the Wembley Exhibition where they and bands of other children (including coach loads from the Dragon School) were shown the wonders of Britains dominions, but Tommy could not be with them. He was consoled with stamps that Mary Smith had found as she cleared her things from the Masters Lodging in Balliol in preparation for leaving. Dorothy wrote to Tommy on 13 July: It feels horrid to go there now & see it all so dismantled, & to think that henceforth it wont be our College as it has been ever since I can remember - until you go there darling & renew the old links..... Plans were being made for Tommy to travel alone by train to the north of England. Dorothy and Robin had again, with Helen, booked the Captains Lodging in Bamburgh Castle for the summer holiday. Dorothy was to join Helen on her planned drive north early on 30 July, and would take Tommys golf clubs and evening clothes.

Tommy duly on 30 July made the train journey from Winchester via Newbury, Oxford and York to be met at Darlington. The Hodgkins visited Durham and the Bosanquets at Rock and went on to the Captains Lodging in Bamburgh Castle. Tommy practised his golf and spent much of his time with his cousins in the writing, rehearsing and producing of what was billed as a Medieval farce. The play, A Daughters Lot, was performed on 13 September in the castles Kings Hall to an audience some sixty strong of family, friends and neighbours. The performance was followed by a banquet of orange squash and chocolate biscuits. A sermon by Johnny Jameson in the Kings Hall on the following night drew twice as many. As the Smith and Hodgkin grandchildren were growing in number and age they were separating into clusters. Tommy was building a close friendship with Diana and Lucy Bosanquet. He was also encouraged to invite Wykehamist friends. David Orr and his family were also spending the summer close at hand. Teddy and Betty Hodgkin were constituting an inseparable foursome with Mary and Andy Jameson. Tommy took the train south on 19 September to Winchester for the start of his second year sweetened by a consignment from Dorothy of mixed biscuits. His first thought was to tell Dorothy of the leave out days scheduled for 18 October, 1 November and 1 December. He sent them with a suggestion that he come home for one, that Dorothy join him at Winchester for another, and that he played golf on another. Charles Hollins remained Tommys socius but with Uvedale Lambert in quarantine Tommy was temporarily sociusing Randall Swingler whom he invited home for a leave out day. The affection and admiration for Randall deepened in the second year to real friendship akin to devotion. Tommy in his letter home could poke fun at new boys and write well of a Hollins younger brother. Tommys letters home became less frequent and dogged. He and Randall engaged in a schoolboy prank of writing hoax letters under pen names to the Daily Graphic. Two letters were accepted: he wrote as a regular camper out to ask for a cure for midge bites, and as an ardent ornithologist to ask for the name of a strange birds egg he professed to have found. The correspondence drew several replies, including what might well have been a hoax riposte that the egg belonged probably to the Great Auk. Three remedies were suggested for the bites including one invented by a man caribou-hunting in northwest America. Tommy sang in a house concert organised by Sheila Robertson (Miss Bobber) and played squash rackets. Dorothy and Robin were becoming acquainted with Malcolm Robertsons mother and Tommy had won his housemasters favour. The Bobber wrote in Tommys end-of-term report: Hes a good little soul - full of fun & enterprise, & I hope hell have a good holiday & lots of sleep. Tommys Christmas 1924 presents included a miniature billiard table from Robin. In the new year of 1925 Tommy went for a three-day visit to Helen at the Lowndes Square house in London that included a dance at friends of Helens. He was fog-bound on the night of the dance and spent a night on a library sofa. He went back to school on 23 January for a quiet term when he was already making his mark in Sunnyside. Tommy and his friends were too junior for Winchesters Shakespeare society and they formed their own. On Sundays after they attended chapel, in tail coats for the older boys, they held Shakespeare readings of the plays, with Sheila Robertson assisting for the female leads. Randall and Tommy were prime movers with Uvedale Lambert and Sir John Nicholson, a Cheshire baronet who had succeeded his grandfather.

Tommy had a leave out day on 2 March. In late March and at very short notice he helped prepare a troupe of performers for a play at the house concert. Tommy returned to Oxford on 3 April, his fifteenth birthday, for the Easter holidays. He carried back the prize for being first in his form and a special prize for mathematics. Tommys housemaster was looking for leadership qualities in him and in an end of term report suggested that he should join the Natural History Society and organise a party of supporters in Sunnyside. On 4 April the Hodgkin family set out in the car for a second visit to Exmoor and to the Royal Oak at Winsford. A couple of ponies were hired for the children to ride, although the inns wireless set was also an attractive novelty. Robin and Tommy went on for a few days visit to Lucy Anna Hodgkin and Violet Holdsworth. In the summer term long bicycle rides continued to be an attraction. For Ascension Day on 21 May a party consisting of Randall Swingler, Uvedale Lambert, Charles Hollins and Tommy embarked on a pilgrimage to Berwick St James. They had the Bobbers permission for an outing but not one as ambitious as they attempted. Tommy was bedecked over grey flannels in a borrowed coloured jumper and a false silk handkerchief in yellow and violet. The journey was hot and hilly and interrupted by several punctures and by the end of the day Tommy had covered some seventy miles. David Orr was on other occasions a participant too in what they dubbed the Sunnyside Cyclists Touring Club. Tommy and Randall decided to enter for the English verse prize on the theme When the morning stars sang together, taken from the Biblical book of Job. They also went to tea with an eccentric old lady, Miss Lettice Lillie. She had a connection to another Winchester schoolboy, R.P. Armitage who left and went up to Oxford in 1925, and she was known to Swingler through the Dean of Wells. Miss Lillie addressed Tommy as Timothy and Randall as Ralph to the open amusement of the boys. On a subsequent visit they were served a foul cake so mouldy inside that they smuggled it away in their handkerchiefs. Another cycling expedition was mounted to a church at Preston Candover but this was found to have been burned down in the 18th century. The same group formed a debating society, the Sunnyside Senate. David Orr and Tommy argued the proposition that the cat was a more intelligent animal than a dog. They were opposed by Swingler and Lambert. The motion was tied and then lost after Hollins in the chair cast a vote against the motion. David Orr was Tommys companion in Oxford on a leave out day in June and the family took a picnic and went punting on the river. Dorothy thought Tommy looked very grown up in a smart new suit (of his own choosing rather than Dorothys preference) and a borrowed Homburg hat. Dorothy and Robin saw Tommy again later that month when they went to the first day of the Winchester and Eton cricket match being played at Eton and brought Tommy back for a night and a day in Oxford. The family played rag cricket and bought Tommy a homburg of his own. Back at Winchester Tommy was resisting the Bobbers encouragement to join the Natural History Society. Tommy was highly cooperative in Sheila Robertsons project for low comedy to be performed at the beginning of July to the Rudmore Mothers arriving in charabancs from the Winchester mission in Southampton. The troupers included David Orr in a nurses bonnet, black dress and skating boots, and John Nicholson in a blue towelling dress and intensely powdered face. Tommys costume included a crepe hair moustache, mauve tie, saffron socks and brown boots.

He was then in the College Sanatorium for several days after an outbreak of German Measles in Sunnyside. The Bobber noted in a house report that Tommy and Randall Swingler did a lot to sharpen each others wits. He was however keen to discourage the occasional visits by Tommy and Swingler to the kind but dreadful Miss Lillie. Sheila Robertson was afraid the boys would catch fleas. Meanwhile Tommy had been working on his English verse entry and produced some eighty lines of alternately rhyming couplets of marked religiosity. The competition was open to the whole school and he did not win. Robin and Dorothy were told informally that he was next to the Proxime. The headmaster found Tommys entry decidedly interesting. When summer term ended Tommy was due for a week at his first cadet camp that would have cut short his holiday with the family holiday in the Captains Lodging at Bamburgh Castle. The camp was cancelled because of school epidemics. Tommy returned to Oxford on 28 July. He was driven north with Dorothy and Robin to the Lake District for three days at the Derwentwater Hotel. Helen Sutherland had invited Diana and Lucy Bosanquet. Tommy and his Bosanquet cousins played croquet energetically on the hotel lawn. The went on via a call on the Bosanquets at Rock Moor to Bamburgh where the party included Helen Sutherland, Gertrude Hartleys family and Mary Jamesons family. Golf and amateur theatricals remained in vogue. Tommy was in costume ornately tabarded as the poet Henry Dunbar for a Northumbrian pageant at Alnwick. The Hodgkin children joined with their Bosanquet cousins to produce a revue in the Kings Hall for a family entertainment. When the Hodgkins gathered for reading aloud the chosen book that vacation was the of P.C. Wrens Foreign Legion novel, the recently published Beau Geste. For a fancy dress party given by the family of David Barren, another Wykehamist contemporary, Tommy appeared in dishevelled dress clothes as Charlie Chaplin. David Orr was again close at hand with his family in the South Inner Ward of Bamburgh Castle. Randall Swingler came to stay for a week of the vacation. Robin Hodgkin and the Bobber were corresponding about Tommys prospects. In academic areas an interest in mathematics was contending with an interest in French. Mathematics was winning. The Bobber was keen for Tommy to attend confirmation classes with the other potential candidates, but would not press this against Tommys or Dorothys wishes. Tommy returned to Winchester on 18 September for his third year with greater confidence. He had paused in London and taken a taxi to the Tivoli Cinema to see Chaplins Gold Rush. At school he was in Cyril Robinsons division, a senior form mostly of scholars from College. He was the protector for the first weeks for two new arrivals, Aymer Robert Maxwell-Hyslop and Keith Steel-Maitland. Tommy was pondering whether to join the confirmation classes and decided to do so on 2 October, alongside Charles Hollins and John Nicholson. He followed Winchester customs for his seniority by indulging in his first Sunday afternoon brew. Charles Wood was his partner in a copious menu of pineapples and cream, Veda & butter and strawberry jam, clairs, chocolate biscuits & bottles of orangeade. Tommy was relieved when his fortnight as protector ended and he no longer had to answer what he noted as a flow of questions from Steel-Maitland, the son of a member of the Cabinet (the Minister of Labour, Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland). In Senior Part he was eligible for membership of the school Debating Society and made a maiden speech on 21 October. In November he was writing a Bacchic poem in the style of Tennysons

Locksley Hall. He was attending frequent readings of Shakespeare plays, although the Bobber was worried that he gave too much time to acting. For Tommys godmother, Helen, a long-standing attraction to the arts was finding new expression. She took an interest in painting, poetry, dance especially the Russian Ballet, music, theatre, and cinema. Through friendship with Violet Hodgkin (later Holdsworth) she was in a circle that included the poet Mary Coleridge, Monica Waterhouse married to Robert Bridges, Margaret Duckworth married to Henry Newbolt, the painter Constance (Cooie) Lane and the author Constance (Conty) Sitwell. Helen was searching out and beginning to buy works by the French modern painters. She could afford to make the transition from buying reproductions of great masters at the Wallace Collection or the National Gallery to buying Courbets or a small Seurat for her own collection. Living artists began to fill the gap left by the loss of her parents and her two brothers, the failure of her marriage and the lack of children of her own. Helen went on 5 November to tea with Constance Lane and met Ben Nicholson and his wife Winifred Roberts. For Helens godson, Tommy, preparation for confirmation was entangled with preparation for changes of wardrobe. It was agreed he should go into tails for Sundays and these were ordered: four buttoned-sleeves, two pleats per side and trousers with eighteen inch flares. Tommy was confirmed on 28th November in Winchester College Chapel by the Bishop of Winchester. Robin and Dorothy attended the service and Dorothy stayed over the weekend with the Robertsons. Dorothy and Tommy went to Communion together on the Sunday. Tommy feared embarrassment about his mother staying in Sunnyside but it turned out well with the Robertsons inviting him to join his mother privately for meals. In London Helen was giving supper to the Nicholsons that evening. On 10 December Helen went to the Nicholson studio to see their work and bought two pictures. Tommy wrote on 10 December to Dorothy and Robin Hodgkin who were on a visit to France and staying at the Hotel Rond Point in Paris. He asked if he might cash in his War Savings Certificates, worth a little over 2, to buy Christmas presents for the family - I know it is unwise to live on ones capital but I feel it necessary. Tommy rejoined his family in Oxford for the Christmas vacation. For Helen the new year of 1926 was memorable for a moment at the Tate Gallery on 3 January when Vincent Van Goghs painting of a chair took her by storm as a noble strong simple painting. A few days later Dorothy and Thomas arrived to stay with Helen at 4 Lowndes Square. Dorothy and Thomas were already thinking about the summer vacation and considering a visit to France. On 13 January in a biting cold wind they went to a tourism bureau in the Haymarket for leaflets about St. Briac and St. Cast in the St. Malo area of Brittany. Helen had invited the Lowenthals to lunch that day. Tommy and Hugh Lowenthal were persuaded to go out together. The Maskelyne show was full and they spent some time watching billiards at Thurstons in Leicester Square. Charles Bosanquet came to dinner with a friend, Diana Lucas, who was taking him on to a dance. Tommy paid more heed to Charles than to the young lady and was afterwards mildly rebuked by Helen for not talking to his neighbour Diana at dinner. Dorothy and Tommy went to the theatre and saw Marie Tempest in Noel Cowards Hay Fever. A visit to Helen who had exacting standards was something of a crash course in social manners. When Dorothy and Tommy left on an early train on 14 January they took a taxi to Paddington and this avoided the problem of tipping Mills, Helens chauffeur for the Rolls

Royce. Tommy had to conduct what he found the uncomfortable task of tipping Mallett, Helens butler. Dorothy assured Tommy that Mallett would be sympathetic. In Oxford Tommy took up holiday tasks including two books of Spensers The Faerie Queen, six plays of Shakespeare and Boswells Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides. He also joined Teddy and Betty in early evening games of bridge and demon patience. On other evenings he went to a rather dismal dance - fifteen boys and fifty girls dancing to a gramophone in the Randolph Hotel - and to supper and the cinema at the invitation of two Old Wykehamists. Tommy prepared to return to school and attended a fitting at Norman Peale for a new brown suit of plus fours. He was at the adolescent moment of fearing and wanting to begin to shave. His mother noted a little down at the corners of his top lip, but so fair it hardly showed. On 20 January Dorothy took Tommy to Oxford station where a small crowd of parents of Winchester boys gathered for a merry send-off of their sons to Winchester. Tommy at school continued his Spenser and Boswell tasks. He was disappointed that Randall Swingler had not won a promotion to join him in Mr Robinsons form. On Wednesdays Tommy paraded with the Officers Training Corps to build up the British Empire as he commented wryly in a letter to Dorothy. At the same time he skipped a debate of 27 January on the proposition that one Briton was worth two foreigners. He described this a completely pointless and untrue assertion. The house hero, Desmond Bonham-Carter, told him the debate was a fiasco. In the same early days of term Tommy was writing a musical comedy and contemplating a Grand Guignol melodrama. His circle continued the Sunday readings of Shakespeare. He read Lady Macbeth to David Orrs Macbeth with Randall Swingler as Banquo and John Nicholson as Malcolm. Tommys study of Boswell had to compete with a Sapper adventure thriller about the xenophobic British ex-army officer Bulldog Drummond (The Final Count). Tommy was impressed with a chapel sermon on the brotherhood of the races. He was enjoying such distractions as buying a ukulele, kazoos and penny whistles for a dance hall outing. His exhibition tango with David Orr was abandoned when coal men arrived to deliver coal. Dorothy in Oxford nervously welcomed Helen Sutherland at Oxford station when she arrived on 1 February for a return visit. Dorothy confided in her diary that she was feeling less and less intellectually a companion for Helen as Helen more and more discovered fresh and wider interests where Dorothy felt too stupid to follow. She was reassured when Helen before leaving on 5 February told her: You know I love you best of anybody. Violet Holdsworth arrived next day as a demanding guest for a fortnight She should have been born a Queen!", Dorothy noted in her diary. In mid-February, Helens music teacher and protge, Vera Moore, was a weekend guest to whom Dorothy found it difficult to relate. On 20 February Robin and Dorothy drove to Winchester for lunch and a Saturday afternoon walk with Tommy. Dorothy found him lively and happy and full of jokes and news. It was symptomatic of his greater engagement with school that Robin and Dorothy left him after a couple of hours so that he could return to his books. Dorothy and Helen were exchanging birthday gifts. For Helens birthday on 24 February Dorothy chose a tiny pair of old silver scissors (too small ever to be in the way) and

Gilchrists life of Blake. For Dorothys fortieth birthday on 2 March Helen made an unfortunate choice of a silk jumper in a mauve pink shade that Dorothy found impossible for her face and all her clothes. Her sisters Gertrude and Biddy agreed, but Robin insisted the gift could not be sent back and Dorothy wrote a less-than truthful letter of thanks. Robin and Dorothy spent the afternoon watching Queens lose to Brasenose in the final of the Rugby Cupper and returned home to a variety of cakes for tea. In the evening Teddy and Betty and the housemaids (Annie Bull and her sister Ethel Bull) were thrilled when a Mr Amiss brought round a wireless for the Hodgkins to try. He left it on loan while they thought about buying one. The children listened again next evening and Dorothy called on neighbours for advice on what kind of wireless to have. The borrowed wireless set was shown to Tommy on 6 March when he came home for a leave out day and took his fancy. He wrote back from Sunnyside next day that he looked forward to the next holidays even more with a wireless set to play with. Dorothy was again plunged into Helens new world when she arrived at Helens on 9 March for a further stay. She found Vera Moore and another musician (Knute ? ) practising for a concert to be held at Helens. Dinner guests were a Tate Gallery art lecturer of Welsh origin, Jim (Harold Stanley) Ede, and his wife Helen Schlapp, the daughter of Edinburgh Universitys Professor of German. Vera and Knute were lunch guests on 10 March and in the evening Helen and Dorothy went to see Anton Chekhovs Three Sisters. Veras concert was held in the early evening of 11 March for some forty of Helens guests. Helen relayed compliments to Dorothy from Jim Ede and Knute, and Dorothy dashed for a train back to Oxford in good humour at kind remarks like spring rain on thirsty land. In Oxford Dorothy resumed household duties. She tried to respond to Tommys request for ideas for a Winchester debate on 17 March where Tommy on the paper was opposing the notion That this house regrets the discovery of America. Dorothy said goodbye to a kitchen-maid, Gladys, and gave her the wrong wages. She had, ignominiously she felt, to write after her to seek a refund of sixteen shillings and eight pence. A new kitchen maid, fourteen-year-old Violet, arrived to join the cook (May Fox from Seahouses) and the housemaids Annie and Ethel. A list of holiday lets in Brittany came from a French house agent on 18 March and Robin determined to go over by that nights boat to look at them next day. Mr Amiss came on 20 March and installed a wireless in place of the one he had left on loan. Dorothy was uncertain of its value but confident that the servants would appreciate it. At Winchester Tommy was trying to balance the demands of another seven cantos of Spenser, mathematics, the Lewis Carroll Alice books, romantic verse composition for Mr Robinson. Shakespeare readings, a junior steeplechase and classics. By late March the Bobber, Miss Robertson and the house matron thought he was overworked. He was fed on chocolate biscuits and made to sleep on a Saturday afternoon. In the event the Duncan prize in mathematics went to John Hunt. On 28 March Tommy re-read the Carroll books in hasty cramming for a paper on 30 March. He was also preparing for a paper on Greek irregular verbs, and to run in 200-yard house relay race. Robin and Dorothy drove to Winchester for Tommys end of term on 31 March. They learned from Sheila Robertson that Tommy after missing a repeat of the mathematics prize had won the Gillespie prize for English literature. Tommy appeared in his new plusfours and the Hodgkins went off or a walk and lunch in the New Forest, before beginning

a leisurely journey to Cornwall. To spread the burden of hospitality the family divided. Robin and Tommy stayed at Treworgan with Lucy Anna Hodgkin. Dorothy, Teddy and Betty stayed at Bareppa with Violet Holdsworth. The houses were within a mile and a halfs walk and the family reunited during the days to revel in the country gardens or the beach. The Bareppa guests rushed to Treworgan soon after breakfast on 3 April to begin the celebration of Tommys sixteenth birthday. Dorothy gave him a leather coat for golf and motoring. Robins gifts included Georgian poetry. Helen wrote offering Scott, that was not to his taste, and Tommy wrote back suggesting Barrie plays. The Hodgkin caravan moved on to rather cramped quarters at the Mulllion Cove Hotel at Mullion in South Cornwall for a weeks golfing from 8 April. They spent the morning of 12 April on the Pollunian beach, returning to the place where Dorothy, Lucy Anna, Tommy and Teddy and the nanny had been in August 1914 when Britain declared war on Germany. On 15 April they returned for a weekend of the comforts of Treworgan and Bareppa and the attentions of family retainers. In Oxford on 19 April Dorothy found that the other Violet, the new kitchen-maid hired in March, had decamped three days earlier allegedly suffering from loss of memory. Afternoons of golf - Tommy and Robin, Tommy and Dina Hartley - and occasional evenings at the theatre helped fill out the holiday. Tommy went alone to tea with the Provost of Queens, Dr John Richard Magrath, on 25 April and was rewarded with ten shillings and some stamps for his collection. Tommy was fast outgrowing his clothes and Dorothy took suits to be cleaned and lengthened in time for his return to Winchester on 28 April, when John Hunt was his travelling companion. The summer term brought to Tommy the best and worst of days. Randall who had been in different parallels was now in the same form as Tommy. They began the term with a 25-mile bicycle ride along with Uvedale Lambert and Charles Hollins. When rain halted cricket on the first Saturday of term the same foursome played golf - at the Bobbers instigation. Tommy and Randall began scheming together. They were to write a poetry anthology, have it printed by the school bookseller in an edition of 100, present five copies to each of their respective families, and sell the rest to prominent people for a guinea a time. They expected to gain at least 30 a piece. They would write all the poems under assumed names. Tommy began with a sonnet on the feelings of a jilted man. He wrote home on 2 May that he was sleeping in the sick room as the doctor suspected he might have the tinea cruris that had occurred in Sunnyside in the previous term. Dorothy was dividing her attention between Tommys letters from Winchester and fluctuating prospects of Britains impending General Strike. Robin perceived the situation as a clash between trade unions wanting a social revolution and a government eager for confrontation to prove its superior strength. Dorothy followed the changes on the recently installed wireless set, especially when the newspapers could not appear. Tommy was sent to the sanatorium for what he called a non existent disease. He heard the Bobbers pessimism and hoped that revolution would not be the result. The Bobber called daily to read extracts from the British Gazette about the industrial situation. Dorothy heard on 5 May that Tommy was confined to the sanatorium and hinting that she should ask for his return home - she was distressed and minding it almost more than the Strike. She and Gertrude Hartley went to Oxford Town Hall and enrolled as cars with drivers to be called on if needed. She told Robin who was annoyed that he had not been

consulted. However Robin did on 9 May go off to Hull to take undergraduates to help unload ships at the docks and spent the night away. On 11 May Dorothy heard the unexpected news on the one oclock broadcast that the General Strike would end that day. Her thankfulness at the end of the strike was clouded by a letter from Tommy disclosing a dreadful depression he did not know how to fight or bear. She was writing to the Bobber when Mollie Hunt telephoned offering a lift as she and her husband were driving to Winchester for the Ascension Day holiday next day, 13 May. Dorothy accepted joyfully and sent Tommy a telegram to announce her arrival. The evening seemed long but she listened to details of the Downing Street meeting on the strike, a speech from Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and the singing of Jerusalem. Dorothy reached Sunnyside about noon and first took Tommy to the tailor to choose material for a suit (to be brown and double-breasted) and then to lunch, where he began to open up about his depression and misery and fear. To Dorothy he seemed bewildered and frightened and on the brink of tears though able still to joke and talk of more mundane things. Tommy was not able to tell Dorothy all his feelings, but essentially it was a compound of over-work and adolescent despair mixed with fears about insanity or suicide (as had come to another Wykehamist of his year, F.M.L. Tottenham who had died on 2 April early in the Easter vacation). Tommy was spending time weeping alone in the chapel. He was in thrall to the romantic idea of love with an idealised female and held an innocent loving affection for Randall, who combined athletic and academic brilliance. Dorothy and Tommy spent part of the afternoon with the Hunts on a drive to their yacht moored at Bursledon and returned to Winchester for tea. Dorothy went with Tommy to Sunnyside and spoke to Sheila Robertson about his unhappiness. Dorothy found leaving Tommy almost as hard as when he had joined the school in 1923. Miss Robertson spoke supportively to Tommy after Dorothy left. Tommy was encouraged by Dorothys words and a sympathetic letter bolstered by one of the finest of cookies cakes. He wrote home that the day of Dorothys visit was one of the most blessed days in my life, and that the Bobber was keeping a protective eye on him. With Dorothys encouragement he had begun the distraction of reading Thackerays The Newcomes. Tommys mood fluctuated. He saw the doctor who felt his pulse and told him not to worry. He reported to the Bobber but declined the offer of being allowed home for a week or two as he wanted to recover at Winchester if possible. He was well enough to score 51 runs at cricket - a fine innings full of confidence & only came to an end because I ran myself out to go to School Shop. He went on an expedition to an old manor house with the Archaeological Society and had tea with Winchester grandees including Richard Crossman. Helen Sutherland was Dorothys guest in Oxford for a week ending on 25 May, Tommys leave out day. Dorothy met him at Oxford station a quarter of an hour before Helens train left. Dorothy and Tommy visited the Dragon School and talked at Bradmore Road. She detected some strain in him, as did the maids. He had gained height in the month since the beginning of term and at some five foot eight inches was almost as tall as Dorothy. Mary Smith on seeing Tommy in fawn shirt and the new brown suit said teasingly that he looked as if he had written a volume of nasty verse. Helen found an opportunity with a friend to visit Tommy at Winchester on 29 May. She gave Tommy a good lunch of salmon, chicken, cherry tart and a pint of cider, and he showed her the

sights. He had begun working on a second attempt at the English verse prize on the 1926 theme of peace on earth to men of good will, taken from the Latin mass. The Thackeray novel was soothing. Dorothy drove again to Winchester on 8 June, with the Bobbers mother among her passengers from Oxford. Dorothy gave Tommy lunch and tea and found him in happy mood throughout the afternoon. He gave her the draft of his English verse entry. She left with a sense of serene reassurance. Two days later she was plunged into one of Helens parties in London, meeting again Vera Moore and for the first time Ben Nicholson, already winning a reputation. She continued her journey on 11 June to stay with the Jameson family in Edinburgh. She showed Tommys draft verse to a literary friend [Walter ?] who responded with constructive criticism. Tommys depression recurred in milder form at the end of June, but did not prevent him sitting the School Certificate examinations of the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board, or coming fourth out of twenty one in the end of term placing so that he was assured of promotion to Sixth Book. Meanwhile he had acquired a passport of his own on 16 July and was ready in August to join his family for a summer in France, spent in a rented villa at Etretat in Normandy, instead of the usual Northumbrian coast. Betty enjoyed swimming and was a persistent diver, while neither Tommy nor Teddy enjoyed diving. The Etretat experience brought confirmation that Bamburgh was what all members of the family preferred. Chapter 4 Senior privileges At the end of the family vacation in France in the summer of 1926 Tommy sailed on 17 September to Southampton. After a scramble over lost and found luggage tickets and luggage, he went straight on to Winchester for the start of his fourth year. He wrote home to Dorothy in triumph on 19 September to say that he had passed School Certificate with credits in every subject. His credits were in Scripture Knowledge (Greek Text), English, History, Latin, Greek, Elementary Mathematics, and Additional Mathematics. His mathematics score was 294 marks out of 300, and he scored about 90 per cent in Latin and Greek. This opened the way for university entrance to Oxford or Cambridge. His seniority in Winchester now gave him a variety of privileges almost more irksome than desirable. He could keep a hat on indoors, follow a special route through senior door, leave buttons undone to read papers, sit on a table - and some fifty odd other notions - all most trying! The Bobber wrote to Robin on 22 September to confirm Tommys safe settling. He confirmed with regret that he did not see any prospect for an ordinary vacancy in Sunnyside for Teddy, whose admission would be contingent on his doing well in the scholarship examination and winning a nomination from the headmaster. Robin pressed the point but the Bobber was firm as he had three or four younger brothers unplaced for the following year. Tommy had moved from the Bin, Mr Robinson, to Arthur Bathers form and was becoming a pure classicist. He was also reading about Shelley, imitating Browning and Swinburne, and participating in debates and Archaeological Society outings. In the OTC he was preparing for Certificate A, and credited with a good word of command when he bawled out orders at the top of his voice. He passed the practical in October by drilling a squad, reading a map, handling a rifle and answering questions on tactics. He took the written test on 9 November (successfully as it turned out).

On 11 November he donned grey flannels and homburg for an Archaeological Society visit to Romsey Abbey (Hugh Lowenthal from College was in the party). The group walked briskly back through the woods in discussion of poetry and ghost stories with Mr Robinson. Tommy played in a Winchester football match of the Societys past versus present members on 15 November, and was inspired to write a dozen lines of verse on the muddy event. He was soaked to the skin and cold to the marrow on an OTC field day on 18 November. He was weighted down in a greatcoat but had become hefty enough to be made to carry the Lewis gun instead of a rifle. He was more cheerful after return to Winchester and a bath and sausage and mash. Tommy had grander fare of turkey and champagne when he and Uvedale Lambert dined on 27 November with John Nicolson's family (*** the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire and Mrs Seeley). Tommy spent the leave out day of 29 November playing golf in the Isle of Wight with the Hollins family. This brought an invitation from Charles Hollinss mother to a winter sports party in Switzerland from the end of school term to early in the new year. Tommy was torn and consulted Dorothy for a speedy indication of her wishes. The winter sports plan was dropped in favour of a commitment to Helen Sutherland. Tommy sat internal examinations in December and at the end of term was eleventh out of sixteen in the division (twelfth in classical order). He faced again the competing claims for future attention of mathematics or English literature. The Bobber was a mild advocate for English. While Tommy and his mentors were juggling with curriculum priorities Robin was juggling with plans for Teddys transition from preparatory to public school and Tommys transition from public school to university. Robin was arranging to send Teddy to Eton rather than risk waiting for the June 1927 round of Winchester scholarship examinations. In the new year of 1927 Robin raised the matter again with the Bobber. The family was also planning to withdraw Tommy from Winchester by the end of summer term1928 even if he had not won a university scholarship in the forthcoming December round. The Bobber replied on 1 February 1927 that there was no formal change in Teddys situation, but he thought a nomination remained likely. He took the opportunity to warn that Tommys chance of being a prefect would require him to be a lot tidier in looking after the toyes where he kept books and an accumulation of personal possessions (that included an almost legless black cat, two urns and a Roman arch). Tommy was beginning to think about his Oxford prospects and asking his father whether he should take examinations in Oxford in March for University or New College, but as a practice run rather than a serious bid (the proposal was soon turned down). Meanwhile he pursued his mix of study with pastimes: frequent games of golf, Shakespeare readings, the occasional thriller, Bernard Shaws comedies, debates, brief experimentation with cooking. Dorothy visited Winchester on 15 February and a few hours after her departure Tommy sent her a lyrical poem on Laughter that he admitted to be full of faults. He went home for a leave out day on 5 March. David Orr did go to Oxford on 21 March for the spring scholarship round, along with Sunnysides head prefect, Alex Marples, sitting for New College, and was

entertained by the Hodgkin family. Tommy stayed at school cramming from a dictionary of quotations for points of plays he could not or would not read, in preparation for a Shakespeare paper. He came a creditable fifth among the competitors in the Senior English Literature Prize examination and at the end of term stood twelfth out of nineteen in the form. Teddy was accepted for Eton and went there on 28 April for the Summer Half of 1927. Tommy, who had regretted that Teddy was not to come to Winchester, took on the role of wise counsellor. He wrote from Winchester on 30 April: I dont suppose you are quite acclimatised yet, but after about a week or a fortnight you will probably find that term is in its way as jolly as the holidays, at any rate that is my experience. The remedy for natural homesickness was not to make too much of it and in a day or two it would vanish. Teddy was to look out for hearty chaps who could be invited to Bamburgh. Dorothy was at home, for the first time since mid-1913 with only one child, her daughter Betty in the Dragon School sixth form. Dorothy kept company with Betty at her homework or pastimes in the nursery, and was juggling her diary to sustain regular visits to Tommy and Teddy at their respective schools, and visits to Helen in London. Robin was seeking from the Oxford authorities a sabbatical year from October to work in London and on sources in Germany and Denmark for a history of Anglo-Saxon England whose preliminary preparation had already occupied many vacations. In early May Tommy was consigned to the sick room with a swelling whose treatment, on the recommendation of the house matron, consisted of lying in the bath and squeezing a sponge over the affected part. He wrote home on 8 May for the largest jigsaw puzzle they had and the most complete version of the genealogy he had prepared back to Adam and for large sheets of paper so that he could copy it out. Robin sent the genealogy by return of post with puzzles that Tommy shared with a junior, John Best, in the sick room with influenza. Tommy, while reverting to enthusiasms of earlier childhood, was also reading Trollope at about the rate of a hundred and fifty pages a day (The Warden, Barchester Towers, and Framley Parsonage) and expected this to influence his own prose style. After ten days without shaving he could show a silky moustache that would have to go as he recovered. He was finding it painful to walk but on 13 May was allowed to sit in an armchair with his feet up. He watched his friends playing in the asphalt court yard next to the house. David Lidderdale and Randall Swingler came up to visit. Randall had been the most regular caller to the sick room and on this occasion brought chocolate. Tommy had nothing smaller than a pound note to pay and took this as an opportunity to invite Randall to Bamburgh after OTC camp. Randall accepted immediately. Tommy returned to the writing of poetry to enter for the poetry gold medal but on looking at Randalls draft compared his own writings unfavourably with Randalls luscious wordy sort of stuff. By 19 May Tommy had recovered and Robin and Dorothy took Betty out of school on 21 May to visit Winchester for a weekend tour that continued on to Teddy at Eton on 22 May. Robin, Dorothy and Betty went again to Eton on the Fourth of June for the fireworks, boats and cricket. Tommy had a leave out day from Winchester on 7 June. He entered a silver medal contest on 10 June by declaiming Macaulays speech on the ten hours bill from the school stage to a panel of judges. He was unplaced but David Orr gained an honourable mention. Tommy wrote a light piece for the school magazine and lost at golf to an athletic junior from Scotland, James Sprot. Dorothy was able to see

Tommy and Teddy at the Eton and Winchester cricket match on 24 June, but balked at a drive to Yorkshire to see an eclipse as Robin and Tommy had in mind. Tommy was soon on the hunt for costume for the role of a refined, elderly lady he had in that years low comedy, a country play called Moggeridges cow. He wrote to Dorothy on 1 July for a really reliable corset if you can beg borrow or steal one (from Cook?) also a thick black silk dress with a trailing skirt if possible - something of the sort that Nanny wore, alpaca wasnt it? - also stockings to match and a huge hat. Robin Hodgkin and Malcolm Robertson were corresponding on more pragmatic matters: the timing of Tommys Oxford entry attempt, school leaving date and promotion to the Library as a prefect. The Bobber, who had to allocate places for future new boys, was waiting to hear whether Tommy would leave in July 1928 or return till Christmas 1928, according to how well Tommy did in applying to Oxford. The Bobber wrote on 3 July 1927 to Robin Hodgkin: I presume you have entered him for Balliol or elsewhere as a Commoner? With his general knowledge etc. he should have a chance of recognition at Balliol & elsewhere this year - but I doubt if his actual Classics wd be strong enough for another year. Robertson was not contemplating making Tommy a prefect for the following term as there were four or five boys with prior claims and Tommy needed method and stability. His many gifts did not include tidiness. Robertson believed that it would do Tommy good to be senior man in hall and responsible for order in the absence of prefects. On the same day Robertson had a half-hour talk with Tommy in similar terms, and Tommy again told him there was a possibility of his leaving school before the summer. Robertson felt that this would be a pity as a boy could come so much to his own during his last term or so. He assured Robin that his current opinion on the appointment of prefects was not final. Robertson was taking an overview of Sunnyside house, but Robin riposted immediately with apprehension about damage to Tommys career and stern defence of his sons claims. Robin believed that Robertson had earlier committed himself to making Tommy a prefect in September. Robertson believed that the expectation was for Tommy to be a prefect during his last year, as it was common to have a small number of prefects in a house in September and to expand at Christmas. Robertson wrote on 6 July to Robin: If I decide to ask the Headmaster for more than 4 prefects next term (which is what I had in mind when I wrote) Tommy will come next. If I already said definitely that I was going to recommend him in September, please just quote my letter. There is, of course, a big difference between going back on such a decision (which I should be unwilling to do - & which would involve some kind of censure such as you suggest) and merely postponing the recommendation for a term. Dorothy was at Winchester on 14 July for a visit envisaged by Tommy as early as May to bridge the time between the Eton match and end of term and to give encouragement for camp. She was also outspoken to the Bobber about her concerns for Tommys promotion and then wrote a letter of apology. Robertson sent an emollient reply on 17 July that Dorothy need not fear Tommy would not have full justice, he hoped Tommy would stay till the end of next summer at least, and he valued Tommy and the Hodgkin friendship and kindness to his mother. Tommy at the close of examinations and preparing for corps camp (where he had decided to take the solid work of Gibbon to last him through the week) wrote to Dorothy on 24 July to warn her that things might not work out as she wished. The rumour was that there

would be only six removes, and he was likely to be the sixth but that honour might to someone who had only one more half to do and would be a senior prefect. This might discourage the Bobber from pushing for Tommys remove or making him a prefect. Tommy would send a postcard next day with the outcome. Meanwhile Charles Hollins and Tommy had been chosen for training in the next school year as potential assistant scoutmasters after they left school. The School Scout Troop was a new initiative of 1927 under a Wykehamist don, John Pinsent, and was intended to lay foundations of social usefulness. Tommy saw that it would relieve him of many OTC chores but found it difficult to imagine himself running about in khaki shorts making weird animal noises and roasting buns. The letter of 24 July reported an experience indicative of Tommys emerging personality. He described a meeting with a tramp: He was the most Shakespearean Welshman I have ever known, and had wonderful fair hair and a lovely accent. He came to the door and asked for a pair of boots (his toes were showing though his present ones), so I searched in changing room and found an old pair - of Shuckburghs, I believe, he hasnt discovered it yet though - & gave them him - quite la Robin Hood. He was frightfully grateful and didnt ask for money, but it struck me when hed gone I ought to have given him some, so I dashed after him and asked him where he was going. He said he was walking from Monmouthshire to Plymouth to get a job whateffer (a rather round about route!), so I gave him sixpence - I feel that I ought to have given him half-a-crown which was the only alternative, but I remembered the collection to-day - he then said that he hadnt broken his fast to-day, and he certainly looked horribly thin; he added that times were hard, with which I fervently agreed (in Examin week) and we parted with mutual good wishes. In the Hodgkin household in Oxford no one went to church that Sunday. The household had a much-loved Pekinese dog, Juki. He was Helen Sutherlands gift to Teddy, bought in January 1925 after much scouring of London in taxis. Teddy had in mind a Kerry Blue but was persuaded to accept Helens choice. The dog had become thin and weak since mid-July 1927 and continued to ail despite a flannel coat with white bows made by Dorothy and Betty to protect his chest. Dorothy stayed up all night on 23 July to watch over Juki but the dog worsened. On 24 July Juki failed to respond to medicines administered in several visits by a vet. Dorothy and Betty went for a short walk while the vet put the dog down. Robin dug a grave and buried Juki under the trees at the bottom of the Bradmore Road garden. Teddys pleasure at coming home on 26 July at the end of his first term at Eton was shadowed by the loss of his pet, although last-minute shopping and packing for Bamburgh afforded distraction. By contrast Tommys promised postcard of 25 July to Dorothy brought good news and relief of his likely remove and promotion to prefect. She wrote to him at OTC camp on 26 July: I dont think I could ever really believe that you would miss either - such is my faith & pride in you - but it is lovely to know for certain, & I have been giving thanks all day. Official confirmation came in next days school report when the Bobber advised that Tommy would go to senior division and be a house prefect next term with five others for claims could not be differentiated. Tommy was eighth out of seventeen in the final order. In the fortnightly classical orders he had usually been pipped into second place by another new boy in the division, and he had lost further ground in the examination.

While Tommy was in camp, Robin, Dorothy, Teddy and Betty drove north in stages to reach the Captains Lodgings in Bamburgh Castle on 30 July, where Helen again joined the family party. Robin on 31 took a second opinion on the strategy to bring Tommy to Oxford by writing to consult a family friend and fellow of Balliol, Cyril Bailey. One issue was whether a boy coming to Balliol for Honour Moderations should go abroad for a term to learn German before coming up or continue his Classics without interruption and spend a last summer term at school. After OTC camp ended on 3 August Tommy came north by train to Berwick bringing Randall Swingler as his guest for Bamburgh. Bailey advised Robin on 3 August to put Tommys name down at once with the Master or with Roy Ridley who had taken over admissions from Bailey. He recommended that Tommy should come in for the scholarship examination in January 1928 for purposes of matriculation. He felt the issue of learning German and the choice of final summer term at Winchester or travelling could be determined later. Robin followed this advice and sent a request to Balliol that was accepted on 8 Aug 1927 by Roy Ridley on the Masters behalf. This was confirmed by the Master, Sandie Lindsay writing on 18 August from his holiday cottage, Low Ground on Birker Moor in Cumberland. Robin had sought yet another opinion on Tommys future from Tommys cousin, Charles Bosanquet, who had left Sunnyside in 1921 for Trinity College, Cambridge, and was by 1927 a young banker. Charles replied on 19 August with a strong vote for three years at university, with Tommy staying at Winchester for one term in the autumn of 1928, and spending the spring of 1929 in Germany. He tempered this with an alternative, if Tommy was aiming for a first in Greats, of the more conventional summer of 1928 in Germany, followed by four years of university. Charles answered from his experience that the Winchester system herded boys together in the hall of each house, and discouraged friendships with people in other houses. Only in the last year as a prefect had he and most of the people of his kind come to know each other and the dons, and to understand the school as whole. He also endorsed the experience of being a prefect, adding wryly: Since, however, corporal punishment is likely to disappear, it will probably be kind to Tommys biographers that they should be able to spice an early chapter with his own accounts of the tundings he inflicted. (A tunding was Winchester notions for flogging a man across the shoulders with a ground ash). Charles was due to spend the weekend of 27 August to 29 August with his parents at Rock. This was just a fragment of the permutations of Hodgkin and Smith relatives and friends in Northumberland in the summer, including the near legendary Lionel Smith. Betty and Teddy spent much of their time with Cubby Hartley, an Eton schoolboy with Teddy. Tommy was somewhat remote from the children and pursuing the company of Randall Swingler and a holiday acquaintance, the young adult, Margaret Curry. Margaret Curry was living in Norfolk, where her father, the Reverend William Curry, was vicar of St Edmunds, Hunstanton. A decade earlier he had been in Oxford parishes, latterly at Wheatley, and the older Curry children were friends of the younger Smith daughters. Margaret was a friend of Dina Hartleys. From the Smith side the family of Murray and Rosalind Wrong left Bamburgh on 24 August to be succeeded by the Jameson family arriving from Scotland to stay at St Aidans. Betty Hodgkins Dragon School friend, Ann Elliott, arrived on 25 August to join her at Bamburgh for the remainder of the holiday.

Betty and Ann climbed to the roof of Bamburgh Castle on the morning of 2 September to admire the views of mountains, moors and sea and then went down to meet the Jameson children at St Aidans. They lit fires in holes in the sandhills and later a hut of tree branches around four pines in the woodland. They played again in the hut on Sunday, 4 September. Robin wrote on 4 September to the Bobber to express his anxiety that waiting until October 1929 for the beginning of Tommys university career would be giving him too late a start in life. If he were able to go to Balliol in October 1928, the question remaining was whether he should spend the summer term of 1928 at Winchester or in Germany. Robin believed that the third term at Winchester would give much benefit, but being thrust into the entirely different conditions of life in a German family would give even more: I think a break of this kind in the routine of Public School and University life is what a boy needs, if he is to find himself and also become a good European. Tommy was leaning towards the summer at Winchester, and this was Dorothys preference. Robin wanted to leave the matter open and offered to pay fees for the summer term if the eventual decision was Germany and the housemaster could not fill Tommys place. Betty was complaining of slight pain on the Monday, 5 September, and returned to bed after breakfast - with just an ordinary tummy-ache. She remained in her bedroom high up in the Castle on the following days, receiving visits from the other members of the holiday party. The Bobber, on holiday with his sister and mother at Hawse End, Keswick, replied to Robin on 6 September endorsing Robins preference that Tommy should try to go up to Oxford in October of the following year. A balance had to be made between the benefit of the last summer at school and the experience of travel in Germany: The only question is whether Tommy, being anyhow on the young side, might just miss getting the full fruition of his Winchester time. The Bobber declined the offer of additional fees and was content to leave the decision until after the forthcoming Balliol scholarship examination. The Hodgkin family at Bamburgh were concerned at Bettys continued pain and agreed with the village doctor on Wednesday, 7 September, to call for a second medical opinion. A surgeon arriving from Newcastle at eleven that night diagnosed appendicitis. Betty was to go to Newcastle for an operation next day. Helens Rolls Royce was waiting at the door when Betty was brought down. Robin sat in front of the car next to the chauffeur and Dorothy squeezed in the back next to a bed of cushions on which Betty lay under a rug. They reached Newcastle in the early hours and Betty was taken to a room to await a noon operation. She died on 8 September under the anaesthetic. Robin Hodgkin and Nelly Bosanquet made a garden of love-in-the-mist from the Bosanquet estate at Rock, and roses and lilies, round Bettys hospital bed where a vigil was kept for a night and a day. The family sent a telegram on 9 September to Lady Elliott in Oxford breaking the news and asking if Ann could stay on as this helped Teddy. Tommy turned to his panacea of poetry and sketched the beginning of a poem: There shall be laughter on the hills Lying deep amid the friendly heather And all adown the melancholy shore

The wind is hushed - the wind shall sweep no more ... Robin brought Bettys body back to Bamburgh where she lay in the Castle surrounded by fresh flowers and mourners until the burial. The grave in the Bamburgh churchyard was lined by her young cousins with heather from the moors. Dorothy recorded the funeral date of 11 September as a wild and stormy day, with a huge wind that seemed to make even the castle shake, and huge waves thundering on the rocks. Dorothy withdrew into her grief. Robin sought solace in his historical research. Teddy went sadly back to Eton. Tommys return for his crucial fifth year at Winchester was delayed for three weeks by an attack of Paratyphoid B -he was laid up with parrot typhoid or jungle fever, as Diana Bosanquet wrote in a get-well letter. Tommy was corresponding with Margaret Curry at her familys home, a Norfolk vicarage at Hunstanton, and sending photographs of their summer encounter. He encouraged her to visit him after his return to Winchester. Through Margarets meeting with the Wrongs at Bamburgh she was being canvassed to work as an assistant for Murrays father, the historian Professor G.M. Wrong, in Canada. Randall wrote from Sunnyside on 1 October to tell Tommy that he had been made Librarian of Debating Society in his absence. He would return to a library full of preffies thirsting to beat men. Shuckburgh, Lambert and Hollins were among co-signatories of Randalls letter. Within a few days Tommy was able to return to Winchester. He arrived heavily laden with extra luggage and was met at the station by the Bobber who whisked him into tea party that led to a gentle talk with Sheila Robertson. Tommy quickly found games of golf and squash to mark his returning health. Robin and Dorothy went through the Bradmore Road house on 5 and 6 October clearing it to be let during Robins sabbatical. Dorothy found the hardest task of all was to tidy away Bettys toys and clothes. Robin and Dorothy were going to stay with Helen at 4 Lowndes Square. Robin went ahead early on 7 October to forewarn Helen of the arrival of eleven boxes of Hodgkin luggage. Dorothy stayed on in Oxford while a house agent came to take an inventory of the furniture to be used by tenants. Dorothy joined Robin in London on 8 October, a date that would have been Bettys twelfth birthday but for the sudden death. Cookie was staying on in the Bradmore Road house and Annie too remained in Oxford. Dorothy in response to a distress signal from Teddy decided at the last moment to go to him at Eton on 9 October. They walked among the deer in Windsor and Dorothy tried to ease the loneliness of his sorrow. With Dorothy on her visit to Eton Robin made a first visit to his London club - felt rather like a new boy - and found a good library there. Dorothy in London was seeking quiet times to be alone and to begin writing for a memorial volume to Betty. The close nucleus of a family in their Oxford home was cracked into four particles. Tommy adapted to his grander status at Winchester. He was, as the Bobber had promised, a prefect along with five others of Tommys circle: Randall Swingler, Evelyn Shuckburgh, Uvedale Lambert, Charles Hollins and Richard Wood. A surgeons son, Patrick Kidd from a Wykehamist family, was tidying Tommys toyes and cubicle. Thomas Barlow was looking after Tommys clothes, but made a poor start by rolling a pair of Tommys trousers into a ball to be tied up in braces. Tommy cast a lofty eye over the seven new boys in the house, five of whom were younger brothers of Wykehamists. He could not see why any of them should have been preferred (in the Bobbers plans) to his own younger brother, Teddy. He had a gallery seat in chapel and was responsible for

monitoring the attendance of a row of nine schoolboys, but had the privilege of entering the gallery after the chapel bells had stopped. For relaxation he was reading Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park). Tommy was due to go to London on 15 October for a theatre outing and a visit to Helens Lowndes Square house. In the new-found excitement of Winchester he asked on 9 October if he might instead stay for a school walk in the New Forest to which other prefects were going. He suggested that Dorothy come down for another day at Winchester and that the London outing be postponed to 1 December. Dorothy and Robin were amenable. As house guests of Helen Sutherland they were being drawn increasingly into her plans and priorities. Dorothy was with Helen on 12 October at a recital by Vera Moore . As Dorothy returned alone she had a chance meeting on a bus with one of Helens painter friends, Teddy Wolfe, who was about to leave for France but interested in visiting Tommy at Winchester. Helen wanted Dorothy to accompany her on a brief visit to Suffolk and Norfolk to see an exhibition of Gainsborough paintings, and this would mean deferring an early visit to Winchester. Tommy endorsed the scheme and on 23 October reported new school glories. After nearly four years of Sunday readings of Shakespeare in Sunnyside, Tommy was invited to join the schools established SROGUS (Shakespeare Reading and Orpheus Glee United Societies). Meetings were enhanced with a large selection of cakes and coffee that Tommy found useful to keep him awake long enough to do some work. He was also in the Essay Society where six college men and six commoners could discuss problems of the day. Canon Burnett. Streeter, like Robin a fellow of Queens, visited Winchester and discoursed on the problem of pain. Thomas followed this up with a long discussion on the subject with the assistant master and Balliol classicist James Cullen that made him late for lunch. Tommy was one of several boys invited to dine in full evening dress with the headmaster who was entertaining Canon Streeter. Another side of his new status came that week when he had occasion to beat James Sprot, who had been his occasional golfing opponent. Tommy objected to what he felt was a breach of manners when Sprot took an unappetising helping of meat, put it in a handkerchief and into his pocket. Tommy proffered a lecture on manners and a quite efficient lashing, for which he thought the victim bore no ill will. Dorothy unable to call on her Oxford cook to bake special cakes for Tommy sent him a large cake from Lyons in London. Margaret Curry confirmed that after an interview in London with Murray Wrongs parents she was to go to Canada in the following May. She was taking lessons twice a week in shorthand and typing in preparation for secretarial tasks on Professor Wrongs lectures and writings. Tommy was learning about scouting and by the end of October had passed his Tenderfoot Test. In Oxford Annie Bull was engaged to be married. Dorothy, Gertrude Hartley and their mother Mary Smith engaged in the search for a house and persuaded Annie to agree on a cottage at the foot of Cumnor Hill, with Robin contributing to the rent. The banns were called for a December wedding. After the expedition to see the Gainsborough old masters Dorothy went with Helen Sutherland on 9 November to see modern art in London. Dorothy did not care for the many pictures by Roger Fry (Robins first cousin) and paintings by Teddy Wolfe less agreeable than the artist. She enjoyed the next day spent with Annie Bull in London in a hunt for a wedding dress.

The Bobber was taking a hand in Tommys future. He wrote to Dorothy about prospects for the summer and suggested that Tommy was too inexperienced to go to Germany. Dorothy replied that the family had practically decided on Tommys staying on for the term at Winchester. The Bobber gave Tommy particulars of a Balliol War Memorial Scholarship for English literature that would be examined on 13 December. Tommy thought the odds were against winning the scholarship but thought it might fit in with preparation for the January Balliol scholarship round. Tommy noted that Evelyn Shuckburgh was going away next half on the public school Africa tour for which the required dress was a double breasted blue suit with brass buttons and yachting cap. Tommy commented to his father on 13 November that would rather stay at school than go to Africa on a glorified Sunday School treat. For field day on 17 November Tommy escaped OTC military manoeuvres and went with the scouts to the New Forest for a civilian version of tracking and attacking and defending games. The main difference was the light scouting dress he now had instead of thick khaki uniform. He wrote of his scouts uniform to Margaret Curry who was preparing an entertainment with a company of Girl Guides and he sent her a gift of stockings. At Sunnyside he had on 22 November to administer another beating after five boys had been fighting in the bedrooms and damaged furniture. He described the sixth prefect, Richard Wood, as a very angry lion with no prospect of a Christian. This news drew Dorothys admonition that beating should be like Holy Matrimony and not be enterprised lightly or wantonly. Robin and Dorothy were inclined to leave the literature scholarship decision to school guidance. Robin gave a hinted of support on the grounds that Tommy showing a good knowledge of English literature might create a good impression for the January examination. Dorothy offered to ask Gertrude to provide accommodation in Oxford if necessary, and to be there herself if Tommy wanted. Tommy consulted the headmaster of Winchester on 22 November. Williams immediately supported his entering for the Balliol examination, and wrote to the Master of Balliol asking Balliol to overlook that Tommys application was being made a day late. The grind was preceded by a leave out day in London on 28 November to include a theatre outing to Bowwows. The Bobber was concerned about signs of strain that Tommy showed and encouraged him to be careful of early nights and adequate sleep. Dorothy wrote to Tommy on 2 December asking if he had told the Bobber no Hodgkin can stand going to bed late, & no Smith can stand getting up early. Robin and Dorothy had been the previous day to Oxford to Annie Bulls wedding in icy cold weather. Since Cyril Humphries the bridegroom was a shop assistant, the ceremony had to be on early closing day, a Thursday. Dorothy perceived him as a fine example of the strong silent Englishman. She delivered wedding gifts from all the family, including Tommy and Teddy. She brought a gift even from the recently-dead Betty, a sugar sifter Betty bought two or three years earlier and had kept for the day that Annie should be married. Tommy, preparing for the Oxford examination, was still showing mild symptoms of invalidness. He was said to be suffering from the rather indeterminate complaint of a cold on the liver. Dorothy was puzzled why this should make Tommy want to sleep so much. She urged him to wear his thicker shirts in the cold weather. In waking hours Tommy prepared by reading three Shakespeare plays and commentaries by A.C. Bradley and Stopford Brooke. He was also reading George Merediths poem Modern Love and

texts by and about William Morris. He found time to be beaten at golf by Sprot. Robin and Dorothy in London made a call on the headmaster of St Pauls School, John Bell, to make enquiries whether he could supply a polisher for Tommy for the January examination round if one were required. Tommy travelled to Oxford on 12 December to his aunt, Gertrude Hartley. Dorothy travelled from London on 13 December to join him in Oxford on the first day of the literature examination for Balliol. They parted on 16 December, Dorothy to London and Tommy to Winchester for the final week of term. The result was due about 19 December. Tommy sat by the fire in the house prefects room. The weather was so cold that the water in the washing basins froze overnight. When the Balliol results came through Tommy in what had been perceived as a trial run came out fourth in the scholarship examination. Harold Hartley gave Dorothy an insiders view from the Balliol fellows. Tommy was regarded as promising, his work bright and lively but not solid enough yet. His average mark in classics was beta and Cyril Bailey said he did some good things, but made a good many mistakes. Bailey was not encouraging about Tommys chances for a classics scholarship to Balliol. Tommys mark in literature was rather better (beta ?+-beta +). The fellows view was that Tommy would be a first-rate commoner who should come up to Balliol and try again in the literature scholarship the next year. The Balliol assessment of Tommys performance was close to that of Winchesters headmaster in the end of term report: In English subjects he can be relied on for vigour and good ideas. On the whole we have thought very well of him and he may go a long way if he will try to enlarge his rather thin classical knowledge and if he can avoid too much dispersal of his efforts! Robin immediately asked the Bobbers opinion whether Tommy should go for the January scholarship round at Balliol. The Bobber replied on 21 December: I do not honestly think it is worth your while to spoil a good holiday by a second attempt now. He thought Christ Church might be a potential alternative in the future. He pointed out that the Winchester authorities had not regarded Tommy as a serious Balliol classical candidate till a year hence. The Bobber thought the way forward was for Tommy to go up to Balliol as a commoner in October 1928 and possibly try for a scholarship then, when he would have matured. The family tradition pointed in the direction of Balliol rather than Christ Church: I think T is cut out for Balliol, in many ways. With this reassurance the Hodgkin family continued with their plan for a Christmas holiday on neutral ground. They went to Paris, to Helens choice of the Hotel de RondPoint des Champs Elysees, by the Folkestone-Boulogne boat late on 21 December. They went on to skating in Switzerland on 30 December, and returned to Britain in the new year of 1928 for a brief visit to the to the Hodgkin relatives, Anna and Ivor Tuckett, with whom Tommy had stayed as a child. Although Tommys entrance to Oxford was assured he was aware of some disappointment in his parents, especially Dorothy, that he had not gained a scholarship. He set himself demanding tasks for his final terms at Winchester. Dorothy paid a visit to Oxford in January to her sister, Gertrude and her brother-in-law. He had just become Sir Harold Hartley after years of scientific research, reaching the rank of Brigadier-General in the First World War and serving as controller of the chemical warfare department of the Ministry of Munitions. Dorothy asked him where Tommy fell short in the December scholarship examination. Sir Harold reiterated that Tommy needed to

concentrate more on his work when he was working. The Balliol dons thought he had made mistakes over things that he really knew. Dorothy returned to Helen Sutherland at 4 Lowndes Square on 25 January 1928 as soon as Teddy and his cousin, Cubby Hartley, had returned to Eton. She left another brotherin-law, Rosalinds husband, the Magdalen College historian, Murray Wrong, seriously ill in the Acland Home with heart disease. Helen had begun Greek lessons with a private tutor and gradually drew Dorothy into the activity. Robin, at Helens for his library research, gave his version of Cyril Baileys comments on Tommys scholarship performance: Tommy needed to concentrate and master the vocabularies better. I think he got the idea that you were not as tidy in your mind as you might be. The sad thing is that businesslike habits both outwardly and in the mind are really not taught either at School or College; and yet they are what is most important of all in life. I dont mind your not being in the running for a Scholarship at Balliol but I do want you to have the happiness which comes from efficiency in life. Robin in the letter addressed his son as Thomas, with the proviso that he could not really think of him as anything but Tommy: the ambiguity marked a moment of transition. Tommy was reading for the English Literature Prize offered by Winchester. He was corresponding with Margaret Curry and tried to discourage her from the plan of going to Canada. He encouraged her to visit him at Winchester when she went from Norfolk to Oxford to stay with Dina Hartley. Dina, with her mothers permission, accepted Tommys suggestion and on 30 January proposed bringing David Orr and a Balliol undergraduate, Hugh Coutts-Trotter who could drive them over in late February. Meanwhile Tommy and Charles Hollins spent the weekend of 11-12 February visiting the Portsmouth mission at Rudmore with which Winchester was connected. He read much of George Merediths The Ordeal of Richard Feverel on the journey. The mission visit exposed him to a succession of high church services that he found disagreeable. Murray Wrong, a former Beit lecturer in colonial history, died on 15 February, leaving Rosalind with six young children. Robin and Dorothy went to Oxford for the funeral on 18 February. Tommy remained at Winchester for his contingent of Oxford visitors on 19 February. Guests with Randall Swingler and Tommy at a rather beastly lunch of roast mutton and tinned pineapple at the Royal Hotel included Margaret Curry, Dina Hartley, David Orr and Hugh Coutts-Trotter. They walked about the Winchester buildings and gardens, had tea with the house prefects in Sunnyside and left as Tommy was preparing for evening chapel. After chapel Tommy with three other Sunnyside prefects - Charles Hollins, Randall Swingler and Uvedale Lambert - dined with the headmaster. Tommy and Randal both suffered severe stomach aches next day but could not decide whether to blame tinned pineapple at the Royal or the headmasters pigeon pie. Tommy had fresh visitors the following weekend for a leave out day on Saturday, 25 February. Dorothy had been reluctant for them to spend it homeless in Oxford. Helen had suggested taking Dorothy on the Friday evening to Liphook for a weekend in Hampshire countryside that Helen knew from her childhood with her parents. Tommy could easily be fetched from Winchester on the Saturday and returned (with Helens chauffeur, Mills, driving the Rolls Royce). The plan worked and the sun shone as they walked through copses and over common (Robin was visiting his mother at Treworgan in Cornwall after she suffered a fall).

For Dorothys birthday on 1 March Tommy sent an expensive book on Shakespeare and Dorothy thanked him for generosity & spoiling. She was also pleased that Biddy Bullard, who was about to give birth to another child, had decided to send her six-yearold son, Matt, to school in England. Dorothy was to act as a parental surrogate and this would give her a job for the summer term: You can guess I am thankful to have one & of that kind. Tommy had thought of spending the Easter vacation in Greece but fell in with parental preferences to spend the holidays on family visits in England. Tommy was running through his English literature preparation, taking in Religio Medici, Bradley on Lear, and a series of William Morris poems. In the light of this burst he decided to mount a tongue-in-cheek campaign as the Labour candidate in a mock election to be held by the school Debating Society on 14 March. He formed a committee and founded an ad hoc Winchester College Labour League with badges of red string that some supporters were persuaded to wear in button holes. Tommy and friends went to the Winchester shops and bought two yards of red material from which they made one immense red flag and many small ones. They found the words of the Red Flag to sing it on election day. Tommy wrote to Ramsay Macdonald for advice - apparently without reply. The campaign was conducted alongside such other tasks as further reading in literature and cooking a meal on the downs as a scout test. He flew a red flag on his toyes, and wrote out and tried to memorise his election speech. He described it to Robin as a mixture of Burke & Pericles and Rupert Brooke and confessed almost on the eve of the mock election: I must say that however good Socialism is as a theory in practice it seems awfully weak. He wrote to Robin on 12 March that he was thinking of walking half way to London at the end of term instead of wasting a day in London, and had collected one or two people willing to join in, or to Reading to catch a train to London. He enjoyed the Debating Society meeting when he and his supporters sang the Red Flag and made a great deal of disturbance. The result was a win for the Tory candidate with 90 votes; 52 for Tommy for Labour; 13 for the Liberal; ten for the Independent and three for the Communist. Tommy understood that the previous highest score for a Labour candidate was 21. On the day after the election he turned to an English Prize Essay required from members of the senior division on the topic Controversy. Amid the varied pursuits Dorothy wrote on 13 March of her concern that he was crowding too much into an already strenuous life. She counselled that he must learn to choose what to do and what to refuse. Tommy was quick to reassure her that he was not overworking. He completed a 3,000 word essay by 18 March and turned to revision for five examination papers from 21 to 23 March. Robin and Dorothy had left London for a weekend in Oxford with Mary Smith and then journeyed to Treworgan to Lucy Anna Hodgkin. Robin had wound up his library reading in London in preparation for field work in Germany and Denmark and taken ineffectual German lessons. In Oxford the Hodgkins took their own car out of winter storage so that Tommy could take driving lessons in the holiday that began at the end of March. Tommys end of term report showed that he had fallen just short of first rank in classics and English. He was second in senior division by about 150 marks in 1500 but about 400 ahead of anyone else, and most of the contenders were scholars in College. The headmasters noted that Tommy was a most spirited and interesting member of the division and that his English work was admirable: He does not find concentration and

mental discipline easy but they are what he needs. The Bobber wrote on 29 March commending the Proxime in the English Literature Prize and reporting that Tommys essay on Controversy was well thought of, and on some views better than the winner and the honourable mention. Tommy turned to the comforts of Treworgan, the pleasures of the Cornish countryside and the pursuits of golf and riding, and returned to Winchester at the end of April to seek new challenges. He found that the Bobber had tried unsuccessfully to secure his promotion from house prefect to school prefect. Robin and Dorothy moved back to Oxford and were staying with Mary Smith at 14 Banbury Road. Dorothys task was to supervise Matts entry to the Dragon School on 2 May, as the youngest in the baby school. Robin spent much of his time in Queens College preparing for a month in Europe on field work on Anglo-Saxon history. He had a two hour session each morning with a shorthand typist to whom he dictated from material he had already gathered in the London stint. After a week of this routine he left for a fortnight at Freiburg im Bresgau, a few days with a former pupil who was a Professor in Heidelberg, followed by two or three days in Berlin and finally a week or so in Denmark. Dorothy visited Tommy for the weekend of 12-13 May after all the preffies invited her to brew, the afternoon tea, on Sunday. She enjoyed the two days and felt that tea in the library helped her picture Tommys everyday life when he was away. In Oxford Dorothy on 17 May consulted an architect and Dragon School teachers about the building and placing of a memorial seat to Betty at the school. Margaret Curry wrote to Tommy from the Canadian Pacific S.S. Montclare as she sailed to Canada to take up her post with Professor Wrong in Toronto, and effectively out of Tommys life. He embarked on a thesis on the classical Greek novel that entailed a succession of appeals to Dorothy for obscure texts from the Oxford libraries and bookshops. She could not help wondering if he might discover that the less known about the Greek novel the better. He decided to enter for a poetry prize as well. Dorothy went to Scotland on a weeks visit to the Jamesons with a day in Bamburgh to plant flowers on Bettys grave. She returned to Oxford in time for Tommy to spend his leave out day on 29 May with her. Dorothy wrote on 31 May how the day together had warmed her: You are blessed with a great gift - the best one - of being able to make people happy. It was the publication day for his grandfathers life by Mary Smith published by John Murray with the modest description A biography and some reminiscences by his wife. Dorothy sent Tommy a copy. She visited Teddy at Eton on 4 June and next day saw in the Dragon School field the pieces of the Betty memorial seat to be assembled. Within a week of the A.L. Smith publication Dorothys own project of a memorial life of Betty was complete. This was a collection of reminiscences and images privately printed by Basil Blackwell in Oxford. Dorothy began distribution to family, contributors and special friends. Tommy had envisaged coming to Oxford for leave out day on 11 June but wrote on 6 June to say that he had accepted an invitation from Sprot to play golf. Tommy suggested that Dorothy and Robin visit after Robins return from Denmark. He had also secured seats for a family gathering Dorothy planned for the Eton and Winchester match to be played at Winchester at the end of June. Dorothy acquiesced in the golf plan. In the event Tommy went with John Nicholson to his home on the Isle of Wight. Tommy was impressed that Nicholson was allowed to drive an ancient Morris Cowley that swayed

rather drunkenly from side to side, but admitted it was a good deal better than anything he could do. He competed for the English speech prize on 12 June. Robin had returned to England on 8 June, was sleeping and breakfasting at 14 Banbury Road and eating main meals in Queens. The Betty memorial seat had been put up. Robin and Dorothy were planning a return to their own home at 20 Bradmore Road for 25 June, as the Baird tenants were leaving on 20 June. The transition was fraught with complications bordering on farce. Biddy Bullard was unexpectedly arriving in London with two younger sons, Giles and Julian, and expected at Victoria on the evening of Thursday, 21 June. Tommy by chance was to be in Oxford on Saturday, 23 June, on a school outing to an afternoon performance of Aristophanes The Clouds. Dorothy declined the Bobbers offer of a spare ticket. Robin and Dorothy, feeling that they should leave space at Mary Smiths in case Biddy needed to stay, were planning to dive out for a country weekend before the return to Bradmore Road, about which Dorothy was apprehensive because of its memories of Betty. Dorothy went to London on 21 June meaning to take leave of 4 Lowndes Square after one night. She went to Victoria but Biddy did not appear as the ship was delayed and they were not arriving until Friday. Dorothy stayed an extra night with Helen after Biddy arrived on 22 June. On the Saturday Dorothy and Biddy and her sons reached Oxford by train just as Tommy was arriving from Winchester. Dorothy and Tommy caught only a vexing glimpse of each other before they went to their separate destinations. Tommy went to the Greek play, seeing Cyril Bailey who came round between the acts to see if the Winchester party were enjoying it. Robin and Dorothy drove off for their country weekend on the Saturday afternoon. Tommy returned to Winchester with Geoffrey Cross, sneaking into an empty first class carriage on the train back, and on the journeys working through some seven hundred lines of Virgils Georgics. As soon as he was at Sunnyside he changed into scout uniform and walked several miles through the setting sun - one of the most glorious sunsets I have ever known - to scout camp. The Bobber was at the Aldershot tattoo. Five of Tommys Sunnyside contemporaries woke him at 5.30 on the Sunday morning with a surprise visit. Tommy walked back to Winchester on the Sunday evening with his patrol leader, Robert Scott. Unusually Tommy in his letter of 25 June twice described Winchester as home. The letter reached Dorothy and Robin on 26 June just as they were settling back into the family home at 20 Bradmore Road, with much unpacking and sorting. The family were reunited in Winchester for the cricket match weekend during which the visitors would stay with a Miss Pesel at Twyford. The three day celebration began with a picnic. Robin and Dorothy came from Oxford, Teddy from Eton, and Sylvia Barrington-Ward joined them. Dorothy wrote to Tommy on 3 July from Bradmore Road: Coming away from you & Teddy seems at first like leaving Betty too - but I think I partly find her here - though I find the emptiness too. Cookie remained, but Annie Humhreys was busy with her own life as a young housewife. Dorothy recruited new maids. Three bookcases of Robins returned from Helen Sutherlands and Dorothy and Robin were rearranging their books. Less than a fortnight after resuming possession she could welcome Lucy Anna Hodgkin and Violet Hodgkin as guests. When Cookie went on her July holiday Annie and Cyril Humphries came to help out. Dorothy was helping Mary Smith with her voluntary work

at the St Clements baby clinic, and on 12 July helped entertain nearly two hundred mothers and babies in Queens. Dorothy went to Lords to see Teddy for the Eton and Harrow match on 13 July and to Winchester to see Tommy on 19 July. Tommy completed his thesis on the Greek novel and took his final examinations at school. He decided not to attend a scout camp near Glasgow after the scoutmaster confused the proposed dates, and the camp would mean leaving Bamburgh in the middle of August. He would return to Oxford on Tuesday, 31 July, on a train arriving at 10.35 in the morning and could travel up to Bamburgh with Robin and Dorothy. Robin had already made a plan to leave Oxford early in the morning and reserved rooms at Boroughbridge for an overnight stop. Tommy was instructed for his school leaving to carry a suitcase for Bamburgh and to prepare his other luggage (trunk and tuck box) for Oxford, where Annie would receive it at the station. He should stay on his train to Leicester where his parents would fetch him from the first class waiting room. Dorothy in a planning letter of 25 July added: Three young maids will also be travelling from here but both you & they will probably be happier in separate carriages. In this manner Tommy left school. His Army Form B. 2075 of 28 July, with his record in the Officers Training Corps, did not recommend him for a commission in peace but did so in a national emergency. He was noted as a house prefect and a lance-corporal in the OTC, credited with three camps, and recorded as learning Scoutmastering duties in his last year. The headmasters valediction commended a quick and able brain, plenty of taste and real liveliness of mind, albeit tempered by a tendency to be erratic and to resort to guesswork. As in the previous term Tommy had just missed the highest rank. His thesis on the Greek novel did not win and he had an honourable mention in the Latin speech prize. The Bobber, bidding fond farewell, wrote on 31 July that Tommy was ready for university: I fully expect him to get some of the actual successes at Oxford on the edge of which he has been here. Tommy spent August and September with his family at Bamburgh. Helen Sutherland was again staying in the Castle. Among her house guests were the poet, Laurence Binyon, the British Museums assistant keeper of prints and drawings, with his wife but none of their three daughters. Robin and Dorothy drove south on 26 September, pausing for Robins interest in history at Sherwood Forest and to see Anglian brooches in the Northants Museum. Tommy and his Jameson cousins and some friends went for an expedition to the Cheviots on 27 September. They went close to the Hedgehope hill, the scene of the family outing just before Bettys illness and death in 1926. Tommy gathered browny crimson heather and golden bracken and took them to Bettys grave. Then he went north to Scotland for a few days of leisure and golf with the Hartleys and back to Bamburgh to the Smith house, St Aidans, for an overnight stay on 30 September. He made the short journey back to Scotland for a final week of youthful pleasures with the Jamesons in Edinburgh, that included a Harry Lauder first night with the Orr family and a golf game with David Orr on his home course. Tommy took the train south to London, returning to Oxford on 9 October ready to unpack his possessions for Bradmore Road and to begin his Oxford University career as a Balliol undergraduate. Chapter 5 Glorious Balliol

For Tommy Hodgkin (or Thomas as he gradually became known) the move from Winchester to Balliol in October 1928 was a simple transition from one charmed circle to another much the same. His maternal grandfather, A.L. Smith, had died as Master of Balliol some four and a half years earlier and was fondly remembered. Thomass aunt, Barbara Cairns, in a letter of 10 October urged Thomas to give warm greetings to Cyril King in the Balliol Lodge: A nice youth, but I fear getting fat too young. When Thomas walked through the Balliol gate as an undergraduate for the first time he came with numerous Balliol connections plus an introductory network of old Wykehamist friends (some of course at New College with the foundation links). The Hodgkin and Smith family ties with Northumberland spilled into the Oxford University setting. David Orr by now in his second year at Balliol was part of Thomass Winchester, Northumberland and Scotland world. A Wykehamist of an earlier cohort, Bickham Sweet-Escott, was second year at Balliol and soon became a new friend of Thomas. Another second year Balliol undergraduate, George Kirkpatrick White, son of the Regius Professor of Divinity in Dublin, became a close friend and confidant to Thomas, but had been educated at Marlborough. In the Balliol first year, Lionel Hale, from Charterhouse became a Hodgkin friend, along with his third year older brother, James (Jim) Hale, a classical scholar who had befriended a contemporary Alec Peterson, an exhibitioner from Radley. Another clever Balliol third year man who became a friend of Thomas was Felix Markham, a scholar from Eton. A Balliol freshman from Charterhouse, Richard Usborne, was a friend of Lionel Hale and on the fringe of the Hodgkin circle. Charles Hollins was a Balliol contemporary. Randall Swingler was at New College with another close Wykehamist of Thomass circle, Geoffrey Cross. Evelyn Shuckburgh went up to Kings College, Cambridge, but was to be found at the occasional London dances that Thomas attended. Thomass Balliol tutor for classical Moderations was Cyril Bailey, a family friend who spent summer vacations in Embleton close to Bamburgh. Helen Sutherland became an adoptive Northumbrian when she gave up her London house in Lowndes Square and leased Rock Hall from the Bosanquets (they lived in Rock Moor, another house on their extensive estate). Helen to retain a foothold in London took a large flat on the eighth floor in the new Grosvenor House. Thomas glided easily into the Oxford undergraduate world and appeared to his contemporaries as clever and stylish. He gravitated quickly towards the Oxford University Dramatic Society of which Lionel Hale was becoming a prominent and talented member. Thomas wore at first a commoners gown after taking his entrance examination at the age of seventeen on a trial run. He worked and played hard in his first term and in December 1928 at his own choice sat again for the colleges War Memorial Scholarship. When Michaelmas term ended Thomas dashed to London on 14 December to attend a dance. He changed at Helen Sutherlands and went to Tite Street, Chelsea, to partner Nicolete Binyon, the youngest daughter of Helens friends Cicely Powell and Laurence Binyon of the British Museum. Thomas found talk with Nicolete good, their dancing less so. The other male guests seemed to Thomas almost entirely Wykehamists or Balliol men, and they included Evelyn Shuckburgh. Thomas returned in the early hours to spend what remained of the night at Grosvenor House and went next day to visit the Cairns family then on by night train to the Jameson family in Edinburgh.

He was in Edinburgh when news came that he had this time won a scholarship at Balliol, to his parents delight and to his own relief. He wrote to them on 18 December: Chiefly I am glad because it has pleased you both, and also because it was about time I did something to justify my parentage. He would in future wear a scholars gown, as did many of his Oxford friends. He was reading the classical Greek text of Demosthenes in the vacation and conjuring up an Easter holiday visit to the classical sites of modern Greece with one or more of those Oxford friends. Geoffrey Cross had proposed a journey with Thomas and was collecting practical information on possible routes and the cheapest fares and combinations of train and boat. Thomas was collecting new candidates for the venture, and unilaterally invited Balliols George White and Bickham Sweet-Escott. Geoffrey would have preferred either a party of two or a third person both knew and liked. He wrote on 19 December to complain that he hardly knew either of Thomass candidates as he had met one once and the other three times. Negotiations continued with Thomas in Switzerland for the end of 1928 and beginning of 1929. George White wrote from Dublin on 2 January 1929 that he would be delighted to go with Geoffrey Cross. George liked Geoffrey but had not seen enough of him to know whether he liked him enormously or not. George reported that Bickham thought Cross very heavy, but Bickham can be kept under control and will come to like him. Geoffrey wrote to Thomas on 7 January 1929 to accept the plan with good grace: a group of four would be less easy prey to brigands. Bickham was keen to go to Greece but not sure that he could afford the expedition. The Lent term of 1929 was much like the first term for Thomas: a lot of study, a modicum of sport and a keen involvement with OUDS. He was assistant stage manager and had the minor role of Third Gentleman for Brewster Morgans production of Othello. The play opened at the New Theatre on 12 February with Lionel Hale as Roderigo, and from Christ Church the Harrovian Valentine Dyall in the title role and Etonian Peter Fleming as Iago. Women undergraduates were not allowed to perform in the OUDS productions, for which professional actresses were imported: Cicely Paget Bowman played Desdemona and Martita Hunt played Emilia. When George White was clear of classical Moderations and Oxford term had ended Thomas, armed with visas for Greece and Albania, set off with his friends, though the four had become five with the addition of Alec Peterson. They crossed to France (third class) at night on 17 March by Newhaven and Dieppe and arrived in Paris early on 18 March. Bickham, Geoffrey, George and Thomas spent the day on a digression to the cathedral at Chartres. Alec remained in Paris as he had visited Chartres on an earlier walking tour with Jim Hale. They all carried on that night by train through Switzerland towards Brindisi in Italy where after a couple of days they could take a boat to the Athens harbour at Piraeus. The party of five continued to unravel from time to time. During the Italian leg Bickham and Thomas broke the train journey to make their own way to Ravenna, of which Thomass namesake grandfather had written in his studies of Italian history. Thomas was beginning to grasp that he could not use his classical Latin in conversation with untutored Italians and was building a working Italian vocabulary. From Ravenna he took away a confused memory of innumerable lovely mosaics there - all mixed up among the most atrocious baroque churches and altars to the Virgin looking like old curiosity shops. He

was delighted to find the rest of his original travelling companions all turning up there at exactly the same time. They went on to Brindisi and found their boat to Greece. They steamed out of Brindisi shortly after sunset on 21 March through a purple sea and spent a cold night on deck rolled up in rugs on piles of timber. The boat paused at the Albanian port of Santi Quaranta to collect passengers. In the sunshine of the next day Thomas and his friends lay on the deck and variously dozed, read Homer and wrote poetry. Meanwhile Thomass mother took the train from Oxford to London on 22 March to attend a musical party given by Helen Sutherland at the Grosvenor House flat. Dorothy Hodgkin thought the musical party a great success with about 150 people of all sorts from the lowest-browed Philistines (the Armstrongs e.g.) via people like us & the Cairns & Lady Bonham Carter to the highest height of brow like - whom shall we say - Edes & Nicholsons & Cooie. The Binyon twins were there - very pretty arent they; but I didnt know who they were till afterwards. Thomas and company had another night on deck while Dorothy stayed with the Cairns family and Robin had a night at his London club. Thomas and his friends landed at Piraeus. He thought it quite a feat to have gone from Oxford to Athens entirely third class, especially through Italy and on the boat good experience of discomfort. He found greater comfort in Athens, sharing an enormous hotel room with Bickham, enjoying the Acropolis and Hymettus honey, startled at Turkish coffee nothing but dregs. Thomas found classical Greek little more helpful for communication in modern Greek than Latin had seemed for Italian. He wrote home from Maison Merlin in Athens describing how after his first breakfast he left Bickham to his 1909 edition of Baedeker and looked for the bath he had requested. He searched all the floors and found a beautiful woman with lustrous lashes preparing a bath. It was a geyser bath from Germany, and it took the water about half an hour to run in; I tried hard to chat pleasantly with the aid of my grammar, while she just roared with laughter. George without a Greek grammar to hand was embarrassed to find two handmaidens preparing his bath. Thomass Athens escapades included a drunken pre-dawn climb of Hymettus with a sober Bickham (Thomas preceded the climb by a night club session with Alec). Thomas was sick just as the sun rose over Asia Minor. After a restorative breakfast Bickham and Thomas went by bus to Cape Sunion to the Temple of Poseidon, where Thomas, a reader of Lord Byron, searched out the poets name cut on one of the pillars. Dorothy had continued her weekend travels by returning to Oxford, going on briefly to Edinburgh to rejoin Helen Sutherland on 25 March, but this time at Rock Hall in Northumberland. Helen was spending money to put her stamp of luxury on the Bosanquet letting. Dorothy found gardeners gardening like mad, a new surface being imported for the tennis court and a check being made on the stock of fish in the pond. Robin Hodgkin remained in the south of England and on 27 March had a consultation with the Kings doctor Lord Dawson of Penn who had just torn himself away from the deathbed of the Duchess of Cambridge. He turned out to have Robins own complaint of migraine and for the fee of five guineas Robin was advised how to tell when attacks were coming on and what to do - keep his feet warm, and drink Vichy water. The Oxford party in Athens decided to untangle in a different permutation. Bickham and Geoffrey paired up to go to Delphi via Marathon, Chalcis and Levadia; Thomas, George and Alec would take another route and all were to meet at the earths navel, Delphi.

Bickham and Geoffreys path was smooth. On 1 April Thomass trajectory was slowed down when Alec with a sore throat found he had a temperature of 100.5 degrees. Thomas and George went off looking for doctors. They tried the British consul (he was William Hough who had begun his career as a student interpreter in the Levant Consular Service and to whom Thomas's Bullard uncle had sent a letter of introduction). Hough was out at lunch, but they encountered next door to the consulate the office of a Greek barrister who had been a student at Oxfords St Edmund Hall - and asked about Thomas's grandfather. This meeting led to a red-bearded doctor with a terrifying look but kind heart who examined Alec and confirmed that the condition was only a sore throat with a touch of influenza. However it was sufficient for Alec to encourage the three travellers to register at the fairly luxurious Hotel Cecil at Kiphissia in Attica (Americans playing poker and guests in dinner jackets). While Alec recuperated George and Thomas set off by climbing up Mount Pentelicos, for the magnificent view of the great bay of Marathon and the mountains of Euboea. They scrambled and slid down the other side and spent a fitful night of 2 April in a quarry hut. Thomas awoke shortly after midnight to realise that it was his nineteenth birthday. His parents had earlier written to say that they would be thinking of him. His mother recalled that the only previous birthday they had spent apart was in 1914 (when Dorothy and Robin were on holiday in Italy and Tommy in Oxford celebrated his fourth birthday with his Hartley cousins). Thomas and George carried on in snakes and ladders fashion, as they had found only minute maps containing the whole country. They had balked at huge German school maps on wooden rolls, and on foot tried to guide themselves by the position of the sun in the direction of streams and rivers running towards the sea. They spent the night of 3 April out in hard and very cold, but fortunately, dry ploughed field. They rose early on 4 April and walked about ten miles to catch a nine oclock train. They intended to go to Levadia but the train took them on to Chaironea several miles to the north-west. When they asked for a restaurant in what they deemed to be excellent Greek small boys led them to a small Hellenistic theatre that they were expected to enjoy. George and Thomas marched half a dozen miles over the mountains to find lunch at Levadia. They tried to retrieve their journey by taking a train from Levadia on to Dadi (Amphikleia) and that night slept in one of a Dadian coal heavers two rooms: Homeric hospitality, combined with real good Samaritanism - he gave George and myself his only bed and he and his family five in all - slept in one room - beautiful. Thomas and George spent much of 5 April in a long wait on the Dadi station for the train to Amphissa, supposedly the Delphi stop. They took an evening walk through olive trees from Amphissa to Delphi, arriving a day later than planned. The expensive journey had twice overshot the mark and the walk back from Amphissa to Delphi was about as far as Bickham and Geoffrey had walked to Delphi from Levadia, with an overnight stay in a monastery for a modest donation to church funds. Thomas and George joined the others in the Apollo inn at Delphi where the beds were thought to be full of fleas, but Geoffrey had Keatings powder. Alec who did not appear was presumed to be convalescing still. After two more days seeing the classical remains of Delphi, Thomas and his companions rose before dawn on 7 April to walk to Itea. After much delay they caught a grubby and crowded boat across Corinthian Gulf to Aegion and yet another train through Patras on the western coast of the Peloponnese in the direction of Olympia. They stayed there for

two days. Thomas was attracted by the beauty of Olympia but wrote home that the remains were rather too remainy to be really exciting. He surmised that he might find more beauty in foundations if he were more of an archaeologist. They were keen to see the southern part of the Peloponnese and made their way back on 9 April towards the coast and the main railway line at Pirgos, where the four undergraduates dined on meat and macaroni and shared a real bedroom. They continued on by train early on 10 April to Phygalia that Bickham believed to be the appropriate destination for Bassae and the Temple of Apollo Epikourios, designed by the Parthenons architect Iktinos and one of Greeces best preserved temples. From Phygalia they began a steady climb on foot up hill and dale, not always on the right path, and by evening had reached a village, Gargitsa, where they were taken in hand by an elderly farmer and his son and led to the familys farm hut. Thomas with no great liking for milk thought it dutiful to drink the soup plate full of goats milk placed before each of the guests. They were sheltered for the night in one room: Thomas and George on a bed, Bickham and Geoffrey on mattresses strewn on the floor. In gratitude for the Homeric hospitality they decided to give the family 200 drachma, although apprehensive that it might be an insult to offer any money. After a breakfast of brown bread and coffee the farmers son set the group some half a mile on their way and Thomas had the task of pressing the money on him. He was expecting a wholehearted refusal and reiterated something that Thomas thought was a suggestion of fifty and was eventually realised to be a demand for 500. They scraped together the sum in question and carried on with their vision of Homeric hospitality somewhat damaged, as the cost was comparable to hotel prices. They made a steep climb to Bassae where the temple stands on a crest of many valleys. As the climbers rounded a bend in the hill they were delighted by a first sight in half sunlight of unbroken grey columns and remained for several hours examining the site. Then they went on to Andritsena and stayed the night of 11 April in a hotel. They carried on by road to Megalopolis, by train to Tripolis. During this journey Thomas caught up on sleep with Geoffreys rucksack as pillow and Bickham patched his coat-sleeve. Another bus journey brought them to an overnight stay at Sparta below a snow-capped Mount Taigetos. They moved northwards by way of Nauplia and Mycenae, where they stayed in comfort at the Belle Helene on the night of 14 April and, as Thomas reported to his family, enjoyed a supper of carrot soup, lamb and a honey omelette, with the wine of Hymettus. They took a slow train from Nemea to Corinth on 16 April and made a strenuous ascent of the Acrocorinth rock. They returned to Athens on 17 April where the foursome separated. Geoffrey Cross and George White were travelling back to Britain in time for the start of Oxford term. Thomas and Bickham had an extension from Balliol and planned a three-day walk in Macedonia. Thomas was hoping for an adventurous return by way of Albania, but told his parents to expect him back in Oxford by 28 April. Bickham and Thomas took the train on 18 April to the northern terminus at Kalambaka. Thomas slept in a lovely elevenpenny bed - no fleas for once. They prepared for an expedition. Bickham had grown a beard of a rich curly red colour. Thomas had also left off shaving, but displayed less visible soft and golden whiskers. Bickhams patching of his coat-sleeve had failed to save the garment. He and Thomas bought themselves each an Albanian shepherds kapa of goatskin. They also brought initial food supplies for their

walk: eight large slabs of chocolate and three strings of figs each, bread plus brandy in case of accidents. Contretemps rather than accidents followed. On the second day of walking Thomas developed a fever and Bickham coaxed him to Metsovo and medical advice that fortunately came free from a philanthropic foundation. They were running short of money and time. They put aside thoughts of Albania and made slow progress by mule, bus, and foot to a ferry from Preveza to Corfu, and then by the boat to Brindisi arriving 30 April. They took the long train journey through Italy, Switzerland and France to reach Oxford on 2 May. Bickhams safe return was soured by a letter from his mother to advise him that his father had been declared bankrupt late in April and was ill in hospital in Bristol. The Easter journey drew Thomas closer to his travelling companions, even to Alec Peterson whose participation was truncated. They formed part of his intersecting world of Oxford, Northumberland and London. Excursions to London were rare but Thomas could almost scatter invitations to his friends to join him when the family again took summer rentals in Bamburgh Castle, and was happy when the invitations were taken up. Thomas was known and continued to be seen to work fairly hard at his books in the summer term, and study was a significant vacation pursuit along with acting when a suitable cast of relatives and friends could be assembled. In the OUDS production in Magdalen Grove in June 1929 of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Lionel Hale was appropriately in character as a perfect nincompoop in the role of Humphrey and George White played Michael. Lionel was invited to Bamburgh for the latter part of the long vacation. When term ended Thomas did a brief stint at a Balliol Boys Club camp at a farm near Dorchester, to be followed there by George White. Thomas then spent the first fortnight of July at Treworgan. Bickham was in Oxford, short of money, anxious about his familys situation, and dolefully in love with Barbara Buckler, daughter of a United States archaeologist and his wife who entertained hospitably in north Oxford. Bickham too was on the guest list for Bamburgh late in the long vacation. Meanwhile Thomas from Cornwall suggested to Dorothy in Oxford that she invite Bickham round for a consoling meal. Bickham duly dined at 20 Bradmore Road on 11 July when Dorothy found him shy and reserved. Dorothy relayed to Thomas a suggestion from her sister Molly that he should find time before the end of July to go to the Barrington-Wards for a few days to keep Sylvia company. Thomas went for a bruising ride in Cornwall on a recalcitrant pony mare on 12 July. This was a distraction from academic work that he reckoned was averaging seven hours a day. As a change from classical Greek studies he dipped into his Hodgkin grandfathers monumental Italy and Her Invaders. He found it pleasant to read, but too remote from the needs of Moderations for him to pursue. Dorothy asked Bickham to a Sunday picnic lunch on the Thames on 14 July as Teddy who had heard much talk of Bickham was keen to meet him. The outing on a hot day went well and undergraduate Bickham and schoolboy Teddy were companionable. Bickham went next day to Sussex for a fortnights tutoring of a schoolboy, Colin Denniston-Swords, for entrance to Harrow. Felix Markham, whose father was Rector of the neighbouring Etchingham, had found this summer job at Glottenham House in Robertsbridge for Bickham. By 19 July Thomas was with the Barrington-Wards at

Kingswood in Surrey and enjoying a round of golf before returning on 20 July for a week in Oxford before Bamburgh. Bickham warned in a letter of 22 July from Glottenham House that he had been asked to prolong his tutoring till 12 August and proposed making his way to Bamburgh on 13 August. Cyril Bailey sent Thomas a letter from the Kings Mound to confirm that the college collection at the start of term would be on four general books of Homer, Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero, and the Greek plays. He hoped to see Thomas in Northumberland as he would be at Dunstanborough. For August and most of September the Hodgkins had taken the Captains Lodgings at Bamburgh. Lionel Hale joined them on 2 August. Robin was working on his writing, to include the groundwork for a book promised to John Buchan in his capacity as a director of the Nelsons publishing office in Paternoster Row. Thomas was preparing for Moderations. Bickham, concerned with ancient history for Greats in the following year, arrived in midAugust. The style was for the undergraduates to work all morning, to enjoy moorland walks or games on the sandhills in the afternoon, and to work again at least from tea to dinner. The Bosanquet cousins Diana and Lucy came over from Rock Moor on 14 August to share the fun. They shared Thomass long-standing enthusiasm for reading and acting plays. Shakespeares Two Gentlemen of Verona was the current flavour. The young Jameson cousins were also at Bamburgh in August and much of September and livened up the party. In late August a mild panic came when Thomas could not find his evening tailcoat. Searches were requested in Oxford. Balliols other Cyril, the porter Cyril King, advised on 26 August that he had searched Thomass Balliol rooms and found no tails. He had found tails in Mr Sweet-Escotts rooms and sent them on without knowing if they were the right ones. On 28 August Annie Humphries reported from 20 Bradmore Road an unsuccessful search for the tailcoat. Nicolete Binyon was briefly among the house guests. By late September the Bamburgh party was breaking up. Teddy went back to Eton as school term began earlier than university term. Mary Jameson went off to boarding school at Bedgebury Park in Kent. Robin and Dorothy drove back to Oxford leaving Thomas as Helens guest in the new luxury of Rock Hall, before he went on to a few days more of lone study at Heather Cottages. Helen was also entertaining John Buchan and his family. Thomas discussed career prospects with Buchan and wrote teasingly to Teddy on 26 September: Will you come to a colony with me? to govern Sudan or something? Thomas and Buchan had a further discussion on 27 September on Meredith and Stevenson as Buchan was working on an essay on fairy tales and the novel. Thomas moved into Heather Cottages with a stock of ginger snaps and raspberry jam, not his sole fare as an aunt, Barbara Cairns in Bamburgh with her children, invited him to a Sunday lunch of lamb and stewed blackberries on 29 September. He returned to the cottages to find Bosanquet cousins bearing gifts of Berwick cockles. He would go to the golf clubhouse for sandwiches at other lunch times and had the Cottages caretaker Mrs Rogerson to prepare other meals and home baked bread. He wrote detailed and circumstantial letters to Dorothy and Robin in Oxford and to Teddy at school. Dorothy on 1 October 1929 replied prophetically: What a happy & delightful task your biographer will have. Robin wrote reassuringly on the same date: I am sure that no one (and in particular no Hodgkin) can get the best of life, or think or do the best work, without retiring fairly often.

The problem of wardrobe recurred and on 2 October Thomas sent Dorothy an urgent request for his dinner jacket after Helen invited him to Rock Hall for the weekend including a formal dinner party on the Saturday night. He welcomed the end of his seclusion at the cottages where tiredness in the evenings had reduced his working time to little more than six hours a day. He proposed returning to Oxford on 7 October for three days with Dorothy before the start of term. The request for a dinner jacket reached Dorothy as she solved the mystery of the missing tails. They turned up in an otherwise empty trunk in the Bradmore Road attic. Two cabin trunks had been brought down for the Bamburgh packing, but then one was deemed sufficient. The second trunk was sent back to the attic, and Dorothy had forgotten that packing into it had already begun. Dorothy had been telephoning to Balliol to see if she could invite Bickham to a meal. He was not in Oxford but on a round of visits to relatives in the Taunton area, and writing to Thomas with a report of his fathers improved morale. Bickham spent part of the vacation at Broomfield, Bridgewater, with an uncle, the Reverend Percy Bulstrode married to Katie Sweet-Escott, and a cousin Doris Bulstrode. Thomas returned to Oxford and move into a new set of rooms in Balliol when term began. He had the additional confidence of being a second year man and wider acquaintanceship than many of his contemporaries with members of womens colleges. Contacts between women and men students were mediated through a set of petty restrictions intended essentially to keep them apart or constrained by the strictest propriety. Women were often in bed-sitters and could not receive men visitors in a room with a bed. They did their entertaining in college common rooms. Men in colleges would have sets of rooms including a sitting room and two women together would be permitted to visit such rooms. It was considered innocent and acceptable for a woman and man to go for open air walks together, and Thomas was fond of such country walks. Helen Sutherland had encouraged him to meet Nicolete Binyon whom she invited to Rock Hall in the summer of 1929 before Nicolete went up to Lady Margaret Hall in the autumn. Visits to the Bosanquet cousins in Somerville and from them to Thomass rooms brought the easy manners of Bamburgh into Balliol. Nicolete came to LMH from St Pauls Girls School where she had a group of girls a year junior to her whom she would take to museums and art galleries. Several of her Paulina school friends came up to Oxford with her or followed on, and several were at Somerville with the Bosanquets. Thomass Wykehamist and Balliol circle became interlinked with the Paulina circle and rippled out to the sisters and cousins of these young women friends. A Somerville fresher and Paulina with whom Thomas became friendly in October was Sheila Lynd, whose writer parents, essayist Robert and poet Sylvia Lynd, favoured the Irish spelling of her name as Sigle. The Lynds were living at 5 Keats Grove in Hampstead, then regarded as rather remote from fashionable London. Robert Lynd was an Ulsterman by birth in Belfast on 20 April 1879 but he identified with the Irish nationalist cause. He had found his way to London by 1901 and was a freelance journalist. In 1904 he met Sylvia Dryhurst at a meeting near Oxford Street of the Gaelic League. They were also Hampstead neighbours. Robert was in lodgings at 9 Gayton Road. Sylvia was living at 11 Downshire Hill with her father Roy Dryhurst, administrative secretary of the British Museum, and his Dubliner wife, Nannie Florence Robinson. For four years the Dryhursts opposed a marriage. Robert and Sylvia were

reputed to correspond daily, with Sylvia, who was short of money for postage, delivering letters by hand to Gayton Road on her way home from her various schools and training colleges. Robert took regular employment in 1908 as an assistant to the literary editor of the Quaker and Liberal Daily News. On the strength of this new status and Sylvias early ventures as a literary reviewer, opposition to their wedding ended. They married at Hampstead register office on 21 April 1909 (he had just turned thirty and she was nearly twenty-one). They moved soon after marriage to a house at 14 Downshire Hill, close to the Dryhurst home. Sheila (Sigle), their first child, was born on 28 February 1910, and at home was nicknamed Baby by Sylvia. Their second child, another daughter Moira (or Maire in the preferred Irish form) was born on 2 March 1912. With Sigle only two and still known as "Baby", Sylvia nicknamed the second daughter Baby Junior, and that became abbreviated to B.J. and was sometimes Beej. Robert Lynd became literary editor of the Daily News in 1913 and from that year had an additional following for his regular essays in the New Statesman, latterly under the pen-name YY (this has been conjectured to stand for too wise). Lynd was a friend of Roger Casement and had for a while been his teacher of Irish. Lynd contributed in June 1916 to the fund for Casements defence in the treason trial. He also pressed for a reprieve against the Casement death sentence (unsuccessfully as the execution was carried out on 3 August1916). The Lynd family left London during the first world war and spent the early post-war years at Steyning in Sussex. They returned to London in 1922 at first to a Kensington flat and then came back to Hampstead in 1924 to 5 Keats Grove, previously occupied by older Dryhurst relatives. The Binyons and Lynds shared British Museum and literary connections and were friends. Nicolete Binyon, whose home in the 1920s was in the British Museum, was friends with Sigle and Maire Lynd at St Pauls. Thomas held a tea party in Balliol on 16 October for his Somerville cousins and invited Sigle Lynd and several of his Balliol friends. They in turn were a potential pool of dancing partners for the Somerville hops each term. Thomas on 2 November had tea with the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges and his wife, a Hodgkin cousin, Monica Waterhouse. He defeated David Orr at golf and was to speak at the union on 7 November on vivisection. Thomass Balliol room had a panelled cupboard adorned on one side with a chintz he found ugly. He and friends made oil paintings on the other panel with scenes supposedly in the style of Giotto, and these caught the eye of Nicolete and Sigle on a further visit on 5 November. Nicolete invited Thomas to a charade party with another Paulina at Somerville, Clarisse Goldschmidt, with the prospect that the Bosanquets might also attend. Thomas writing to Lucy Anna Hodgkin that week noted: It is being a jolly term on the whole and the presence of the Bosanquets at Somerville does add a lot to happiness. With home and them term is prevented from becoming too termy. Nicolete early in December tentatively asked Thomas if he would join her for a dance in London on 19 December and Thomas accepted. It was becoming understood that Thomas was attracted to Sigle Lynd and Nicolete described the event at 59 Finchley Road, NW8, as the Lynds dance. Nicolete and Thomas were invited to a pre-dance dinner with yet another Paulina at Somerville, Mary Grenfell, at her parents London house, 9 Connaught

Place. She was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Morton Grenfell and his second wife, a member of the Lyttelton family. Robin was in London on 9 December when he attended the annual dinner of the Queens College Association, held at the Trocadero Restaurant. A fellow guest was a student contemporary of Robins, a Queens graduate, Stuart Hodgson, who since 1921 had been editor of the Daily News. Robin spoke to Hodgson about his literary editor, Robert Lynd, and Hodgson dilated on the charms of the family. Robin went next day and bought a book, The Goldfish. He wrote to Thomas on 14 December from a brief visit to Treworgan that he and his mother had greatly enjoyed the book. He also reported with some relief that as Buchan was retiring from the publishing house, Nelson wanted to discontinue the series for which Robin had promised a volume. He would be able to concentrate on his major work on Anglo-Saxon history. Thomas, after a typical last minute scramble with his packing, went to London on 18 December. He and George White were allowed to stay at Helens Grosvenor House flat in her absence. The flat and the staff were largely unfamiliar to Thomas and he noted an atmosphere of locked drawers and protective chintzes. He had brought work with him and sat in the safety of his room reading Cicero and nibbling a Lyons cake. Thomas was also under instruction from Dorothy to buy a really good Burberry raincoat and have the bill sent to her, as a dull but needed present. George Whites status in the Hodgkin family as a trusted intimate of Thomas was canonised when Dorothy chose for his Christmas gift the memorial volume for her daughter, the Betty book as it was known in the family. Thomas had a luncheon date on 19 December with his cousin, Michael Gresford Jones. He went to an afternoon dancing lesson before the Grenfells dinner. The dance in North West London was not at a grand level but fitted a comfortably upper middle class ambience. Thomas was coming into a London circle that included Lesbia Cochrane, his childhood contemporary at the Dragon School, and her brothers and sisters. Lesbias mother, Margaret (known in the family as Mora fool in Greek after her birth on the first of April) was the fourth of five daughters of the Parliamentary draftsman, Sir Courtenay Ilbert. The eldest Ilbert daughter, Lettice, was married to H.A.L. Fisher, with a distinguished career in politics and in education at Winchester and as Warden of New College. The second daughter, Olive, was married to the medical administrator Michael Heseltine and wrote under her married name and under a pseudonym as J. Dashwood. The third Ilbert daughter, Jessie, was married to Sir George Young, a fourth baronet, former diplomat and in the early 1920s a London University professor. A fifth daughter, Joyce, was born in 1890 when Lettie was already aged fifteen. The children of the older Ilbert sisters formed a close cousinage, particularly of Lesbia Cochrane, Gerry and Joan Young. Others in this family circle were Francis and David Cochrane, Virginia Young, Myrtilla (Tilly) Cochrane and the only child Mary Fisher. Joan Young was in her first year at Somerville and in the spring of 1929 Alec Peterson had fallen in love with her. On the edge of this circle was a young Robert Mathew, from a distinguished family of lawyers. The Youngs and the Binyons were acquainted. The children of Sir George and Lady Young were brought together with the children of Robert and Sylvia Lynd through Sylvias friendship with Olive Heseltine. Olive in 1927 had dedicated her book on Conversation to Sylvia and sometimes kept an eye on the Lynd daughters when Sylvia Lynd was ill.

Thomas came into this milieu with Nicolete Binyon who belonged through her parents place in the intelligentsia and through her Paulina connections. The Binyon household opened its doors to Thomas who could call at the house for a welcome alternative to the slight loneliness of Grosvenor House. On 19 December 1929 Thomas was thought to be a little enamoured of Sigle Lynd. He danced also with her younger sister, Maire Lynd, and drew on his spring visit to Greece to talk of the differences of pronunciation between ancient and modern Greek. Gerry Young was thought to be Sigles admirer, but in the views of some as a professional flirt rather than as a permanent suitor. Thomas confided to George White that the notion of a Hodgkin proposal to Sigle had crossed his mind. Lesbia sent Thomas on 24 December some admonitory lines on another young man engaged at 21: In three brief years is all your dallying done? Have you forever left that happy realm Where love is light and need not constant be Thomas in full bachelorhood went to Northumberland to visit Helen Sutherland. George White approved that Thomas had not made any marriage proposal. After a return to Dublin George wrote on 29 December that charming and beautiful and attractive and altogether delightful as Sigle was, he hoped he might be allowed to say that she was not as beautiful as her sister - Not that I want you to behave as did the sister of Clementine, but I just mention it. George did however grant that Sigle was worthy of Thomas and that it would give him great happiness to see them happy together. Chapter 6 Greater love Thomas spent the first few days of 1930 in the South Inner Ward of Bamburgh Castle while Teddy visited Mary Jameson, her sister Alexa (Bunty) and brother Andrew (Atty) in Edinburgh. Thomas was back in Oxford by mid-January for the new term and to entertain friends for dinner and charades on 18 January. He won more plaudits for acting charades than for his formal dancing. He went on seeing Sigle, but was working hard for Moderations. He had declined to go to the Somerville hop but agreed to be on standby if Lesbia Cochrane expected from London were without a partner. The discursive discussions on walks with Nicolete were largely abandoned in favour of study. Sigles twentieth birthday on 28 February was marked with a birthday ode from Thomas. She was keeping a guinea-pig dubbed Hodgkin, living loose about her Somerville room, eating twice his volume in lettuce a day and showing a taste for icing sugar sponge cake. In early March, in the run-up to Mods, Thomas was staying outside Oxford at High Clere near Newbury with C.R. Cruttwell, who had been a star history pupil of Robins. Brian MacKenna, a recent graduate on the threshold of a legal career in London, wrote urging that they travel together in the Easter vacation. Meanwhile Thomas joined other candidates in Classical Moderations, designed by the university authorities as a severe and exacting examination in Latin and Greek. In Oxford orthodoxy prose composition was a pinnacle of highly refined scholarly activity. Passages of English prose were to be rendered into a Greek and Latin style as authentically close as the candidates could come to the leading classical authors and orators. Thomas was expected by his tutors and friends to do well. It would be a

culmination of his years of training at Winchester and the gateway to studies of Greek and Latin philosophy and history in the original tongues for Greats. When the examinations were over Thomas returned to entertaining his friends and evenings of charades. He went in mid-March to stay with George White in Dublin and to walk in the Irish mountains. He sailed back to England to join Brian MacKenna for a brief journey to France and disembarked at Le Havre on 26 March. Thomas and Brian went to Rouen and on to Paris seeing the Eiffel Tower and classical vases in the Louvre and on an expedition to walk in the woods of Fontainebleau. This trip was little more than an extended weekend. Thomas joined Robin and Dorothy at Treworgan, and in early April was already trying to recruit George White for a more ambitious journey through Europe in the summer. George in a letter of 11 April declined: Work and, above all, Money hold me back. He apologised for sending no gift for Thomass twentieth birthday on 3 April and offered to make an effort for Thomass coming of age. The Mods results came out at the Examination Schools in Oxford on 14 April and were published in The Times of 15 April. Thomas, for whom a first was expected, took a second. He received letters of commiseration and condolence rather than congratulation: including from Alec Peterson, Bickham Sweet-Escott, Brian MacKenna, Cyril Bailey, Diana and Lucy Bosanquet, C.R. Cruttwell, George White, Lesbia Cochrane, Lionel Hale (whose third was even less befitting a Balliol Scholar), Nicolete Binyon and Sigle Lynd (who had failed the physics part of her own preliminary examination in Natural Science and would have to resit). Balliols Gilbert Highet was among the firsts, but to Bailey the results appeared the worst disaster the College has had in my memory. Bailey passed on to Thomas the detailed marks for his sixteen papers. Five scores had alpha elements, including a good result on Greek unseen. Nine scores were mainly beta. To Cyrils astonishment Thomas had only beta gamma in Greek prose and the paper on Demosthenes. Thomas responded reassuringly to Cyril who wrote back on 18 April that he had never enjoyed working with anyone more than he did with Thomas. Thomas wrote to Nicolete Binyon on 19 April that it would be ridiculous to take the award of a second very seriously, but he chafed at the examiners comment that he was sprightly. In the summer term after Mods Thomas resumed his pursuits of the union, acting and frequent tea parties. He played a little squash and cricket, and spoke in a debate on India on 15 May. He acted on 12 and 13 June with Randall Swingler in Elizabeth Inchbalds play of 1798, Lovers Vows. This curiosity of melodrama is the play fictionally performed as amateur theatricals in Jane Austens Mansfield Park a point noted on the Oxford programme. Thomas in Oxford played Count Cassel, the role carried by Jane Austens Mr Rushworth, as he noted in a letter of 11 June to Teddy at Eton. Randall was a cottager. The role of Mr Anhalt was played by a second-year Christ Church undergraduate, Peter Burra, who had been educated at Lancing College in Sussex. Burra was central to a literary coterie with Wykehamist connections through New College. Burra, at the instigation of Simon Nowell-Smith of New College, edited a short-lived literary magazine Farrago. In the modest theatrical production in Burras room at Christ Church, Burras mother, Ella Burra, played Agatha Friburg. George Lowther Steer, a former Winchester scholar, played the Landlord. The Wykehamist and New College

scholar, Jo (J.F.E.) Stephenson played Verdun the Butler. Yet another New College Wykehamist, Kenneth Knowles, helped design and build the scenery, and played the role of Frederick. The New College scholar Goronwy Rees doubled as a farmer and a gamekeeper. Thomas also pursued his travel plans for the summer and turned down invitations to Commemoration balls in Oxford in June and to the Eton & Harrow ball in London in July. Nicolete Binyon was intending to be one of Thomass travelling companions for a summer expedition, but she withdrew in deference to her parents wish that she spend the summer studying in South Germany. Sigle Lynd was trying to make up a party for one of the Oxford commemoration balls. Thomas turned down Sigles invitation to Christ Church and encouraged her to invite Peter Howard as a substitute, when their paths crossed at the George a regular alternative for Thomas to dining in Balliol hall. Peter Howard was a famously handsome Oxford figure, a physically imposing sportsman with an aesthetic side to his character. He had been at Mill Hill School and came up as an exhibitioner to Wadham College in October 1928. He became a Rugby Blue in the Oxford team that beat Cambridge nine points to nil on 10 December 1929. The sporting prowess was particularly significant to Peter and to his schoolmaster father, Ebenezer Howard, for Peter Dunsmore Howard was born in Maidenhead on 20 December 1908 with a seriously defective left leg whose corrective treatment lasted through his childhood. He exhibited a strong drive to overcome physical handicap and this made him in some eyes unusually, albeit understandably, self-centred. He came to Oxford from a straightened home and was on a grant that imposed a bond on him to become a teacher after graduation. He had come close to wining his Blue in his first season in 1928 but was dropped from the Varsity match because the Oxford captain was fearful of Howards thin leg snapping. Howard was an extravagant and quirky undergraduate and eschewed most forms of caution. He was a notable sportsman and enthusiastic for student journalism, acting, social life and practical jokes. He was physically rather an antithesis to Thomas, who was likened in one account to a magnificent golden mole. After Howard accepted the Christ Church invitation, Sigle commented to Thomas: He is gloriously handsome & Rugby Internationals certainly add a certain cachet But Im afraid he lacks your pretty wit - & sure he lacks your brio in the polka. Thomass preoccupation was to make the Albania adventure that had proved impracticable on the expedition to Greece at Easter 1929. He wanted another try with Bickham Sweet-Escott. Bickham had taken his finals in Greats that summer term but was not due for a viva until late July. Bickham had agreed with his cousin, Doris Bulstrode, that she should come as well. Thomass plan for a fourth person had fallen through. Three month visas for Albania and Yugoslavia were stamped into Thomass passport on 17 June. All this while Sigle was drawing closer to the Hodgkin family circle. She invited Thomass mother to tea in Somerville and Dorothy formally confirmed Thomass informal invitation to Sigle to come to Bamburgh during the Hodgkins summer stay. Sigle wrote on 18 June that she was spending much of the summer in France and she could accept only for the last half of September if Sylvia Lynd (Mammy) had not made other plans for her.

Dorothy left 20 Bradmore Road to visit Helen Sutherland in Northumberland. The O.U.D.S were opening Gyles Ishams production of Twelfth Night in Queens College garden on 20 June. Lionel Hale played Malvolio, Wadhams George Devine was Sir Toby Belch and the Wykehamist Guy Chilver from Trinity was Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Thomas saw a dress rehearsal but before the opening left Oxford to join Bickham and Doris, and on 20 July he retraced the 1929 route to Dieppe, through Paris and Dijon and on to Switzerland and Italy. This time they were heading for Bari to take a boat to the Albanian port of Durazzo (as the starting point for a three-day walk across Albania and into Yugoslavia). They paused in Florence and Rome. They were not a well-matched trio. Thomas found Escott charming as usual but was not sure whether to be angered or amused at Doris who was seeing Italy for the first time. She cried out in Florence for a little Sports Morris. She was lost in Romes Coliseum and had to be rescued by Italian soldiers. In Oxford Peter Howard took Thomass offered place at the Christ Church commem on 23 June. Sigle and B.J. (Maire) Lynd were among some six hundred revellers. Howard danced much of the evening with B.J., to her delight at such attention from a Rugby International (capped early that year for England against Wales). Sigle warned B.J. of Peter Howards reputation as a frightful flirt. B.J., in her last days as a Paulina, wrote to her close school friend, Diana Hubback: But still, it was fun. Im not going to allow my heart to be broken again yet awhile. Dorothy sent invitations to Alec Peterson and Randall Swingler for the Bamburgh guest list that already included Sigle and George and was to be augmented with others including a Balliol undergraduate, Denis Rickett, and Brian MacKenna. Thomas with Bickham and Doris crossed the Adriatic from Bari on 24 June and landed at Durazzo on 25 June. Thomas was surprised and moved to receive from the British consul a loving letter that Dorothy had written on 16 June and sent while Thomas was still in England making his preparations for the journey. She wrote plangently: Just now shining through the shadows & pain that dont go is the lovely remembrance of our time together this afternoon. The consul reassured the visitors that Albania was the safest country for Englishmen there is. An Albanian they met on the boat from Bari had earlier warned of troublesome dogs. Bickham and Doris and Thomas, following the route of an old Roman road close to the river Skumbi, began their walk towards Lake Ochrida. They slept rough on the night of 25 June and went on to Elbasan where the three shared a large room on 26 June. The walking through Albanias hot sand was exhausting. Bickham secured a mule and muleteer to carry their bags and rucksacks to the frontier with Yugoslavia. Thomas was more prone to thirst than Bickham and much more afflicted than Bickham or Doris by terrible bites, especially from bed bugs at Elbasan they caused great pink lumps all over him that itched. The path took them through sheer cliffs. In the midst of day when Thomas had drawn apart to find somewhere to bathe he heard what sounded like an avalanche. Peasants from hundreds of feet above were rolling down great pieces of rock, apparently onto Bickham who speedily took to overhanging cover. The three travellers slept out again on 27 June, breakfasted on coffee and black cherries and arrived at the frontier posts of Albania and Yugoslavia on 28 June. They submitted their passports to the various controls and formalities. As they waited, a small dog suddenly ran up behind Thomas and bit him on the calf. Doris bandaged Thomass

bloody wound. This troublesome dog was on the Serbian side. The Yugoslav officials were apologetic that such a thing should have happened and they shot the dog (Thomas declined their kind offer to let him shoot the dog). A great scramble followed to secure treatment for Thomas against possible rabies. Thomas was more perturbed by the bugs in the Yugoslav town of Struga, more varied and numerous than those of Elbasan. He later reported to Teddy that in the early hours he stopped thinking of sleep and began to make an insect collection: Thirty or forty bugs fleas lice seven white soft back lady-birds a woolly bear and three wood-lice. The doctor in Struga had no Pasteur vaccine; they must go to Salonika. Salonika had no vaccine; they must go to Athens. In Athens Thomas was advised to take the train to Paris where there were specialists in handling the rabies vaccine. The train journey would take nearly three days. Thomas seized the opportunity to return, less from fear of the dog bite than from discomfort at the bed bugs and secretly from doubts about Bickhams cousin (the latter anxiety he could not with courtesy disclose, although he did later own up to Bickham). Bickham and Doris continued their journey through the Levant as intended and Thomas took the train through Yugoslavia and Switzerland and into France on 5 July. He gave himself the unusual indulgence of travelling in expensive comfort and read Tolstoys War and Peace and Spinozas Ethics on the journey. He cabled home from Paris on the morning of 6 July Arriving Victoria 5.15 decent love Thomas. The premature end to the trip meant cancelling a plan to meet Lucy Bosanquet in Germany in late July to make the return journey with her. Commiseration on the news of Thomas and the dog bite flowed in rather as it had after his second in Mods. Lucy wrote from Bavaria, Teddy from Eton, Nicolete from the British Museum, Geoffrey Cross from Aston Tirrold Manor on his Berkshire estate, George White from Dublin, and Alec Peterson from Bexhill. Alec wrote in mock despair that he had no job in prospect, the Young family were moving to Spain and Joan Young and Robert Mathew were a pair of turtle doves. He thought George Young and Sigle Lynd should escape. Thomas, if he wanted to remain young and cheerful, should cut this group, as a group, right out. Thomas took more heed of Sigles letter of 22 July inviting him to lunch at Keats Grove on the Monday of 28 July if he were taking an afternoon train from London (Thomas was to join up at Peterborough with the family migration by train to Northumberland). Thomas also took advantage of the truncation of his travels in Europe to spend a long weekend in Cornwall with his grandmother. Thomass setting off for Treworgan was ridiculous, as he confessed in writing to Dorothy on 24 July. He discovered in the middle of St Giles, Oxford, that he had left his carefully arranged wallet in another coat and it was then twenty to eleven. He told the cab driver to go like the Devil to Balliol, borrowed two pounds from the porter, Cyril King, and tumbled onto Oxford station as the train was going. He awoke at Parr and dropped asleep again before Truro, waking again when the train had been at Truro for twenty minutes and was just moving off to Redruth with him in it. He tumbled out but had missed the Falmouth connection. With the ticket collectors help and some telephone calls he was fetched by Lucy Anna Hodgkins companion, Miss Jones. Dorothy sent on the missing wallet and urged him to retrieve a Macintosh he had at Brian MacKennas. Thomas saw the class list for Greats in the newspaper on 26 July. He noted that Bickhams deserved glory of a first made Alecs distress of a second more bearable.

Lionels older brother ,Jim Hale, was also among the seconds. Bickhams success strengthened his chance for the banking career he was seeking after the fall in the SweetEscotts family fortunes. Bickham had told Dorothy that his funds were so low he would have to take a tutorship instead of coming to Bamburgh. Thomas enjoyed relaxation and being spoiled by his grandmother and by his aunt Lily Gresford Jones. The only hitch was that the sessions of reading aloud almost always became too indelicate for the company. Thomas went up to London and to 5 Keats Grove to take up Sigles invitation to lunch. He was welcomed by Sylvia Lynd, and shortly afterwards B.J. arrived home. Sigle was absent and no explanation was offered. After lunch B.J. and Thomas went to Selfridges to buy mackintoshes. Thomas chose a duplicate for an orange-brown coat that Dorothy had given him. He wanted to conceal from her that this was lost. B.J. chose a white mac, almost an umpire's coat. They called them the sun and the moon in the beginnings of a shared private language. Thomas missed his train. Sigle returned late that evening and was indignant to discover that her sister and mother had each assumed that the other had explained her own absence. She wrote to Thomas that she did not generally ask people to lunch and then go away. She had been delayed in Bexhill for repairs to the Youngs car damaged when Gerry drove down to Alecs. B.J. had returned by train on the Sunday night because of school and could be in time to receive Thomas. Sigle added to her apologies: However I heard you had good fun with B.J who is I know an adequate substitute so tho of course it wd have been twice as much fun for you to have seen us both I shall only feel any sorrow for myself. I hope that is prettily expressed. Sigle and her sister were going off to France within a couple of days to spend the summer mainly at La Croix in the Var. Sigle had also felt obliged to turn down Dorothys invitation to Bamburgh for September as Sylvia had made other plans and arranged special coaching for another attempt at the physics prelim. Thomas responded with a suggestion that Sigle come to Bamburgh in the spring or summer of the next year and that B.J. join this years party for a week in September. B.J. on 9 August sent a willing but diffident acceptance, with the reminder: Im not at all a good understudy for Sigle, being quite different from her, & unable to talk a lot & make jokes &, above all, act. Thomas from the Captains Lodgings in Bamburgh Castle sent on 15 August a reassurance that all his group acted so badly that the time had come to give up. George Whites Bamburgh visit from early August was ending. Thomas had as guests Alec Peterson, Felix Markham and Denis Rickett (a vivacious Intellectual) and was expecting Brian MacKenna and splendid Scotch cousins the Jamesons. Thomas expanded the original one weeks invitation to suggest that B.J. stay longer, from 10 September to 26th September as long as you possibly can. He thought her first letter truthfully the best thanking letter I have ever received, and B.J. was so taken with the compliment as to relay it to Diana Hubback. B.J. spent the first week of September at Valmondois close to Paris. She could give only vague indications to Thomas of her arrival at Bamburgh. Her parents were anxious about her making a long train journey alone and would take her by car and drop her on their way to Scotland. She should be expected on the night of 11th or 12th September, rather than the 10th. The uncertainty was partly because the Lynds in an unfamiliar car would be driving slowly with an overnight stop at Peterborough (and B.J. did not disclose that Robert

Lynd, with a passion for sport, would ensure that the family took in the St Leger at Doncaster on the way). When B.J. did arrive at Bamburgh late on the afternoon of 10 September this was a day earlier than the household expected. The younger members of the family circle were playing hide-and-seek in the tree tops. Mary Jameson, a spirited sixteen-year-old to B.J.s demure eighteen, had just fallen out of a tree and was looking mildly shaken. As a room was prepared Brian MacKenna took B.J. aside for a short walk to tell her about the family, and why Thomass mother wore black - still in mourning for Bettys death three years earlier in the operation for appendicitis. B.J.s room was high up beside the entrance to the Tower. She joined a beguiling regime. Family prayers in the morning were followed by individual study (B.J. was reading Homer), a communal lunch in the dining room, then more work (possibly in the mugging room) or a neighbourhood expedition before tea. There might be some exercise before dinner and the meal would be followed by readings aloud or literary games. Permutations of these pursuits filled the days and in the evenings B.J. would gaze at glorious sunsets. She found Bamburgh a place of extraordinary happiness and delight. Thomas was greatly drawn to her, as George White suspected. George wrote from Dublin on 16 September teasing Thomas about the law permitting someone to marry a deceased wifes sister: It is running things a bit fine to marry her before your wife is deceased or even before she is your wife. Geoffrey Cross was among the Bamburgh guests. Alec Peterson was by now back in London, in lodgings in Chelsea and job hunting. Alec met Sigle, cramming for physics and a little envious of B.J. in Bamburgh. He met too, at prayer in the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, Helen Sutherlands artist protg, David Jones. Alec was interviewed for a post with Sunlight Soap. The literary evenings continued at Bamburgh. On 21 September, the last night of B.J.s and Marys stay, each was to choose a poem to read. B.J. was handed an anthology of modern verse. She could not immediately see something she wanted. She pretended to read but in fact recited lines from James Elroy Flecker's "Stillness" ending "And only know I should drown if you laid not your hand on me". Thomas perceived she was reciting rather than reading. He was enchanted. They agreed to meet in the Tower to look at the night stars. B.J. went up several times, but Thomas failed to appear. Then Dorothy came and asked if B.J. needed help with her packing. B.J. retreated to her room and gazed out of the window, and did not know that Thomas was gazing at her and shy of tapping on her window or at her door. She returned to London and sent Dorothy on 23 September an enthusiastic letter of thanks. She artlessly sent love to everyone, not excluding Pook (the familys Pekinese dog) and special love & thanks to Tommy in a way that Thomas found slighting. The double contretemps seemed to bind them even more. Thomas confided in a letter to George that he had intended that night to propose marriage to B.J. Georges response categorised Sigle as the perfect wife for you, B.J. good but not so good. Sigle, he argued, belonged to a lively, bouncing, energetic, humorous and witty side of Thomas, and B.J. to the sensibility-romance side. When the Bamburgh family party broke up Thomas stayed for a few days in Heather Cottages at Budle. Lucy Bosanquet was near at hand but a scheme to bring Sigle to the cottages was foiled by her grappling with physics and the examination. Thomas was under the care of a Mrs Rogerson, whom he deemed a Bad Plain Cook. His privations were amply redeemed by hospitality from General Sitwell at Barmoor and Helen

Sutherland at Rock during the weekend of 27 and 28 September. Alec in London agreed to go into soap in Liverpool at the beginning of October and celebrated the final days of September with a round of farewell parties. Aunt Helen offered Thomas the loan of her Grosvenor House flat if he wanted to spend a night in London before term. Thomas reported to his parents a characteristic encounter on his way to the Sitwells: I had a tramp [who admitted that before the war hed been a welter-weight prize-fighter] on the way to Barmoor. He seemed very anxious to get to Berwick to stay a night with a second cousin so remembering the Gospels and George [He came from Donegal] I took him there, and had a warm glow whenever I thought how many miles I had gone out of my way for him .... Thomas wrote to Nicolete on 30 September about her recent brief visit to Bamburgh and suggesting that they and David Jones have lunch together in London before term. He continued a discussion with Nicolete on the meaning of good and argued: 2Good is what you know through your reason and love with your spirit and your reason may instruct your spirit. But unless there is a spirit to be instructed you cannot count as a human creature and there is no merit in what you consider your goodness. Sigle went to Oxford to resit her physics prelim. Somerville declined at the last minute to put her up and sent her to a licensed lodging in Merton Street that she described as full of superannuated dons & their mothers. Sigle was ploughed again and she packed for a definitive departure from the university. She informed Lucy and Thomas that but for missing them she would not mind two hoots about abandoning Oxford for good. She would go to Paris almost at once to learn the rest of the French language and to waltz on skates till Christmas. As Alec was departing for Liverpool, Geoffrey interrupted his revision of Plato and Herodotus for collections in order to join the shoot on his family estate and 93 brace of partridges, a thing thats never happened before. Lionel returning to Balliol a few days before term (and to take up the editorship of Isis) reported a possible hitch over the lodgings he was preparing to take with Thomas and with George White. The fourth sharer, Peter Howard, had apparently fallen out with his father and might not be coming up at all in the new term. Lionel wondered whether they would have their reflected glory at 33 Beaumont Street. He was not even certain that in the confusion the tenancy agreement had been signed. Thomass week of near solitude (Robin jested that he was the anchorite of Budle - a la Cuthbert with five onions or so) culminated in a gregarious day with the Bosanquet cousins on 5 October and two further days as Helens guest at Rock Hall. This gave him one day in London before the demands of the new Oxford term. Thomas was expecting George to arrive at the Beaumont Street lodging on 9 October. At the last moment George wrote from Dublin that a slight attack of appendicitis would delay his return to Oxford for three or four weeks. He begged not to be given a very horrible bed-room. The lodgings conveniently close to Balliol were spacious even to be shared by four despite Lionels foreboding Peter Howard did return to Oxford, to the tiny staff of Isis and a place in the digs. The large airy rooms included two sitting rooms and two or three bedrooms to spare. A slobberingly fond dog and a great dirty brute of a cat were part of the household. The resident landlady, obligatory by university regulations, was a Mrs De Vine already viewed by Lionel and later by George as a shedragon to be placated. B.J. had also come into lodgings in Oxford. She joined the university as a home student and on arrival boarded at 11 Rawlinson Road in north Oxford. In loco parentis to her

were Oxfords Wykeham Professor of Logic, H.H. Joachim, and Elisabeth Joachim, his wife. The professor was a former Balliol man with a son at Balliol a year junior to Thomas. B.J. found the sixty-two year old professor charming, but completely shut off behind his spectacles & his quiet, educated voice. Mrs Joachim was kind but had a disconcerting facial twitch. B.J. reported these details in a letter of acceptance to Thomass invitation for a walk on the first Saturday of term. She hoped for a long walk but had to find time to meet an aunt and uncle who were visiting their young son as a new entrant to the Dragon School. Thomas teasingly riposted that they should take the little Dragon cousin out to tea too and spur him on to be as fine a three-quarter as Lesbia Cochrane had been in Dragon days. Thomas and B.J. made frequent walks, mostly by Ferry Hinksey up to the wood on Boar's Hill or to Cumnor. On one of these early walks B.J. was wooed by being bought a baby black piglet, purchased from a farmer on Boar's Hill. She and Thomas tried to lead the pig home on a string attached to a dog-collar. The irresistible pig was lost and found again, and eventually carried in a sack the four or five miles to Oxford. They called the pig Sighle (an Irish spelling of B.J.s sisters name). The piglet was lodged overnight in the Beaumont Street houses coal cellar and fed on bread and milk. Sighle was regaled chocolate biscuits at a tea-party and returned to the coal cellar. When Mrs De Vine refused to put up the pig for another night, the young owners decided to shelter her in the University Parks. Diana Hubback tells the story from a letter of B.J.s: This turned out to be so difficult that the gates were shut on them before they had made any satisfactory arrangement. In the disturbance that followed, with their pig squealing, their dog barking and the park-keepers blowing whistles, they made their escape over a ten-foot wall, trembling with effort and excitement. Sighle was not, however, abandoned. Later that night a party of young men climbed back into the Park to retrieve her. Next day a "lovely home" was found for her on a farm at Marsh Baldon. "You wouldn't have foreseen quite this for me, would you," said B.J.s letter. The piglet remained a running joke between Thomas and B.J. as they exchanged notes between Rawlinson Road and Beaumont Street. Meanwhile as Peter Howard was in the digs with Thomas, B.J. could scarcely avoid meeting him again. The three shared an unsuccessful luncheon party on 21 October. The two men had an embarrassing misunderstanding over the death on 20 October of Howards grandfather, Ebenezer Howard. B.J. thought Howards appearance still adorable as she confided in a letter to Diana Hubback, and confessed: My sadness at the discovery that Im no longer in love with Peter made me silent. Thomas next day wrote B.J. a light-hearted note suggesting a visit to our Little One on the following Saturday. In the same spirit B.J. replied that this would serve as an excuse to dodge acceptance of an invitation from her JCR for tea. She had left the loophole for escape that her parents might be coming to Oxford: And now this is more or less whats happening, only that Im being the parent visiting my child. The banter was to cover stronger feelings growing between them. They visited the piglet at her farm and were shown round by the farmer who allowed them to mince mangel-wurzels in a large machine. B.J. was frightened by a field of bullocks, and by a motherly warning from Mrs Joachim that Thomas was the kind of young man who must always have a girl to worship.

They were meeting and writing each day, although some other pursuits were maintained: for B.J. the Bach Choir rehearsals; for Thomas a presentation to the Balliol Society and his continuing interest in undergraduate theatre (the OUDS selecting one-act plays for performance chose Thomass Which Side Woodness alongside Lionel Hales Old Friends and other submissions by Balliol men). B.J. agonised over her emotional feelings. On 26 October all the clouds had silver edges; on 27 October she thought her behaviour cold because of the beastliness of the day. During a Saturday afternoon walk up Cumnor Hill on 1 November the doubts seemed resolved. They had reached the top and were gazing out at the sunset, with B.J. seated and Thomas leaning against a cedar tree. Thomas said: "I love you so much and I can't bear to think of my life without you. Will you marry me?" B.J. was bewildered and shy and inconsequentially replied that she had heard that morning of the death on 30 October of her grandmother, Nannie Dryhurst. Then she accepted a secret engagement to Thomas, without a kiss to seal the pact. At tea together next day, in the digs at 33 Beaumont Street, Thomas asked if he might kiss B.J. and she chastely offered him her cheek. The secret was broken at once by a telegram from Thomas to George White in Dublin. George sent his blessing on 3 November: I am too happy in thy happiness, and in hers too. Please forget all the words of caution which I wrote to you when you were at Bamburgh. Thomas also wrote to George with more details, and on 5 November George received a letter that he thought beautifully fills up the blank spaces in the picture of your bliss which I had in my mind. The secret was rippling out further. Thomas on 6 November wrote to Lucy Bosanquet inviting her to hot wine and sugar lumps. He wrote to Sigle Lynd in Paris with news of the attachment to B.J. Sigle responded on 11 November with pleasure, qualified by the blackest of curses on you both if you become openly engaged, especially as an open engagement of young people who could not marry for years would upset both sets of parents. She cited the mistake she had made in formalising an engagement to Gerry Young though this paradoxically was to placate Sylvia Lynds concerns. B.J. was keen to break the news to her parents; Sigle remained adamant that she should not: Youre more likely to see Tommy in the vac. if you dont tell them than if you do. Thomas on 18 November postponed a planned visit to Teddy at Eton as he was busy with rehearsals for his one-act comic play and its cast of five actors, including Winchester connections. Ernest Sabben-Clare, a Wykehamist scholar contemporary now a history scholar at New College, had the role of Otto, the mayor. Guy Chilver played one of the mayors sons, a sufferer from leprosy. The Isis reviewer, Richard Oke, in the issue of 26 November, could see Sir Andrew Aguecheek showing through. By now the secret of B.J.s engagement to Thomas had been broken to the Lynd parents coming as less of a shock to Sylvia Lynd than Sigle had expected and to the Hodgkin parents. Dorothy Hodgkin was reacting with caution, and she seemed persistently incapable of grasping the spelling of her prospective daughter-in-laws name in English or Irish forms - generally referring in her correspondence to Moria. Dorothy wrote on 2 December to Sylvia Lynd suggesting that opposition or even interference, would be a mistake at present, although some demands or prohibitions as to behaviour were advisable and necessary. She hoped nothing would be regarded as settled for at least a year. She had begged the couple not to let this friendship be exclusive of other thing of other friendships; with men or women, or of their work, or of other interests.

After some awkward moments at tea parties - with a mixture of friends who were or were not in the know - Thomas wrote on 3 December to Nicolete Binyon of his engagement to B.J. and saying that for the sake of the parents it was to remain secret. Nicolete responded with congratulations and with the disclosure of a secret that she and her parents had been keeping for much of the year she was going to become a Catholic in the following July. The end of term on 6 December brought a partial separation although the exchange of love letters on an almost daily basis continued. Thomas went to London to stay with Brian MacKenna (rather uncomfortably on a camp bed with coats as cover instead of the more usual sheets and blankets). Thomas and B.J. were together for a theatre visit in London on 8 December. They were apart on 9 December when Dorothy Hodgkin and Teddy joined Thomas at Twickenham for the Varsity rugby match tickets given by Peter Howard, who was one of the Oxford teams forwards in the drawn game. Thomas bought violets in the hope of finding B.J. who was somewhere else at the ground and was teased by a boy offering to sell him a cushion for his flowers. They met again in London the following weekend, and on 14 December Thomas and B.J. had lunch with Bickham Sweet-Escott and Thomas felt they liked each other. B.J. was spending much of her time with her close friends from school days, Diana Hubback and Peggy Garnett, to whom she could speak freely of Thomas between visits to a French film and a Belgian dress-maker. Thomas was enduring the London bustle that he disliked. The pleasurable lunch with B.J. he reported to his mother: Then a Jewish Dinner Party and Dance returning to Hampstead at twelve for the fag end of an offensively literary party - Priestley and Humbert Wolfe playing charade games worse than we but with more applause. The Hodgkin holiday plans were to spend Christmas in Oxford followed by a week with the family in Treworgan. Sylvia Lynd and B.J. were to join Sigle in Paris. The prospect of a fortnights separation had been redeemed by an invitation from Helen Sutherland, acceptable to the families, that B.J. and Thomas should be her guests at Rock in the new year. B.J. wrote on 16 December to Thomas: I am, too, overcome with wonder at the miracle performed by your aunt Helen in our absence, & I cant help thinking that if we hid our eyes & counted a hundred, a like miracle would soothe our parents & they would allow us to marry tomorrow. B.J. a new car driver, had her first drive alone on 18 December and went to Diana Hubback to share confidences. Later B.J. went for a walk with a Hampstead neighbour, Douglas Jay, then a Home News sub-editor on The Times and newly elected All Souls Fellow. She hoped to prompt him into talking about Thomas. Jay responded that at Winchester he had always confused Thomas with Randall Swingler and launched into a long story about Randall. Diana was stalwart but leaving London next day for a family holiday in Cornwall. The Oxford examination system that had brought Sigles difficulties now took toll of Thomass close friend, Lionel Hale. Balliol sent Lionel down for a term which means Im afraid all time, announced Lionel and he refused the compromises and inducement Balliol offered if he would give up journalism for his academic work. Lionel intended to cut adrift from Balliol but return to Oxford as a private person, writing in Isis and acting at the Playhouse. He would have to leave the digs as he would no longer be eligible The lodgings would in any case be beyond his means on the 4 a week salary he

expected to earn: Its the only sensible thing: journalism is so difficult a business that entrance must be forced one way or another. Chapter 7 Found and lost The early weeks of 1931 were idyllic for Thomas. He spent the new year at his grandmothers in Cornwall, and walked beside the Helford - with the sun fading more than setting.. only gold and orange haze where it went, he wrote on 1 January 1931 to B.J. back at Keats Grove from her Paris expedition. He went on to his godmother, Helen Sutherland at Rock Hall, where he was joined by B.J. They worked on classical and literary texts and walked on the moors. Helen as hostess and chaperone allowed them a peep at the moon each night. They went to Bamburgh on 10 January dancing along the beach from Monks House and catching the foam still chaperoned by Helen, who this time allowed them to run up to Bamburgh Castle for a few minutes alone on the battlements. Here Thomas kissed B.J. on the lips for the first time. On 13 January they took their last walk together of this Northumberland visit before separating to their homes and to resume the intense exchange of daily letters, filling all crannies of the page and often spilling over to the backs of envelopes. Within two days the gap between Keats Grove in London and Bradmore Road in Oxford had shrunk to what Thomas gloomily described as you in that tomb Rawlinson Road and I in this pit Beaumont Street. The 33 Beaumont Street lodgings had lost Lionel Hale (in Oxford, secretary of OUDS and editing Isis). The core coterie remained Thomas, George White and Peter Howard the large house had other occupants including Brian Davidson. Thomas played in the occasional nondescript hockey or rugby game and contributed to Isis. The end of January brought Thomas his first bill from a wine-merchant - about a modest pound. On impulse on 29 January Thomas went and hired a great white mare and galloped up to Shotover (with B.J. beside him, but in his imagination only: I rode on like the wind O B.J. B.J. why werent you there my most loved one whom I need always). A tongue-in-cheek gossip item in Isis of 4 February noted: Mr. White, Mr. Howard and Mr. Hodgkin all live to-gether. White hates Hodgkin but thinks Howard's rather nice : Howard hates White like poison but thinks Hodgkin good-looking : Hodgkin hates them both but is rather pleased and proud of (a) Howard's International Cap, (b) White's monstrous orgiastic parties. The police watch the house night and day ... White, as a practising Christian son of a prominent theologian, provided nothing more damaging than chocolate cake. Howard was becoming a prominent figure in Oxford in several fields. In February he was a regular Isis staff writer, was announced as Englands captain in a forthcoming rugby international match, and chosen for the role of Masrur in the OUDS production of the James Elroy Fleckers poetic Eastern play Hassan published in 1922, seven years after the death of its author. Giles Playfair was in the title role and Peggy Ashcroft and Thea Holme were brought in for the principal female roles. Howard as a black executioner had to carry off Thea Holme as Yasmin. The Isis reviewer on 19 February thought Howard a most impressive figure, who in his scene with Yasmin gave a real impression of sinister power, which was assisted by a wonderful lighting effect. In the same issue another reviewer

commented on Lionel Hales natural and spontaneous comic acting in Reginald Berkeleys French Leave at The Playhouse. Thomas took B.J. in her fine clothes to dine at the OUDS on 20 February and to see Hassan at the New Theatre. She watched Peter Howard apparently cured of her earlier feelings for him Thea Holme was reputedly deeply affected by Howard. Thomas left with B.J. before the final curtain to escort her along the Woodstock Road to an eleven oclock curfew at her lodgings with the Joachims. The Hodgkin family circle was taking to B.J., despite Lynd misgivings. Thomass paternal grandmother persuaded Sylvia Lynd to permit B.J. a visit to Treworgan in the forthcoming Easter vacation. Helen Sutherland wrote on 2 March with loving greetings to B.J. to mark her nineteenth birthday. B.J. celebrated at tea with the Hodgkins who had all chosen gifts for her, and she stayed on to dinner. Thomas had a moment of sadness and later disclosed that, as B.J. had talked much lately about Peter Howard, he feared that she might still be a little in love with Peter. Term ended on 14 March with a difficult parting on Oxford railway station. B.J. returned to 5 Keats Grove and Thomas went to a house party with Geoffrey Crosss family at Aston Tirrold Manor, Wallingford. Thomas set himself a holiday task by choosing to enter an essay competition for Old Wykehamists and gathered his thoughts about the English countryside. The main purpose of the visit to Geoffrey was energetic exercise on horseback including a twenty mile ride to the Crosss home, along the Thames towpath with a fall for Thomas at an awkward gate by Sandford Lock. Thomas in the privacy of his room regaled himself on mixed biscuits the splendid gingero-macaroony kind and wrote more love letters to B.J. He returned on 18 March for two day at Bradmore Road and travelled with B.J. to Cornwall on 20 March. At the additional family inspection - by Lucy Anna Hodgkin of Treworgan, and Violet Holdsworth with her husband, John Holdsworth, from nearby Bareppa House - B.J. more than passed muster. Thomas described to his mother how Violet paraded each of the young couple on an arm, with Uncle John and Granny holding on too. Thomas found their welcome rapturous, and was able to send his mother the first draft pages of his competition essay for typing. Contentment was rippling through the Hodgkin households. Dorothy and Robin were pleased when Lucy Hodgkin and Violet Holdsworth an enthusiastic endorsement of the devotion B.J. and Thomas showed to each other. Thomas penned more sections of the essay and Dorothy sent cherry-embossed sarcenet cloth for B.J. who wanted to make herself a new dress. Violet further signalled approval by presenting an inscribed copy of her book Quaker Saints to B.J. The Cornish holiday and Thomass essay were drawing to a close. Thomas and B.J. were strengthened in the conviction of their love. As respite from studying, they had built a house in the woods and read aloud George Eliots Mill on the Floss, but this was unfinished when they separated at Paddington Station on 31 March. Thomas wrote within hours of the parting wave: But let us straighten the line at Paddington and hang lamps all along it so that we can wave for ever instead of suddenly miserably losing you. B.J. walked in the morning sunshine of 1 April with her closest confidante, Diana Hubback, before bidding her goodbye for six months in Germany. B.J. went home to put red piping on the dress she had begun to sew in Cornwall, and to grieve about the death on 27

March of the novelist Arnold Bennett at the age of sixty-three: He was kind & splendid & full of affection for us ... And his spirit was young. Thomass competition essay was finished, and was not of high standard. Dorothy who typed the full text thought the English countryside had received rather sketchy treatment. Helen Sutherland who was shown a copy saw the shortcomings and noted that he must have had to do it in too much haste too little leisure for so great a subject. The long essay patently philosophical in tone but more scholastic than scholarly was entered at Winchester and unplaced in the competition. Birthday letters and telegrams (including one from B.J.) were arriving for Thomas at Bradmore Road on 2 April. B.J. went to Paddington again to arrange the dispatch of Thomass suitcase. She had a chance meeting with Bickham Sweet-Escott, who was working in a London bank but travelling to family in Taunton, and could talk happily to him of Thomas. Late that night Thomas poured out in a letter to B.J. their shared feeling for love and poetry, and as he wrote heard the striking of midnight that ushered in his twenty first birthday - 3 April 1931. From the Lynds came an Oxford set of Jane Austen, from Teddy a rare edition of Charles Lamb, from Dorothy binoculars, and from Robin a very old desk with a hundred secret drawers. Two riding crops were among other gifts. Thomas also came in to family money that would he thought give him an income of 300 a year surely enough for us to be married on, Thomas wrote on his birthday to B.J. He mused too of future birthdays when they would always read Florizel and Perdita to each other and have a hundred friends to a dinner of chicken and meringues. Meanwhile the Hodgkin family more prosaically attended a Good Friday service. Dorothy and Robin with Thomas and Teddy began a family holiday at the Bell Inn, at Brook near Lyndhurst to go riding in the New Forest. Within a few days B.J. arrived on 12 April, feeling a little constrained. She almost welcomed the drama of a terrific forest fire on 14 April that spread before the wind for over a mile, and lasted for two hours of sunset. The entire group helped by beating out the flames and they ended with black smudges on red faces. The Hodgkins arranged a gentle brown pony for B.J. to ride, as she was a novice. She assembled a wardrobe of green breeches and yellow stockings from Teddy, braces from Thomas and her own tussore blouse and a brown jacket. She walked and trotted on the pony for a short ride. She went for a longer ride at sunset on the next day, this time in Thomass silvery buff breeches and a red jersey of her own. She enjoyed the experience but was not truly at ease. More to B.J.s taste was a walk on 16 April for some fifteen miles alone with Thomas. They wandered through forest from Brook to Brockenhurst, acting out such roles as Orpheus and Euridice on the way, and caught a bus for part of the journey. They crossed from Southampton to the Isle of Wight where B. J. was invited for a long weekend with Peggy Garnett and her family (Peggys Garnett and Poulton parents were from the island). Peggy extended the invitation to Thomas, but he imagined unwilling parents and declined. Instead he took a boat back to the mainland. Dorothy and Robin were travelling in Kent where Robin had field work for his study of Anglo-Saxon history. Thomas went for a few days reading as a paying guest of Mrs Barnard at Hindhead Nurseries at Thursley in Surrey. Mrs Barnard was a neighbour of the Fishers of New College who owned Rock Cottage, Thursley, and Olive Heseltine had taken the Lynd children to Hindhead Nurseries when Sylvia Lynd was ill. Thomas went

to tea with the Fishers and made friends with a fellow guest who was working on a book about her grandfather, the artist Burne-Jones, but found the guest-house lonely and chilly: This is a useless sort of solitude which consists merely in exchanging the conversation of those you love for the conversation of those you hate. He returned to London to see B.J. on 21 April, slept overnight on a chair at SweetEscotts, and saw B.J. again for the morning of 22 April. After another Paddington farewell, when B.J. ran down the platform until her shoes nearly fell off, Thomas returned to Bradmore Road to grapple there with his reading of the Ionic revolt in Greek history. B.J. went to The Times office to meet Douglas Jay for dinner. She took a train to Oxford on 25 April for the new term. A shadow had been cast over Thomass circle with news of the disappearance of one of their friends, Lesbia Cochranes brother, David Cochrane, on a walking holiday in Greece. Cochrane, in his third year at Trinity, had vanished near Delphi on 18 April. The family in Britain were alerted on 20 April and search parties were conducted over several days. The relatives were divided whether he might have been the victim of an accident or crime. A reward was offered if he were found alive. Cochranes uncle, Sir George Young, who had served as a senior diplomat in Athens some three decades earlier, was convinced that David had been murdered (he travelled to Greece on 28 April to investigate personally). Davids own parents were unconvinced. Thomas shared the familys distress. To B.J. who was seeing much of Herbert and Lettice Fisher it was a recurring anxiety. B.J. was at tea with the Fishers on 26 April (with Hilaire Belloc and Randall Swingler among the guests). She had a dream that night of David Cochranes safe return, but next day had horrible visions of David lying dead. An unaccustomed thread of sadness spilled into the almost daily meetings, letters and frequent verses between B.J. and Thomas. In the Beaumont Street digs, George White believed himself in love with Thomass cousin, Lucy Bosanquet. Peter Howard was branching out into politics. He was reported by Isis on 29 April to have sneaked out of Oxford to Ashton-under-Lyne to campaign for Sir Oswald Mosleys New Party candidate in a Parliamentary by-election on 30 April. Peter was also heavily in debt from his Oxford social life. Thomas on 5 May was sent a large cheque from Robin Hodgkin as a reward for abstaining from smoking until he was twenty one: I hope and believe that your nerves as well as your purse will be the better for it all your life. Mrs Joachim kept B.J. indoors for a couple of days in mid-May because of a cold and sore throat. Sylvia and Robert Lynd, who were expected to lunch with Dorothy and Robin at the end of the month, made an unexpected visit to Oxford on 16 May and had tea with B.J., Thomas and George White. Sylvia and B.J. were both recovering from illness; Thomas my hair being shorn and wet found it difficult to think of things to say; as did George; Robert Lynd spoke few words. Thomas sent a report of the more or less miserable tea to his mother who was away from Oxford on a few days visit to Helen Sutherland at Rock Hall. Dorothy Hodgkin conjectured that B.J. was less at ease with her parents than Thomas was with his. During that same weekend Thomas was briefly in, then out of, the planned summer production by OUDS of Much Ado About Nothing. Thomas who was not keen on the choice of this play was asked to prepare the role of Claudio. Then Baliol Holloway, the outside professional from Stratford and the Old Vic, disliked the texture of Thomass

voice and dropped him. The part went instead to a young Wadham undergraduate, Christopher Hassall, and Thomass thoughts turned back to the Jenkyns Exhibition, a college award in classics for which he was entering. Sadness was persistently intrusive and the correspondence again turned to the fate of the missing David Cochrane. B.J. publicly declared her certainty that David was alive, and privately harboured miserable doubts. Thomas asserted that David was alive and well, and would soon be found. Thomas was aware that this was not the real issue between them, and was troubled at leaving B.J. on 18 May in an inexplicable state of misery. Next day they sat among the buttercups of summer, Thomas read aloud to B.J. from Jane Austens Emma, and they were happy again. On 22 May the Friday of Eights Week when Oxford filled with visitors Thomas entertained for lunch at the OUDS club room in George Street B.J., the Fishers only child Mary Fisher, Thea Holme, George White and Lionel Hale. As conversation lagged Thomas began to joke about debtors prisons Lionel, heavily in debt, took offence. The animosity spread to Lionels graduate brother, Jim Hale, who was visiting Oxford. Lionel was reluctant to accept the apology that Thomas wrote next day. On the Saturday evening - 23 May - Thomas and B.J. dined in the OUDS with Peter Howard, Sigle Lynd and Brian MacKenna. Jim Hale dining with friends at another table was polite to B.J. but ignored Thomas. Thomass party went back to 33 Beaumont Street. Peter Howard said Grays elegy to B.J. and Sigle talked to Thomas. The talk largely about the quarrel with the Hales made B.J. silent and miserable. She wound the clock in Thomass room and set it going for the first time that term. The landlady. Mrs De Vine, turned the Lynd sisters out at ten oclock, and Thomas escorted B.J. back to the Joachims house. On Sunday 24 May B.J. went to tea with Gilbert Murray, who gave her azaleas out of his garden, and in the evening joined an expedition to the Rose Revived inn, near Witney. Two carloads included Thomas, Sigle Lynd, Mary Fisher, the Diana Bosanquet and Lucy Bosanquet, George White, Peter Howard and a sporting friend of Peters, John Williams. They went punting before supper, with Peter punting well and Thomas ill so that his punt floated broadside downstream. B.J. found the supper a meal of rather forced gaiety. Peter Howards attentiveness to her during the weekend was stirring the past, and by now Lynd mediation had more or less patched up the quarrel with the Hales. B.J. and Thomas walked along the river bank for a while a little apart from the others. On 25 May Monday they did not meet. In the morning B.J. reluctantly and shyly showed a group of factory girls around Oxford (this was part of good works she had recently taken on in imitation of Thomass voluntary work in the Boys Club). In the afternoon she went to watch the Eights and have tea with an undergraduate she had just met at Gilbert Murrays. In the evening she went with Douglas Jay for a drive and picnic in a bluebell wood - Witchwood Forest - and then they walked to a great field of cowslips. B.J. talked about Thomas; Douglas talked about Peggy Garnett, and about his sister who had died suddenly the year before of polio at the age of nineteen, and would otherwise have come up to Lady Margaret Hall. Thomas and B.J. were to meet on 26 May the Tuesday of Eights Week as part of a busy day that B.J. wanted to divide between the river - and possibly cricket in the Parks and her academic work for the term that was already lagging. She dressed in a smart red shantung frock spotted with white took a few minutes after lunch to begin a letter to

Diana Hubback then went to her first engagement, to meet Oliver Woods on the New College barge. She was due next on the Magdalen barge with her moral tutor, Dorothy Lane Poole, from the Oxford Society of Home Students. Thomas was asked (in a note on the envelope to her letter of that morning) to come to the Magdalen barge at half-past five, so that they should then go on to Balliols barge best of all with you. When Thomas and B.J. did eventually go to the Balliol barge Peter Howard was standing at the stern. He took B.J.s hand; she felt what she was later to describe as an electric shock, and against her will found herself falling in love again with Peter. In her uncertainty she thought that Peter was making her love him (perhaps so that Robert Lynd would give him a job on the Daily News; perhaps as an exercise in sheer power). A flurry of ambiguous messages and meetings ensued until the weekend when B.J. wrote her farewell to their engagement: Thomas Im very sorry, but I do believe that I cant love you any more & our engagement must end. You know that I cant tell you this to your face because Im too fond of you & so much hate to see you miserable. She asked that they not meet for some time, and hoped the autumn might make them friends as they had been at the very beginning. She added: All this term I have really been in doubt with only splendid intervals of perfect happiness. She also wrote to her family in Hampstead with news of her change of heart. For Thomas the disclosure came with the force of something like a bereavement; condolences and encouragement came from the close friends to whom Thomas turned for comfort. Randall Swingler wrote: B.J., having once achieved the state of Love, cannot go back on that and she has but to regain consciousness of that state which is transcendent of these particularly false and petty Oxford encumbrances to be again conscious of its concentration in one personality and her need for that concentration. Lesbia Cochrane wrote from London on 3 June: It is dreadfully sad that this has happened and I am afraid you are far too miserable to think condolences anything but impertinence. I cant think of anything to say except that you have achieved a perfect idyll and the best idylls never seem to turn to matrimony. Lesbias mother wrote to Thomas of the agony he must be feeling, and Lesbias young sister also wrote Yours was such a beautiful and pure romance and nothing can make it any less so. For the Cochranes the broken engagement was linked to the continuing fear over David Cochranes disappearance and likely fate, as David had been witness to the early happy days of the courtship. B.J.s relatives condoled with Thomas. Sigle wrote that the whole family was in tears when B.J.s letter arrived, and she urged Thomas: My poor poor lamb, do try not to mind this too frightfully it seems to me as inevitable as death & so grieving over it is futile. Not that that stops the grieving. Sylvia Lynd wrote to Dorothy Hodgkin: We were all very sad to hear from Maire that her engagement to Tommy is at an end. We all love Tommy & grieve that he should be unhappy, though it will be only a brief unhappiness if he, dear boy, would only realise it. Sylvia did grieve over the loss of B.J.s immense happiness in the previous months that had been such a pleasure to see. Sigle wrote a considered letter of consolation to Thomas, drawing on her own experience of a broken romance the previous summer: "You will recover like me to being happy, interested, excited, susceptible, only you won't - I think - get into this particular paradise again. You are innoculated against Romantic Love - and my lambe - point Number 2 - A Good Thing Too. You will go on loving (or will stop - I cannot be positive which but as I

haven't stoipped yet I am inclined to believe that other loves will be superimposed jpon this one and will not supplant it) - but will be happy in spite of it - and will never regret the engagement, but will come not to regret the jilting either." Thomass grief persisted and, in reply to a consoling letter from Nicolete Binyon, he wrote on 13 June: It is more strange and unbearable than anything to lose the centre of your life and yet feel it still there, if only you could reach it. But I believe that what began in such glory and has had such a lovely course for seven months must somehow have a lovely ending too - I dont know how or what sort But I have faith that loveliness will come of it. He wanted his friends to comfort B.J. in any way they could. Oxford life was carrying on. George White took his finals and went away, with an injunction to Thomas to seek the help of God as well as human friendship. Lucy Bosanquet sent Bamburgh shells to comfort Thomas for the little sadness of Georges going. She could offer nothing for the great sadness of the broken engagement except the hope that Thomas would find some sort of peace. Lionel Hale was bidding farewell on 17 June to his editorship of Isis. The OUDS production of Much Ado About Nothing opened on 18 June in Wadham College garden. Lionels new play Bear Garden was in rehearsal to open the following week at the Playhouse with Stanford Holme in the lead. Thomas in the last weekend of term had to sit the examination for Balliols Jenkyns Exhibition, for which he had entered in happier times. He turned to his uncomplicated friendship with Nicolete. Thomas wanted also to comfort B.J. They met briefly, but unsatisfactorily, in the closing days of full term. Thomas wrote to B.J. on 20 June: Theres been far too much for us to be able to pass easily into friendship. It would all be like Friday with me wanting us to be ourselves and you wanting us to be nothing. He suggested that after a year they might be far enough from the horribleness to be able to begin a true friendship: And if there seems no happiness possible then well wait apart till there is. But I am sure that in the end there will be some sort of loveliness for us. It was the season of dancing: George and Lucy were guests of Geoffrey Cross at Aston Tirrold Manor in Wallingford for the first days of the vacation, for a county dance on 22 June and in readiness for the Oxford Commemoration Balls that followed. Thomas quit the city for London and to embark on a months walking in Europe with Geoffrey Cross as his travelling companion. B.J. was in Oxford: at the Hertford Commem on 22 June and dancing with Goronwy Rees who was unsuccessfully wooing her, then at the Balliol floor polisher on 23 June in a party with Peter Howard and John Williams. The evening began badly with a dinner when Peter showed jealousy to B.J. over Douglas Jay her father confessor of the time and later refused to dance with her, so that John Williams had to escort her throughout the evening. When B.J. left Balliol she encountered Douglas and Goronwy who took her on to gatecrash the ball at Oriel. In the Oxford goldfish bowl Dorothy and Robin Hodgkin were in the Playhouse audience for a performance on 24 June of Lionels play Bear Garden as were George White and Thomass cousin Lucy Bosanquet. George and Lucy went on to Balliols Commem proper on 24 June, where Peter Howard and John Williams with Sigle Lynd and B.J. were also guests - B.J. again felt Peters discontentment. Thomas had written to George White urging him to be kind and affectionate to B.J. when they met at the ball.

Dorothy and Robins anxieties were over the Jenkyns result. On 24 June they learned that Thomas was given an honourable mention, but the award went to an older candidate, Gilbert Highet, to put alongside several other college and university triumphs in the classics. Robin wrote to congratulate Thomas: a fine achievement to get so near far beyond anything I could have dreamed of doing at your age, and it augurs well for Greats next year. Robin next day collected more details of Thomass performance from Cyril Bailey his neighbour at a luncheon party and from Balliols young philosophy don, John Scott Fulton, his table companion at a Balliol Gaudy. Cyril reported that philosophy had been Thomass strong point, but he had by doing only one question in the General Paper and making it autobiographical. Fulton suggested that Thomas should have won the award, and ought to have a shot at an All Souls fellowship taking history. Thomas, with Geoffrey Cross, was in Strasbourg on 26 June walking among the gabled houses and through woods and lunching on a mixture of roast beef and veal. He sent a message home that he was happy about the Jenkyns result. Sylvia Lynd had one of her Friday night literary parties, and B.J. felt she might have been in moping mood enjoyed talking to darling little Lord David Cecil, & being admired by Lady Hilton Young. Dorothy, who was close to being relieved over Thomass broken engagement to B.J., wrote to Thomas on 28 June: I feel more & more as if there were truth in what I said (though you werent inclined to agree) that she is so impressionable that she became out of that impressionableness & a great fondness for a time the kind of person in herself & in relation to you that you wanted her to be but it was the seed on stony ground there was no root as with you & the plant grew too quickly & couldnt keep alive long. Thomas on 28 June was by his own account Byronic and swam some half a mile across the Konigsee, with Geoffrey following in a boat. Next day they made a steep and gruelling climb until they could think of nothing except how tired they were just what Thomas wanted. Thomas, shepherded by Geoffrey on the train journey southwards through Europe alternated between reading Humes philosophy and George Eliots fiction: Middlemarch splendid and full of Wisdom. Hume less full of it and rather muddled and muddling, he wrote to Dorothy on 29 June from a hut in the Alps. B.J. was identifying herself and perceived by some of her contemporaries as a Turgenev figure - Goronwy Rees sent her On the Eve. B.J. read the book at a sitting on 29 June and wrote to Diana Hubback : The heroine is lovely - very like me, but more strongminded. By day she laughed at Peter Howard as a very absurd & unfortunate & fascinating young man - and by night she dreamed of reconciliation with him. Thomas and Geoffrey moved on from their alpine hut with a seven-hour climb uphill and down to a valley where they took a train to Zell-am-See in Austria. They went through Klagenfurt on 2 July and crossed into Yugoslavia (the recently adopted name for the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) for more walking and climbing, via Cetinje and the island of Rab where Thomas admired the great marble doors with their engraved adornment of Madonnas, flowers and leaves. At the Lynds home in Hampstead B.J. was momentarily regretting that she had ever gone to Oxford and lamenting: I want the sea again - to bathe in it a lot & wash the whole of Oxford off me. .... She was distracted when her parents entertained James Joyce to dinner. Joyce was in a state of some excitement because after partnership to Nora

Barnacle since 1904 he was going secretly to marry her next day (having previously married when she gave a false name). B.J. enjoyed listening to Joyce singing Irish streetballads charmingly. Thomas and Geoffrey in their Dalmatian wandering reached Split and on the morning of 6 July had a slight quarrel, as Geoffrey was feeling the heat uncomfortably. They saws the Palace of Diocletian and Mestrovics statue of St Gregorius, looking to Thomas like Great Agrippa when he drowned the boys in the ink well. However after half a day of Split they were tired of it and contemplated sailing to Sicily from further down the coast. Meanwhile they decided to go to Trau (Trogir) nearly ten miles away. Thomas wanted to sail there, and Geoffrey thought it unwise as he expected a squall. Geoffrey at last consented and eventually, as Thomas was hoping for a scarlet-sailed schooner, they hired a light sailing dinghy for five oclock departure next morning. With the disagreement soon ended, they spent an evening of happy reconciliation in a cheap eating house and singing Annie Laurie with sailors from an English Dreadnought (many of them as Newcastle men who knew Benwelldene, where Thomass grandfather had lived in his successful years as a banker). Diocletians Palace seen at night through a tavern window took on a beauty it had lacked by day. Dorothy Hodgkin in Oxford was musing over the summer guests for Bamburgh and doubting the wisdom of Thomass suggestion in a postcard from Villach in Austria that Sigle Lynd should be in the house party. Dorothy wrote to Thomas on 6 July: You know I like her, and Im sure she wd be a nice visitor. But I wonder if its wise. Fresh skin growing over wounds is very sensitive and one cant always trust it as one can ones old tough skin. Well both think about it a little shall we? Thomas found it hard to get up at five in the morning on 7 July when Geoffrey called him and had to bolt his breakfast- so that he was already feeling stomachy when they set sail. Inside the harbour it was breezy: the boatman pointed miserably to distant Trau and tried to go home. Thomas forbade him: I agreed with him in my heart but thought it would be cowardly. So we sailed on the sea turned into a collection of vicious little high spirited wet hillocks that cut capers beneath us like lambkins. Every second we were thrown up into the air like a game of cup and ball, and caught again quickly with a smack as we hit the top and then a squelch and a gurgle as we rolled off again. I became very sick but remained brave and in agony willed myself not to be avoided Geoffreys reproaching eye and the mans and smiled at my boots as if at a secret joke. Fortunately as the boat was half full of water and had begun to go sideways the man took the matter into his own hands and turned to go home. We didnt stop him. In the emotion of thankfulness I forgot to go on willing and was sick and remained so for the hour and a half which it took us to get to land. Geoffrey held onto Thomas by the coat collar until they reached Split harbour. He pulled Thomas out of the boat to dry land, paid the boatman and jumped back into the boat to rescue Thomass book and pink bathing. As Thomas recounted Geoffreys comportment: Then when he had done all that had dispersed the crowd and had seen that we had left nothing in the boat and that I was comfortable - he went quietly to the waters edge and was sick. The crowd of ninety which was still near by was so touched by such a splendid exhibition of British self-control that they all clapped till the harbour rang. The stormy wind changed to the warm and dusty sirocco and Thomas and Geoffrey spent

most of the day indoors and sleeping off their adventure. (B.J. in London went to Lords for the first day of the Oxford and Cambridge cricket match). Geoffrey and Thomas travelled on the prow of a passenger boat on the night of 7 to 8 July down the coast to Dalmatian Ragusa (Dubrovnik). Another storm brought the sea in a great flood over the deck and they had to go below. The place they found to bed down in the hold was a nest of bugs and stinging winged wood-lice they were much bitten. They found the great double walls of the Ragusa fortress magnificent, although Thomas watching the waves break slowly on the seafront was reminded of the Cornish Riviera. B.J. in London attended the Oxford and Cambridge cricket match, but principally was absorbed with Peter Howard. They lunched in Soho and in a taxi on the way back Peter proposed to B.J. and she accepted what they agreed should be a fairly casual engagement. On 8 July the night of Oxfords victory against Cambridge they attended the Vincents Club ball at the May Fair Hotel. Peter Howard kissed a shy, silent, inexperienced B.J. for the first time, and teased her that Thomas had not taught her to kiss better. Geoffrey and Thomas spent the night of 8 July at the hilltop house of a hospitable Pole, Coslowski, whose other guest was a writer named Ossandowski the latter welcomed the Oxford undergraduates as friends of liberty. They abandoned the notion of sailing to Sicily, rose at four in the morning of 9 July, took an early bus to Cattaro (Kotor) and resumed their mountaineering walking up 4,000 feet of wiggles in a burning sun. They spent the night of 9 July in the comfort of Cetinjes principal hotel, the Grand. In the wake of the casual engagement of Peter Howard and B.J. on 8 July, B.J. wrote to Howard three times; Peters communications to B.J. were one note, one telephone-call and one telegram. B.J. confessed her ambivalent feelings to Diana Hubback in a letter of 13 July: Perhaps I shouldnt mind much, now that Ive had his kisses, which was all I wanted - on the other hand, I want him to kiss me again. Peter made an assignation to meet her on 14 July outside the Regal cinema at Marble Arch. B.J. stood there alone for half an hour and Peter never showed up. Howard, unable to persuade his family to pay his Oxford debts, had left the university and was collecting jobs that would allow him to clear the backlog. He would accept the post of national secretary to the youth movement of Sir Oswald Mosleys New Party. The Howard family wanted Peter to read for the bar. In the short term he was alerted by Lord David Cecil to the need of a young baronet, Sir John Dyer, for cramming for the Oxford entrance examinations. On offer from the family was five pounds a week and all expenses to take the candidate, in poor health, to Switzerland for six months of coaching. Howard as tutor, his pupil and the pupils grandmother and sister, settled into the Kulm Hotel, St Moritz. Peter entered for the summer tennis tournament, as did some of the tennis champions in France. They could practise on the hard courts beside the Kulm Hotel. Peter Howard on a hotel balcony teaching the young Dyer looked down and saw a girl: She was playing tennis on the hard court below. I fell in love with her. Three days after I met her, I had proposed to her. Three seconds later she had refused me. She was Doris (Doe) Metaxa, French born of Greek parentage and at the age of 22 a junior tennis champion of France. The brief loving notes Peter Howard sent from Switzerland to B.J. dried up to nothing. Chapter 8 The pursuit of learning

Thomas Hodgkin and Geoffrey Cross on their miniature grand tour of Europe in the summer of 1931 were in the Italian city of Bologna on 14 July. Geoffrey rested from a stomach upset and Thomas explored the Pinacoteca and various churches. As Geoffreys recovery continued Thomas walked on 15 July to Monghidoro and on 16 July they separated a day or so earlier than planned as Geoffrey returned to England. Thomas, with guide-book and compass and a volume of Hume went on: by 18 July in Padua for the Giottos; 19 July in Florence for the Botticellis; 20 July in Venice. Thomas continued by train to spend a week at a Sligger reading party at the Chalet des Melezes, Saint Gervais a tradition established for four decades and coming to a close, since Sligger was in poor health. Fellow guests included Etonians Paul Willert, Cosmo Russell and Quintin Hogg, a fellow Wykehamist Lawrence Homan, and a Frenchman Arthur de Montalembert. Hogg, working for All Souls and expecting to be prime minister if not prevented by a hereditary peerage, took Thomas for a walk among glaciers on 23 July. They walked through gentians, harebells and wild strawberries on the low slopes of Mont Blanc. Hogg cut perfectly unnecessary steps along a perfectly good path to try out his new ice-axe. After dinner Thomas, on the strength of his incipient reading of Kant, defended the philosopher against attack by Homan, a Christ Church classicist. Thomas spent the next days reading more Kant and climbing the hills. He left on 27 July borrowing a pound from Sligger for the journey - to meet Bickham Sweet-Escott and Sigle Lynd in London. He joined the familys migration to Bamburgh, and the customary quota of houseguests, to include Brian MacKenna, Mora Cochrane, Tilly Cochrane, Alec Peterson, Lucy Bosanquet and Randall Swingler. George White was in Ireland and wrote from County Galway on 4 August to console again for Thomass B.J. sorrow and at the suggestion by their Oxford landlady, Mrs de Vine, that George and Thomas should pay Lionel Hales overdue rent. George thought there was no use in appealing to Peter Howards conscience or purse. Sigle Lynd too was in Ireland and not in the Bamburgh house party. She was on an energetic holiday with groups of friends including the Acland family Richard Acland. a Balliol graduate and son of a baronet, offered a half proposal of marriage that was not taken seriously. Sigle in Dublin on 4 September crossed paths with George White who had decided that he would go and teach in Ceylon. Thomas wrote to Lucy on 6 September about a particularly memorable moment in early September with Alec and Randall: "I think on the whole its been a silvery sort of day: it certainly ended so with Randall playing his flute like an angel in the cold Kings Hall and all the notes dropping like rich silver coins from it or silver bubbles which then floated round the room all shining. George White joined the party in the Captains Lodging at Bamburgh next day. Lesbia Cochrane wrote from Argyllshire to Thomas on 21 September that she was all among the shootin and fishin with the national crisis passing unobserved. In a political crisis over the cost of unemployment benefit the second Labour Government had collapsed in August. Ramsay MacDonald was to resign as Prime Minister, but accepted the Kings commission to form a National government with Conservative and Liberal support seen as a betrayal by much of the labour movement. Thomas wrote to his Oxford bank on 22 September for twelve pounds to be sent to him at

the castle, and was assured that domestic banking was being carried on as usual as the present trouble is purely an external problem. Dorothy and Robin Hodgkin returned in late September to Oxford. Thomas went from Bamburgh (via Edinburgh and a fleeting visit to the Jamesons) to the isle of Arran to stay at the Corrie Hotel for a healthy mixture of outdoor exercise and academic study. This setting provided Thomas with comfort which I should despise as too comfortable if I hadnt decided from excess of Cottages experience that moderate comfort tho bad in itself helps work, he wrote to his mother on 27 September. He made friends with a middle-aged fellow guest who was a colleague of Herbert Reed and worked in the pottery room of the Victoria and Albert Museum Were it not for the crash Id have him to Oxford. Thomas on 28 September climbed to the peak of Goatfell and enjoyed the splendidly Wordsworthian feeling of being alone in mountains. Dorothy and Robin in Oxford tried to sneak a look at Thomass prospective new lodgings at 15 Oriel Street, to be shared with Geoffrey Cross {and Charles Hollins ???} , but failed to gain admittance, as the landlord, A.I. Earl, was out. Dorothy had set her heart on bagging the best bedroom for Thomas. Thomas riposted in a letter of 4 October to Robin: Dont let her bother about getting me the best bedroom. Dear Geoffrey will probably give it up to me out of nobility anyhow. But its beautiful of her. George White wrote from Dublin still consolingly to Thomas over the loss of B.J. from whom he had heard: I wanted to tell you, Thomas, that I recant and believe her to be really what you know her to be, and I have regained my hopes of a possible future for you and her. She dreads going back to Oxford as you do. I feel much for you both. But I am confident, since the proof you have given in this trouble of the fine stuff which is in you, that you have courage and strength to face Oxford. Dorothy Hodgkin wrote recalling Thomass first year as an undergraduate, how happy he was and the countless doors that were opening for him. She saw his third year now ended as an aberration from the normal Oxford life: I should so love to think that this next year you will find for yourself again some of those blessings you have lost sight of. Thomas accepted an invitation from Nicolete Binyon to a dinner party in London on 8 October {** David a guest was this David Jones?}. This was technically the first day of the new Oxford term, so Thomas broke away from the talk and that sort of fire that comes at midnight to take the train to Oxford in order to catch some sleep and be prepared for six hours of college collections on 9 October. George White breezed into Oxford to take his degree on 15 October prior to leaving at what he called the screech of dawn on 17 October to take up the school teaching post in Ceylon. Thomas took up boxing boasting of a jab to the heart to perplex his opponents, and taking hard knocks: on 17 October I got a bruised cheek and a bloody mouth Splendid. He was beginning to take an interest in Arabic. He played soccer in mistake for rugger on 27 October, finding soccer a game where if youre not good they abandon you. He continued to attend play-readings and to frequent OUDS. He was finding it opportune to abandon soccer and on 10 November returned to hockey, a favourite sport of the Smith family, and played in the Balliol first team. He invited Nicolete to watch the fighting at the boxing club on 18 November: Come rather Bohemianly dressed and Ill wear my fur cape and a wild hat. He essayed yet another sport on 20 November when he was stroke to Stanford Holmes bow in a practice row for a race between the OUDS and the Playhouse on 22 November.

He reported to Dorothy on a rugger match at Marlborough where he had undressed in George Whites old dormitory and was moved to see his hard little red bed and bath in his little bronze hip-bath (George by this time was at Trinity College, Kandy, where he began to teach on 17 November). Between the rowing practice and the event Thomas played in a rugger match in Oxford against London Scottish, and seemed to his teammates to bring more energy than expertise to the game. He was invited to speak at Balliols Saint Catherines Dinner on 25 November, when he proposed a toast to Professor W.C. Mitchell, an American economist and new fellow of Balliol. Lionel Hale opened a 15th century period play, Passing through Lorraine, at the Arts Theatre Club that night in a production by John Fernald, an ex-President of OUDS and like Lionel an ex-Editor of Isis. In the vacation Thomas took a train to London through the fog of 18 December to see Lionels play at the Prince of Wales' Theatre. He invited Nicolete Binyon and was inveigled into going on to a dance given by the Lucas family (for the three daughters of the house: Barbara, Christian and Sylvia). Colin Hardie, as a young classics tutor from Balliol, was among the guests Thomas was pleased to see. He noted too a hundred gypsy Meynells interesting and boldly handsome. He went on to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight to stay at Norton Lodge with Charles Hollins a creme brulee at dinner on 20 December and golf in the dying light of day on 21 December. Later that month Robin and Thomas went to Northumberland for a Hodgkin family wedding on 29 December when Violet Bosanquet married John Pumphrey, a New College Wykehamist and cross-country runner who graduated in 1930. Thomas was an usher and wrote to his mother on 31 December 1931: It did make me proud of our family to see it shining out there, and all the people admiring it and again last night at Cousin Ellas when Lord Grey lectured beautifully about his Ducks... Thomass role as usher was he felt a sop for not being best man at the wedding. He wrote in the New Year of 1932 to Mary Jameson with a confession that he had not been a very good usher. He had borrowed an Eton waistcoat from his brother Teddy that was too small, and braided tails from his cousin Charles Bosanquet that were too broad: It was only at the last minute discovered that I was wearing brown boots and green socks which is apparently bad form so I was put into soberer ones of Teddys And I put an Earl and his Lady into a seat behind and completely obscured by the Bosanquet cook good and Democratic. Thomas marked the end of 1931 by finding glass shells on the beach and sprigs of rosemary to place on Bettys grave in Bamburgh churchyard. He was staying with Helen Sutherland at Rock Hall along with the musician Vera Moore. He stayed on after Vera left and enjoyed walks and talks with his godmother and studying for his degree. The peace of the countryside was pleasantly broken for Thomas when Helen Sutherland suddenly invited Thomass cousins, Mary Jameson and her sister Bunty Jameson to join them on 11 January: They came delirious with excitement and shouting at the tops of their voices at lunch time. He went to London to see Brian MacKenna and to dine with David Jones on 15 January and returned to Oxford to his digs in Oriel Street for the Hilary term. He had forgotten to pay his college bills and was turned out of Hall in disgrace and dinnerless. Another undergraduate out of sympathy invited him to a film and Paul Gore-Booth gave him tuppence for a meal. Thomas enjoyed cold sausages and cold creamy custard at the OUDS. Cyril Bailey wrote solicitously from the Latin Department at the University of

California on 23 January: How are you & what is your ethos this term? Are you still an early-rising, boxing, fighting, long-lived hearty sort of man? or a pale young philosopher or the mixture of both, which I like best Thomas had nascent hopes for his future after graduation and was looking towards Palestine. George White wrote from Kandy on 9 February: I shall be surprised if you are allowed to go without a year of learning about Jews and Arabs and their languages: but perhaps you could do it at Cambridge. I do think that it would be worth the extra year, for Palestine is just about the distance that would best suit you, and it is old and yet has new young troubles to help with George expressed his continuing belief in the notion of Thomas and B.J. inseparably together. They were not meeting. B.J. was living in her second year with Herbert. and Lettice Fisher in the Wardens Lodgings at New College, and occasionally spending weekends at their country home, Rock Cottage at Thursley in Surrey. On 28 February she met there the former Prime Minister, Lord Lloyd George, and discussed artichokes with Lord Conway. Thomas went to Bamburgh Castle in the Easter vacation for an unseasonable working holiday without the usual cluster of relatives, but under the care of the familys cook, May Fox who was not far from her familys home at Seahouses. He was also watched over by Helen Sutherland who loaded him with jam for his scholarly seclusion while Thomas sent home on 15 March for a translation of Herodotus, a good classical atlas and copies of past Greats papers. He was in the early stages of job-hunting and wavering between colonial service and archaeology. He faced what seemed to him a formidable form from the University Appointments Committee, and was quizzed by his tutor, Duncan Macgregor, about the relative merits of Thomass hankering for a short-term archaeological job in Palestine and the chances of a permanent appointment in another field. Macgregor wrote on 23 March that if Thomas were thinking seriously of Palestine he should write to the archaeologist and classical scholar John Myres during the vacation, and could find out about prospects in Cyprus from James Cullen, a former Balliol man. Thomas duly wrote to Myres in April about his project for going to Palestine or some part of the Near East. (Cullen was director of education in Cyprus and Thomas had known him as a master at Winchester. Myres, a Wykehamist and now the Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, was a friend of the recently retired director of education in Sudan, John Crowfoot, who in 1927 had become director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem). Thomas had brief visits from Teddy and from Lucy. Teddy who had been trying for a Balliol scholarship was beaten in the March examinations by Oliver Bell, son of the Balliol historian Kenneth Bell. Thomas commented in a letter to his mother on 24 March: Somehow we seem to better simply thinking than thinking competitively and if the desire to win isnt pronounced perhaps thats what handicaps us. Dorothy and Robin at Treworgan in Cornwall felt the distance keenly in the approach to Thomass twentysecond birthday due on 3 April. Robin, who was hoping to deliver the first two volumes of his Anglo-Saxon history by the summer, wrote on 30 March how his love would follow Thomas in this perhaps the most critical year in all your life. He forecast that Thomas would have the determination to put spiritual values above material ones. Robin characteristically hoped that Thomas was not overworking, and looked forward to the period after schools when Thomas would be emancipated from such things for the rest of his life. He offered as a

birthday gift new evening dress clothes The ones you have are a sight. Dorothy wrote next day of unspeakable thankfulness for twenty two years ago - & all the shining light & blessing & joy you have been & given for all the 22 years. A new Jewish Balliol friend, Derek Kahn, wrote from Agrigentum, Sicily, on 1 April with the hope that Thomas was keeping your Northern marches well, not working to distraction etc. etc. Derek had come up to Balliol from Rugby as a classical scholar in 1930. His cousin, Phyllis Kahn, was a Paulina and this brought him into touch with Nicolete Binyon, and with B.J. By May 1931, in the Trinity term of his second year, Derek was described in Isis as our Playhouse rambling reporter, and he appeared in OUDS productions. He gradually became a close and influential companion of Thomas. Felix Markham, already a Balliol graduate and a history don at Hertford, arrived at Bamburgh on 1 April to liven up Thomass birthday celebrations that included a "banquet" offered by Helen Sutherland. The new term in Oxford began in late April and Thomas collected testimonials to support his job hunt. His Winchester headmaster, the Rev. Dr. A.T.P. Williams wrote on 2 May: I am very glad to write on behalf of Mr TL Hodgkin whom I knew well at Winchester 1923-8. He always showed marked ability and originality of mind and played a full part in all our activities. He tells me that he is keen to work in the Near East, and I think he should do admirably there if he is able to find employment, for he has character initiative and capacity in a high degree, and already knows some of the ground. He should have a distinguished career. Thomas worked at his digs in Oriel Street for his examinations, but did not cut adrift from friends. He lunched on 9 May with Felix Markham and other friends, and had supper and discussion on Aristotle with a Balliol third year classicist, John Austin - by far the cleverest man I know, Thomas wrote to his mother who was visiting Helen Sutherland. He also played an occasional game of golf. Cyril Bailey, from his temporary stay at the University of California, supplied a college testimonial on 14 May: I have known Mr. T.L. Hodgkin well since he became my pupil at Balliol College in October 1928 & should like to recommend him strongly for an appointment in the Colonial Service. He is a man of wide interests & great intelligence, quick at acquiring languages, & fond of travel & exploration. He would show himself energetic and adventurous, and at the same time would keep a sound judgement & would act wisely. He is by nature understanding of other people and would, I am sure, be much liked by all among whom he worked. A former Balliol classics tutor, J.A. Smith (the family friend who had provided Thomass silver christening mug in 1910), who was by now a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, agreed on 26 May to be a referee for Thomass application to the Colonial Office: I cheerfully accept responsibility for your character; its formation has been in better hands than mine. Thomass preparatory school teacher Cheese (G.C.Vassall of the Dragon School, Oxford) wrote on 26 May to the Colonial Office: I have known Mr. T.L. Hodgkin intimately since he was eight years old. Whilst he was a boy at this school he showed the greatest keenness in every side of school life, & entered into everything, work & play, with the utmost enthusiasm. In every department he tried to give of his very best, & it was noticeable that he always commanded a following of the leading boys in the school. Better still, he was always certain to be found on the right side, whether the right side was the popular one or not. It has been my good fortune to keep in touch with him

ever since he left the school, & that he has developed along these lines has been proved to me on several occasions. When Thomass finals began on 2 June he characteristically attained subfusc (the dark formal attire required for Oxford examinations) with borrowed plumes, including boots, gown and tie from Colin Hardie. The boots and gowns were to be returned, but for the tie Colin urged that he keep it for keeps & wear it for visits to Excellencies or Herren Sanitatsrate, instead of your book-strap or old braces or even bootlaces The writing of schools papers pointed to a measure of freedom from the academic grind. Thomas was also aware that in June 1931 he had written to B.J. that after a year of absence from each other they might be far enough from the horribleness to be able to begin a true friendship. With the year almost up he wrote to B.J. at the Wardens Lodgings in New College to invite her for a walk As short as you like - on 11 or 12 June when his schools would be over and before he went away from Oxford. B.J. replied on 6 June that she was due to go to Thursley on 12 June with Mrs Fisher, but would love to walk with Thomas on the Thursday afternoon. They walked briefly among buttercups, and later Thomas gave her some of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Derek Kahn, as acting president of the OUDS, appeared in the societys production by Gilbert Murray and Alan Ker of the Sophocles play "Oedipus Tyrannus" in Greek that opened in Magdalen Grove on 15 June. [*** need to confirm and insert the Dorothy Hodgkin and Dorothy meeting for tea re Samaria] Thomas had a job interview for the BBC then went from Oxford to join up in Europe with his brother Teddy as travelling companion for strenuous walking and climbing in Thomass familiar haunts Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia in particular in the weeks before Thomas was due to take his viva. He revisited the Alps. Thomas rated Teddy a good climber and a better speaker of German than he was: Teddys German was reliable, Thomass unreliable but bold. Dorothy in Oxford oversaw the return of Thomass books and possessions from the Oriel Street lodgings he was vacating. The Colonial Office wrote offering Thomas an interview for 22 June and Dorothy replied that Thomas would be abroad and would want to attend at a later date. Thomas and Teddy on 22 June were at Jesenice crossing the frontier from Austria into Yugoslavia, with the intention of going for a quiet sensible walk in Bosnia following Sir Arthur Evans well-known route. They would go from Doboj to Travnik and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) then on to Venice in Italy, Thomas reported this plan to his mother on a picture postcard of Berchtesgaden with a purported array of jewel-box castles. That years Encaenia, to commemorate Oxfords founders and benefactors, was held at Pembroke on 22 June. Amid the scarlet gowns and hoods Dorothy buttonholed Thomass senior examiner who could say in a guarded way that he had seen only one of Thomass papers and that seemed to be all right. Thomas and Teddy travelled through Bosnia in the fourth class railway carriage and by 26 June were in Ragusa. They did not find the hospitable Pole of Thomass visit with Geoffrey Cross a year earlier, but the pine-tree smell again reminded Thomas of Treworgan. The brothers went by overnight boat to the Hotel Regina in Venice Ragusa they compared to Turkish Delight and Venice to wine. They joined up with Hugh Elliott, a childhood friend of Teddys, and soon went on to stay with Derek Kahn at La Casina, Sori, a villa near Genoa.

Robin wrote on 2 July that Thomass long-standing friend, Charles Hollins, had a third in the Physiology class list published that day, and that the city was filled with some six hundred Oxford Groupers, including Thomass cousin Michael Gresford-Jones. Dorothy wrote the same day that the Colonial Office had sent in answer to her polite note advising that Thomas was abroad rather a sharp reply: they had not been told that Thomas was going abroad and he should notify them as soon as he came back. Dorothy also went into Balliol and with the help of the porter, Cyril King, was able to identify and inspect the second floor rooms that Teddy would have when he came up to Balliol in the Michaelmas term: sitting room facing west over a quad and bedroom facing east over Trinity College. The scout, Veery, had been in Balliol for twenty-one years and reassuringly to Dorothy knew that Teddy was grandfathers grandson. Copious dinners at La Casina were followed by discussion and poetry Derek reading aloud the whole of T.S. Eliots The Waste Land on 5 July. Thomas taking too much rich food and insufficient exercise felt a perpetual slight slackness which isnt quite illness. He dosed his stomach with a variety of patent medicines and engaged a little with Aristotle and Rousseau in preparation for his viva. Although the news might have gone unnoticed at La Casina, Peter Howard on 9 July 9, 1932, and the tennis star Doe Metaxa announced their engagement, a year and a day after Peter Howards casual engagement to B.J. (and after discreet inquiries by Mrs Metaxa, the prospective motherin-law, to Howards old school, Mill Hill, about his character had not proved unsatisfactory). Thomas, leaving Teddy for more vacation days in Europe, travelled from Italy on 11 July to make his way back to England and join his parents on a visit to the Hodgkin family in Cornwall. Thomas returned to Oxford for his viva on 21 July, and in the brooding time before the results attended a Colonial Office interview in London. He thought it went badly and he was rather baffled by his interlocutor. The interviewer seemed certain that there would be no possibility for a Near East post that year or even the next: The only things he offered were 20 African vacancies and a possible Hong-Kong one among 500 applicants. Thomas found this unpromising but was assured that he had been passed through a sort of qualifying round. He asked me questions like What would I do on a lonely station with a Doctor and two black missionaries the only humans except for blacker heathens to keep myself fit after office hours: I suggested reading writing and walks. He preferred Squash with the doctor. The interviewer disclosed close knowledge of Thomass family said that he had been at the Cottages when Dorothy and Robin had become engaged. Thomas wrote from Helen Sutherlands Rock Hall to his mother to ask who the interviewer was. He did not know that Ralph Dolignon Furse, the Colonial Services director of recruitment since 1931, had in 1914 married Celia Newbolt, a daughter of the poet Henry Newbolt. Newbolt had been on one of his regular holidays close to Barmoor at the time of Robins swift courtship of Dorothy in August 1908. Celia Furse before her marriage had been a bridesmaid at the Hodgkin wedding. Thomas in London on 22 July 1932 and free of schools and viva was in the mood for entertainment, but frustratingly could find none of his usual London friends to dine with: Jim Ede, an assistant at the Tate Gallery, vanished; Bickham Sweet-Escott rushing away to Corsica; Brian MacKenna unreachable. Finally Nicolete Binyon lent a female philosopher friend who was staying with her at the British Museum house. Thomas took

her to a grand guignol theatre performance, and then stayed overnight at the Thackeray Temperance Hotel close to the British Museum. Thomas had come to know Jim and his wife Helen Ede through their connection with Helen Sutherland. The Edes had a flat at 110 Heath Street, Hampstead. Basil Gray, a British Museum keeper of prints, and Ellis Waterhouse shared another flat in the house. The back door led to the kitchen of the Ede flat and the front door to a staircase and the Gray and Waterhouse part of the house. Gray, who was away from Hampstead in Haslemere, wrote on 23 July to Thomas that he was returning next day. As Ellis Waterhouse was away for a week there would be a spare bed and Gray was inviting Thomas to stay and to be in London on the Monday night of 25 July for a party with Nicolete and Joan Fletcher. Thomas could not stay for the party but at a loose end on the Saturday night borrowed Grays bed, thinking to use his own bed then and there would be a good friendly action interpreting the spirit not the letter. The stratagem allowed Thomas to dine and talk late with David Jones and Nicolete on the Saturday, to finish a pineapple in the early hours with Jim Ede and to enjoy a beautiful egg breakfast with Helen and Jim on the Sunday morning before going on to Helen Sutherlands in Northumberland, with a fresh red pink in his buttonhole from the Hampstead garden. Thomas had invited himself to Rock Hall and felt it would be ungracious to postpone his arrival. He left a note of contrition for Gray: I think I have behaved abominably. He admired Grays having a pineapple and Keatss letters beside his bed. However Thomas believed the pineapple that he had finished would have gone bad before Gray came back. Thomas was delighted to go on reading the Keats letter as he was in the middle of them before. He concluded: I do trust that one day one of us will stay with the other properly with both of us there. Thomas found on arrival at Rock Hall that Helen had visiting Sir Montagu Barlow: the kind of lesser Cabinet minister who talks the whole time - always about himself, usually doing something vital for the nation which no one has recognized. With Thomas potentially an entrant to colonial service, Sir Montagu held forth about Africa Nyasaland in particular - the colour bar and something Thomas thought was pronounced miskidjinni and was a native fetish. It emerged that Sir Montagu was speaking of miscegeny of which Thomas had never heard. Robin Hodgkin on 27 July sent Thomas a cutting from The Times of 25 July about a BBBC summer school in Oxford for wireless group leaders. C.A. Siepmann, BBC director of talks, was reported to have spoken of broadcastings impact on public opinion, and was beginning to inculcate in the public mind a sense of tolerance and respect for other peoples views. The examination results for Greats were posted in the Examination Schools in Oxford on 30 July. This school was a reflection of a reformist trend in Oxford from the early 1800s to make the study of classics a rigorous exploration of the ancient Greek and Roman world through the greatest minds of those civilisations and in their original Greek and Latin. It was perceived as a demanding combination of history and philosophy. The news flashed through Thomass Oxford and family network that Thomas was among the firsts. Telegrams and messages of congratulation began to reach Thomas: from his Smith grandmother, widow of a master of Balliol, from Cyril Bailey, Balliol classics tutor, and from Cyril King, Balliol porter; from his Hodgkin grandmother and from Smith and Hodgkin aunts and; from Bosanquet cousins; from close friends including Nicolete

Binyon and Geoffrey Cross, who was also in the first class list. Christopher Cox at New College telephoned Geoffrey Cross at Aston Tirrold Manor with the news: We rushed into Oxford this afternoon and made sure and found you there, bless you, and lots of Wykehamists & New College right at the top. The newspaper publication of the list on 1 August provoked a broad stream of congratulations: B.J., Lesbia Cochrane, Tilly Cochrane, Tom Boase, Lionel Hale, the Archbishop of York William Temple, Sigle Lynd, Alec Peterson from Zurich, George White from Ceylon, and Derek Kahn from Genoa. B.J., who was at 5 Keats Grove after a visit to Wales and preparing to go to Italys Lake Garda with her parents, wrote on 1 August: How splendid & glorious. Im frightfully glad that youve got your beautiful First. Of course everyone knew you were going to, but you yourself were so certain that you hadnt that you almost convinced me too. Anyway its lovely & splendidly clever of you. She hoped she would see Thomas before he went to Palestine perhaps well go another walk & have some more splendid adventures? Meanwhile Thomass tutor, Duncan Macgregor on 1 August sent his private judgment: I was very glad to see everything went well, as it should. Your history wasnt what I expected. But philosophy handsomely made up. Macgregor passed on the rough average marks of Thomass twelve examination papers. He scored alpha double minus on logic, moral philosophy, and books, alpha triple minus for G.T. and alpha beta for Ph.T. Thomas had various beta gradings on ancient history, greek history, Roman history, R.T., G.P and unseens. His Latin prose was only gamma plus plus. Such details were not commonly known: in the eyes of the friends and society and future employers he had succeeded in the rarefied form of education that was thought at the time, in the words of Pembrokes R.B. McCallum, to produce men who are unrivalled as expositors and judges of any situation or set of facts placed before them. Balliols philosophy tutor, John Fulton, did know the detailed results of Thomass schools papers and he write on 3 August: Im glad you got such a convincing Philosophy first. He remarked that the college had not had such good philosophy marks as Thomass and Gilbert Highets for some time. Fulton said he had been confident that Thomas would take a first. Among other dons J.A. Smith wrote of his delight at the first and his surprise that Thomas was going for the colonial civil service. Christopher Cox applauded the triumph and hoped that he would soon hear that Thomas was about to go to Judaea. Thomas from The Captains Lodging at Bamburgh wrote on 7 August to B.J. deprecating his own academic achievement: Beautiful that you wrote its absurd of course we arent any of us good at book learning really. Its only because Philosophy isnt book learning at all but life and Plato and goodness and poetry and all the things that you love and are interested in that were good at that: so you will be brilliant at it too. He was going to certain a walk but the Palestine project seemed uncertain: The Colonial Office thinks that Tropical Africa is the healthiest and jolliest place for young men. But it doubts if I am worthy of it. He suggested a walk with B.J. in Oxford before term began. In the meantime as Bamburgh again filled with family and friends Thomas turned to a project he had conceived when staying with Helen Sutherland at the beginning of 1932 and had revisited Bamburgh on New Years eve. He had described in a letter to Teddy written in the early hours of 5 January: Weve got another more probable [in fact almost certain] plan to act Twelfth Night in August not in Modern but in early Victorian Dress Elizabethan costume is mere fancy dress and means nothing to any one but this would

have the formality that a comedy needs to steady it Viola ? Lucy in a rosebud Crinoline and little Lord Fauntleroy when shes Cesario. Malvolio we thought would be Disraeli and Olivia ? Diana Queen Victoria a billowy widow: at the same time Orsino would have to be the Prince Consort I think I dont think it would be any good going for any one particular time or historical accuracy and Valentine and Curio Prussian Courtiers on the lines of Bismarck and Tirpitz. Illyria = the Prussian Court Olivias country [whatever it was] Britain Sir Andrew Me? Gladstone [Disraelis scorned rival Ifaith, Ill not stay a jot longer] and Feste with his Mistress mine and purses for odd lyrics the laureate Tennyson. Lionel Hale, who had played Malvolio in the OUDS summer production of 1930, arrived at Bamburgh on 12 August to replay the role and to produce this private Victorian dress version. Guy Chilver was away in France and could not repeat his Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Thomas played Sir Toby Belch (the George Devine role in OUDS) and Duncan Wilson, another Winchester classicist then at the end of his second year in Balliol, took Feste. Lucy Bosanquet, newly graduated with a second, and Teddy Hodgkin, about to go up to Oxford, were also in the play performed in the courtyard of Bamburgh Castle on 22 August. Thomas in the wake of the Colonial Office interview with Ralph Furse was called for further interview and was offered one of the African vacancies in the Gold Coast administration at 450 a year. Thomass friends and Balliol mentors were almost universally opposed. Cyril Bailey wrote from a family holiday in Sedbergh on 3 September: Well! Africa is really an astonishment to me. I do hope it is the right thing for you. .. I feel it will satisfy your love of adventure & your interest in strange people & their ways ... But it will be a tremendous banishment from civilization & there is a wonderful future there, I am sure. Forgive me for havering, but it is a great surprise & I want much to talk to you about it. Colin Hardie returning to Oxford from Bamburgh wrote from Ballion on 6 September: I am not altogether sorry I didnt become your guarantor to the Colonial Office because I should have wanted you to break it for your sake. I do wish you would reconsider it. I know it is difficult to put up a case against you, because of the lack of a definite alternative & I suppose you feel you must do something & not become a mere intellectual, & literary man. But the experts of duty are also invisible & they seem to cause few ripples even in the academic pool. I do think you are throwing yourself away on the Gold Coast. Palestine had something to be said for itself: there are your Arabs & there are antiquities & history & not too great a distance from England. But Im sure your Cote dOr doesnt deserve its name. Duncan Macgregor wrote ambiguously from Balliol on 10 September: I wish I could feel confident in answering you but I dont. I think you should accept the Gold Coast job. I think there are very important bits of you which would develop & fructify in a job like that - & would atrophy in other jobs for which in many ways you are better fitted. Further I think that the other bits of you would not suffer in development: and that you would be more complete & tetragonos looking far ahead if you chose that kind of life. But pay very little attention to this: I have no clearness & certainty about it, & I hate to think I may help to mislead. Macgregor counselled that Thomas should try for an All Souls fellowship and stood a good chance.

Sligger wrote from Lynton on 11 September: I hear you are preparing to go off to the Gold Coast, Why, Oh Why? Have you really taken serious advice on the subject? Heaven forbid that I should not respect your judgment in so important a matter, but I cannot help feeling that you could find better things to do. I have no doubt that you would do the job very well, but so would other people - whereas you could do jobs which they could not. Thomas consulted Alec Peterson. Alec sent to Thomas Sakis 1912 cautionary novel The Unbearable Bassington about Comus Bassington, the boy who went away to the oubliette of West Africa and never came back. Alec wrote strongly pleading against the appointment: Its a fallacy that the Gold Coast or so forth gives a wider experience of men than Birmingham. Your companions would be pukka sahib or slightly soiled public school-boys, infinitely less stimulating than either Oxford or Leeds or even Civil Service. The blacks will be children I imagine, certainly not so interesting as Canning Town children & no more foreign. To narrow the mind go to the colonies. Think of the awful Indian Civil Service crowd my mother knows. You dont, but North Oxford isnt in it. And India is more interesting than the Gold Coast Its some time since I read Bassington but surely he went to Africa because he had no money not from a broken heart I didnt mean him for you at all only its a very good book & I thought the end might make you see Africa as a negation of all that makes life worth living Thomas decided to turn down the Gold Coast job, even before Sliggers letter had been sent, and he wrote to Ralph Furse accordingly. Furse sent a personal reply on 12 September while on leave in Devonshire: Thank you very much for writing to me so fully & frankly. Dont bother your head any more about the matter. If you have come to the conclusion that a career in Tropical Africa is not the right game for you, you are perfectly right to withdraw quickly I quite understand your attitude throughout. Thomas explained his thinking in a letter of 13 September from the Captains Lodging in Bamburgh Castle: My Dear Sligger, It was beautiful of you to write to dissuade me from Africa. I am dissuaded. Three days ago I wrote to them a humble letter giving it up. But I was still a little undecided [it is as you say fearful making decisions about oneself at all and one's own career worst of all] - so that your wise advice coinciding with what I had just decided was a great blessing and reassurance. I had really slipped into it rather than chosen it - meaning to go to Palestine as you know - but when they fixed me with their honest blue eyes, and said how magnificent Africa was I was led away by them and agreed. I had to make up my mind in a minute whether to stand for Africa or no - so like an ass I said I would - and trusting Heaven to arrange whichever way was best - like tossing a penny when you know what you really want to do - and then don't abide by the penny. But it took a fortnight of pacing up and down the beach to make sure in my mind that Africa really wasn't and never had been what I wanted: the lure of an actual job and money and the glory of serving the State and the privilege of wearing an old gold cummerbund with my court dress tempted me. But I do agree with you that it is wiser not to. All my interests and affections are here or in The Near East: the more I read history [I'm trying to read some, rather without digesting I'm afraid, for All Souls - Presumptuous - - a smattering of the Crusades and Gregory VII - I regret my mispent past], the more I am certain that it would be impossible to give up friends and sociabilities unless one could continue learning, and forming relationships in that way - and one couldn't do that in The Gold Coast - a country with no past and no history - and no present either - only

perhaps a promising future - and that at a Kindergarten level. So now I shall try to find Archaeological work for the time being - if they will have me as a learner - at Ithaca and then Jericho: that would take me where I want to be - and it will at any rate be an interesting beginning. But it's still the fact that I don't know what the end will be - or what on earth I am fitted for - though you beautifully say that there is work I could do near home. But I do trust your judgment and my father's and the few wise judgments I know far more than my own: Heaven forbid that you should respect mine. I have continually found it wrong before. So that I am most thankful for what you say - your letter arrived yesterday when I most needed reassurance - to know that one of the Prophets was on my side. Your kind letter after Greats I have been meaning to thank you for ever since too: though I'm very late I am truly grateful: it's a comfort to be a credit to you and Balliol this time. This letter's too long already with egotistical details or I'd begin to write about you and Balliol - which is a far more interesting and pleasant subject to write about than me and the Gold Coast. But I'll leave that for another letter or a talk early next term: I'll see you then before the beggining of term I hope. Hurray. Continual gratitude - Yours ever Thomas Hodgkin. Chapter 9 All Souls and archaeology When Thomas had put aside the prospect of going to the African colonies he shifted the agenda back to Oxford and the Near East. He was tenuously writing a novel, studying for the All Souls fellowship examination in October 1932 and again probing for openings in archaeology. The archaeologist Leonard Woolley had taken a special interest in the Sumerian civilisation of Ur in Iraq, where Thomass uncle, Lionel Smith, had served. Lionel now Rector of the Edinburgh Academy sent Thomas on 10 October a letter of introduction to Woolley with little hope that a dig would be available. Liverpool Universitys Professor John Garstang, a former director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, was leading an archaeological expedition in Jericho over several years and Thomas offered himself as a volunteer for the next season. Meanwhile Thomas entered for the All Souls fellowship examination and the John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy. Thomas was staying in Oxford at the family home at 20 Bradmore Road. Many members of his close circle were dispersed: Nicolete Binyon went to the British School At Rome to study inscriptions. Lucy Bosanquet went to London as a John Lewis management trainee. Thomas spent spare moments with the theatre manager, Stanford Holme, understudying him in late October by going to the girls' school Downe House at Newbury as Sir Andrew to Ben Greets Malvolio. Derek Kahn in his third year at Balliol was Secretary of OUDS. B.J. was still a student and living with the Fishers in the Wardens Lodgings of New College. Thomas wrote to her on 25 October proposing a walk on the Downs for 7 November before he left England. Oxford was visited by Hunger Marchers who held orderly meetings close to St. John's College. Garstang sent a postcard from Liverpool on 27 October with kit instructions for the Jericho dig: Sheets: no. Thin shorts (like the Scouts) yes, plse. Also knickers or breeks for the odd cool or wet days. There are hot and cold days. Old clothes & flannel bags good. Thomas was not chosen for All Souls and he failed to find the bus information he wanted for his outing with B.J. All Souls was a near miss (although the three who were chosen - the Wykehamists Wilberforce and Reilly and Isaiah Berlin from

St Paul's - were strong competition). Thomass Balliol friend, Denis Rickett, already an All Souls Fellow of three years standing, wrote on 3 November that Thomas was very seriously considered for election and that everybody agreed in hoping that you would stand again next year. Charles Grant Robertson wrote from All Souls on 4 November to Thomass mother that in the opinion of most of us, though we did not elect him, he ought to consider standing again. Robertson believed that Thomass first attempt performance warranted a second try. Thomas and B.J. enjoyed their country walk. Meanwhile Thomas was gathering contacts for his archaeological venture. Thomas received recommendations for Cyprus and Palestine from a clergyman Harold Jocelyn Buxton (an acquaintance made through the Balliol archaeologist William Hepburn Buckler) who had served in Jerusalem and was currently Archdeacon of Cyprus. Thomas went to Winwick Rectory, Warrington for a few days with his aunt and uncle, Lily and Herbert Gresford Jones, plus his Bosanquet aunt and uncle, who were making wedding plans for Lucy Bosanquet and Michael Gresford Jones, first cousins who had suddenly and almost unexpectedly become engaged. The visit allowed Thomas to spend the nights of 10 and 11 November with Professor Garstang and his wife, Marie Berges from Toulouse, and to make his own plans for Jericho. Thomas belatedly sent off an application to Magdalen College, Oxford, for a Senior Demyship. He reported on the Garstangs in a letter to his mother on 13 November: "I like the old man. His wife is a fine fat colourful woman she hasnt ever learnt either to pronounce English or to spell French. She says joost for just in the way that Froggies in Leech pictures might. I am getting excited by Archaeology I think at any rate by Bronze Age History." He was aiming for a weekend departure for a Cyprus holiday before Palestine, and he returned to Oxford for a rush of farewell activities from 16 November. He wrote on 14 November to B.J. suggesting a sunset meeting in Oxford for 18 November. The OUDS was presenting a three-night run of one-act plays including Thomas's comic satire "Old Boys' Dinner". Thomas attended the full dress rehearsal on the evening of 16 November. Among his dinner guests at OUDS for the opening night of 17 November was the New College don, Christopher Cox, who had agreed to write to Magdalen in support of Thomas's research plans. Cyril Bailey also sent to Magdalen a testimonial about Thomas. B.J. was in the theatre audience, and sought guidance from a reluctant Derek Kahn about her reviving interest in Thomas. For the second night of the play Thomas went with his parents and before the third night he was travelling across Europe on cheap tickets and with Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" as reading matter for the first phase of the journey. Dorothy in a letter of 21 November consoled herself for Thomas's absence with the thought "that you will never be long among strangers without making them into friends - & also that 'alone' is a thing that can never be true of you - with the constant thoughts & love of so many people always flying out to you & surrounding & protecting you". {Paris Peterson - girl in caf ????) Thomas embarked from Trieste on 23 November. Since he felt he could not afford second class travel on the boat he travelled third and "made friends by dozens instead of ones" amid "eggs shells & sleeping Jewesses strewed over the floors". He made friends with a Pole who had belonged to the English gendarmerie in Palestine. They drank Italian brandy and discussed the Dostoevsky novel that Thomas had just finished. On 27 November Thomas reached his initial destination of Nicosia in Cyprus, to visit James Cullen, a classicist and Balliol contemporary of Christopher Cox, who had travelled with

Cox on archaeological expeditions in Anatolia in 1918 and 1925. Cullen had been an assistant master at Winchester in Thomas's school years, and Thomas had encountered him in the context of the school's Essay Society for senior boys. Cullen in 1930 had become director of education in Cyprus, and in 1931 he married a Cypriot wife, Inez Zarifi. The Oxford news caught up with Thomas. The John Locke scholarship had gone to a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Winston H.F. Barnes, who had a double first in mods and greats in the same years that Thomas faced the examinations. Dorothy had the news from Thomas's godfather, J.A. Smith, who hinted that he was influencing Magdalen towards providing a consolation. Dorothy had also at a luncheon party encountered the Warden of All Souls, a former Viceroy of India Viscount Chelmsford, who confirmed the college's view that Thomas should make a second bid for a fellowship. Lionel Hale's full-length play, She Passed through Lorraine, had been performed at the Playhouse with Stanford Holme in the cast in the third week of November, as a critical rather than financial success. Lionel wrote to Thomas on 28 November that his own financial prospects were brightening since Robert Lynd (B.J.'s father) was offering him Norman Collinss job on the "News Chronicle", as Lynds assistant, and he would be taking this up early in 1933. Dorothy was probing why Thomas had not won the Locke scholarship and wrote to Professor Joachim, who replied on 28 November that all the examiners agreed that Barnes "had done the best examination on the whole". There was a difference of opinion on the next contender, but no vote and some would have put Thomas second and others (including Joachim) would have put him third. Thomas stood very high in literary ability and general cleverness, but Joachim did not see evidence of "special aptitude for philosophy" and showed defects or gaps in knowledge he ought to have had of logic and the history of philosophy. Dorothy relayed much of this to Thomas who in Cyprus was encountering the colonial society, initially through the family of a Berwickshire naturalist, du Platt Taylor, a friend of Archdeacon Buxton and the Bosanquets. He was also preparing for Palestine and wrote on 30 November to give news of his impending arrival to Christopher Eastwood, an old Etonian from Trinity College, Oxford. Eastwood was in the Sligger circle (at the Chalet in 1924, 1925 and 1926), and a friend of Nicolete Binyon; he and Thomas had met at the Binyons. Eastwood was now serving as private secretary to the High Commissioner for Palestine, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wauchope. Thomas wrote to his mother from the George Hotel in Nicosia on 2 December: "It is a pity that so far the only people I have got to know are English except for an Archaeologist with woolly hair like Rudolph Valentino. But it is hard to avoid them and they tend to avoid natives: it is all a little colonial and horrid." Thomas was making slow progress on writing a novel and wondering whether it was worth finishing. Thomas cabled Derek Kahn about some cryptic scheme he had in mind. Thomas who was eager to meet the Greeks rather than the English set off without James Cullen for what was intended as a walk alone through the Greek Cypriot countryside. He was close to Famagusta when he wrote to Teddy on 8 December of the sequel: "But suddenly some vague friends of vague friends of an Archdeacon I met at lunch with the Bucklers asked me to come on a donkey expedition with them to talk Greek. Coo; flattered with which I agreed to be dragoman. For once I have been travelling like a

prince not like a tramp we have six donkeys among the three of us are escorted everywhere by battalions of Greek Foresters dressed in green tunics and slouch hats Government servants; that comes of the elder of the women whom I escort being a Lady I fear the wife of a Knight rather than the daughter of a peer. But they dont notice the difference" Magdalen College dons met on 8 December and determined that Thomas should be elected to a Senior Demyship for one year from 1 January 1933. On the same day Derek Kahn belatedly received a cable from Thomas that had been forwarded by post and arrived just as Derek was due to leave London in the evening for a stay in Berlin. Derek telephoned Lesbia Cochrane to ask her to deal with a mysterious correspondence Thomas was expecting to ensue. B.J. wrote from her home in Keats Grove in London on 7 December of "this desire in me to love you again" and asked Thomas to decide whether in Jericho he should forget her existence. Thomas's Magdalen award was announced in "The Times" of 9 December with an indication that he proposed " to do work in certain branches of Near Eastern archaeology" (Barnes, the winner of the Locke scholarship, was another successful applicant). In the next few days Thomas went walking again with Cullen. He planned to leave Famagusta on 18 December and to go to Beirut where he had an invitation from a friend of his father's in the British Consulate whose name Thomas had forgotten. Thomas wrote to the British Consul to announce an imminent date of arrival to stay and received a terse rejection from a Mr Eaton, who was clearly not the friend in question (Robin Hodgkin's former pupil, Raymond de Courcy Baldwin had been serving in the consulate since 1927 and was acting vice-consul). Thomas would then have gone from Beirut by coach to Jerusalem to arrive by Christmas. Eastwood was spending Christmas with Humphrey Bowman, the director of education in Palestine, and Bowman's wife. Through Eastwood Thomas was invited to dinner on Christmas evening when the guests would include the Crowfoots - Grace "Molly" Crowfoot and John Crowfoot, Garstang's successor as director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Thomas hoped he could talk to Crowfoot about the possibility of going to him on a dig in Samaria in March to find Roman inscriptions, and to discuss his proposed thesis on the history of Roman Palestine. On Boxing Day Thomas would begin work with Garstang. Thomas was trying to hatch another plan - for B.J. to run away from home to join him in Palestine. Thomas had charged Derek Kahn with the task of making a case for this. A telegram from B.J. to Thomas reached Nicosia late on the morning of 20 December and was forwarded to Thomas at the Othello Hotel in Famagusta next day, with the message: London twentieth not yet dear Thomas forgive miserable B J. Derek wrote from Berlin on 21 December: "I wrote to Maire and got what I expected a muddled letter full of romantic excitement and indecision that was not really indecision, because as I said in my first letter the idea of her running away to you is an exaggeration it is too much." Derek saw B.J.'s feeling for Thomas as affection, not passion, and reported that B.J. saw herself rather like a heroine in a Russian novel. B.J. played with the idea of going to Berlin on Boxing Day, and sent Derek's address as a contact point for her friend, Diana Hubback. As Christmas approached Thomas did not set off for Lebanon or Palestine, but remained in Famagusta suffering a most acute stomach-ache and vomiting - from a chill. "My intestines tie themselves into clove hitches", he wrote to Teddy on 23 December. Thomas

took chicken broth and mint tea and by the afternoon of Christmas day had recovered enough to eat most of a single mince pie at the Cullens. He embarked in the evening for Palestine, reached Jaffa in the rain, caught a glimpse of a walled Jerusalem and on Boxing day found Jericho - "a bright green patch of orange and banana trees in a cup among the mountains" - and the Garstangs. Professor Garstang provided several remedies and a stomacher for the chill and recommended a local doctor, an American Jewess. Thomas was lodged at the Winter Palace hotel in Jericho. He met a "nice tall Hertford man", John Richmond, who as an Oxford freshman had been taken to meet Thomas by Pat Cotter (Thomas's close friend at the Dragon School) and who already had a season's experience of digging. Richmond lived in a tent and this put Thomas in mind to do the same since he found the hotel "pretentious and dirty". He intended to go to Jerusalem at the weekend and buy a tent. Richmond lived in a tent and this put Thomas in mind to do the same as he found the hotel "pretentious and dirty". He intended to go to Jerusalem at the weekend and buy a tent. Thomas sat down on his first evening - "feels like all my first terms at all my schools" - to write understandingly to B.J. about her failure to join him: " we both hope, and I believe, that we aren't apart for ever I know it wasnt lack of braveness that made you not come." Thomas still nursing an upset stomach had a first day of light duties helping Marie Garstang arrange kitchen stores, and then began on archaeology. He sent to the President of Magdalen, George Gordon, on 28 December an outline of his study programme and wrote to his father on 29 December: "On two days' experience I should say that Archaeology was a good career: it's reasonably simple and unconstructive work so far which is just as well - on the tombs - Richmond and I each have one. The Professor potters between them - looks at our notes - sits down on our sherds and jumps into our shafts. Mine has turned out to be a good little grotto tomb with a great stone in front about a yard in each direction, which we rolled away from the tomb mouth with great pomp and excitement this morning." In the evening Thomas was beginning to learn Arabic from the expedition surveyor, a Christian Arab Bulos el-Araj. Thomas gave a less respectful comment on archaeology in a letter of 31 December to Mary Jameson: "I am at the moment digging out that is to say I am looking approvingly at an Arab chap who is poking away with a penknife at the rate of a bone an hour which is what digging is. For the last weekend of 1932 several of Thomas's friends were gathered at Geoffrey Cross's home in Berkshire for a house party before a dance at Reading. They included Joan Young, Gerry Young, Charles Hollins and B.J. In Palestine John Richmond took Thomas sightseeing on New Year's day of 1933 in Jerusalem. Thomas dined at a New Year's ball with Christopher Eastwood. Thomas found that a tent would have to come from Egypt, and chose meanwhile to rent a house in Jericho at 4 a month - "two little rooms and an angelic green verandah looking immediately over Elisha's fountain" - and to employ a cook, Saleh, who darned socks, but irritatingly with bright white cotton. Thomas's heavy luggage arrived - "lovely arrangement of books and plum puddings"; he had a shelf put up for the books and invited visitors to taste puddings made by the family's cook. He managed to see Crowfoot and was hoping to work on Roman Judaea when the Jericho stint ended in March. The expedition was joined by the Bishop of Rochester, Martin Linton Smith, formerly a New

College rowing man. Garstang allotted the Bishop a team of 10 workers, Richmond 25 and Thomas four - "a very reasonable ratio of merit", Thomas wrote to his mother on 9 January. Thomas was not doing well with Garstang, and sent a lament to his father on 16 January: "I'm not altogether satisfied with Garstang. I think he's being a good deal less use to me (so far) than I to him. He has rather the Pecksniffian quality of using one - and he doesn't much bother to teach. Though I have had lately about four days with 10 men or so working down to early Bronze age rooms and clearing them - so that one can't help learning how to cut to find walls & suchlike." Thomas returned to Dickens references in a letter of 18 January to his mother: "I think there is some Pecksniff and some Squeers in him - and more than a little Mrs Squeers in Madam Garstang. So long as I can learn - as I am from working with Richmond and watching him - I don't mind the Professor giving me only the dirty and unprofitable jobs where I learn nothing." Thomas sketched out a consolatory schedule for the months after March that would allow him to study Jews, Greeks and Romans, read for his thesis and prepare for the All Souls examination. He would not join another dig - Crowfoot was already sufficiently subscribed with some fourteen helpers and did not want to take on Thomas, but Crowfoot thought a fortnight for Thomas at Samaria would be helpful. The end of Ramadan brought a five-day holiday break from 24 January for the Moslem workers to celebrate the lesser Bairam. Thomas enjoyed the company of the Bishop and Richmond on a drive to a Saracen castle at Kerak in Transjordan and caught some flavour of Crusader history. After the drive back to Jericho on 27 January Thomas received a letter from B.J. with further explanation of the botched elopement plan that might have taken her to Germany, Cyprus or Palestine. She had her own stomach pains on Boxing Day of 1932 and was admitted on 10 January 1933 to the Tower House nursing home at 63 FitzJohn's Avenue in Hampstead. On 11 January she had her appendix removed by Geoffrey Keynes (a brother of the economist, John Maynard Keynes and a surgeon with a special interest in William Blake). The surgeon lent his patient a 1542 Latin edition of Aristotle's "Politics" that had been in William Drummond of Hawthornden's seventeenth century library. B.J. began the letter to Thomas on 11 January before surgery and resumed still feverish on 14 January to say that she had not wanted Thomas to be anxious beforehand and that he should not be worried about her. Thomas replied on 27 January with an account of the visit to Transjordan: "A glorious Crusader castle - Bamburgh in the middle of black mountains". He was frank about the difficulty with Garstang: "We have come to hate one another did I tell you? He is meanspirited and loves nothing but the Bronze Age (especially the Middle Bronze Age) and his rather dull family. He pays no attention to anything I ever say, so I have given up saying anything." Thomas was going next day to Jerusalem - "To read Josephus, write and have dinner with people. But it's silly for Arabs are friendly and Englishmen & Governors almost always unfriendly. Old Etonians are always rude to one I suppose I can only get on with the lower classes." He spent two days in Jerusalem, partly writing his novel, having a further meeting with Crowfoot and dining with John Richmond's parents - the father, Ernest Richmond, was Director of Antiquities. After dinner he danced waltzes with the daughters of Commandants of Police and Chief Commodores - "Not my line a bit, but interesting to

see for a change", he wrote to his mother on 30 January. In Germany Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. In London B.J. was reading Thomas's contribution to "Red Rags: Essays of Hate from Oxford", edited by Richard Comyns Carr and published by Chapman & Hall. The eighteen essayists were all Oxford graduates or undergraduates, who had been invited to write on an object of peculiar detestation. Thomas, whose paternal grandfather had made his scholarly reputation as a historian of Italy, wrote a tongue-in-cheek diatribe against the tradition of grand tourism entitled "Hating Italy". He had wanted to be anonymous and he feared the title with his name would offend the paternal aunts - especially Violet Holdsworth, his grandfather's amanuensis - and even the uncles to whom no genuine reference was intended. A passage of Thomas's draft had been cut at the instigation of the writer of an epilogue to the book, Justice Henry McCardie who deemed it dangerous for the delicate state of international affairs. General Wauchope, the High Commissioner, came on a Sunday visit to the dig on 5 February. Thomas dodged an impending picnic outing to the Dead Sea, but on 6 February tackled Garstang about his anxieties over field archaeology and felt that Garstang responded by giving more explanation and assigning more instructive work. Thomas also learned that Wauchope knew from Ralph Furse that Thomas wanted to go into the colonial administration. Wauchope had questioned Garstang about Thomas's character. Thomas commented: "It was rather like Herod noticing a likely looking Jew in a chaingang at the stone quarries." He wrote to his father that if the Colonial Service were taking a serious interest he felt encouraged to stay as long as possible and to learn Arabic as well as possible. Thomas was hoping in May to ride through Syria to Aleppo. He walked, however, a score of miles on the night of 11 to 12 February from Jericho to Jerusalem. He wore a green Aertex shirt from his mother with Lucy's Christmas present of a butter-yellow tie woven at Chatton, and in the company of an agreeably taciturn Richmond. Richmond, nearly a foot taller than Thomas, had too long a stride for Thomas's comfort. They set off shortly after midnight and arrived at half past seven for a breakfast beginning with porridge and cream. He dined in the evening with the Richmond family who offered Thomas the possibility of pitching a tent in their garden and taking meals en famille when he came to live in Jerusalem. Thomas preferred independence: "It might be a danger to be too sociable. But helpful to have friends." He entertained in the Jericho house. A guest for a couple of nights from 20 February was a young Arab Christian inspector of antiquities, Mitri Baramki, and they dined on quails that had been shot for Thomas. After dinner on the two evenings Baramki drove Thomas and Richmond out to the Dead Sea. While Baramki and Richmond talked on the beach Thomas "looked at the stars and went to sleep". A weekend guest was the Keeper of the Rockefeller-financed Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, J.H. Iliffe, and with him Thomas went for a fierce walk up the mountains. Dorothy wrote on 20 February that she was sending volume one of John Morley's threevolume "Life of Gladstone" from Robin's library. Thomas received three copies of the "Red Rags" anthology whose publication had been marked in London by a cocktail party at the Savoy Hotel on 17 February. The book was reviewed in "Isis" of 23 February by A.M.E. Goldschmidt, who noted: "The contributions of Thomas Hodgkin and Gilbert Highet are the best in the book. Mr. Hodgkin, who writes on Hating Italy, avoids being either priggish or pompous. He does not depreciate Italy

merely in order to exalt Munich or Salzburg, and he is careful to shun the temptation to write a schoolmaster's model essay. His humour is delightful, and he shows a genuine appreciation of the style of Karl Baedeker. Mr. Highet hates Motherhood and puts his case in the form of a dialogue which is a model of picturesque conciseness. The other H's are less memorable." The latter were Lionel Hale, Renee Haynes, Quintin Hogg and Richard Houghton. Dorothy read the review to Robin, who on 24 February sent Thomas his own news that the Delegates of the Clarendon Press were favourably disposed to publishing his book on "A History of the Anglo-Saxons". Oxford was even more than usually featured in the British newspapers after the Oxford Union vote on 9 February against fighting for King and country. Derek Kahn was helping to produce the first issue of a new magazine "Oxford Outlook", bringing in Richard Crossman, Isaiah Berlin, Douglas Jay, Goronwy Rees, Gilbert Highet, Maurice Bowra and Kenneth Clark (Thomas sent to Derek a short story for the second issue subsequently turned down). B.J. (who was being tutored by Isaiah Berlin) reached her twenty-first birthday on 2 March. She celebrated with a demure party organised by Lettice and Herbert Fisher in New College. Derek wrote to Thomas: "All the people were charming, but the Fishers & the oak panelling took away all stimmung. Teddy & I & Anne Sitwell sat in a corner & sang little songs. B.J. sent Thomas as an advance present for his birthday an edition of the letters of John Keats, as requested by Thomas. Thomas promised her that he would go to Hebron and find her a soft sheepskin coat "like the Golden Fleece". Thomas left Jericho on 3 March for a weekend break at the Hotel Fast in Jerusalem intended to give himself encouragement for the final weeks of toil with the Garstangs and to allow a few moments for the reading of history. He dined on the Saturday evening with Iliffe and went on to a concert by a musical quartet - through much of which he slept. On the Sunday he went for a country walk near Bethlehem amid almond blossom, cyclamen and anemones - in the company of Baramki and Baramki's cousin Nastas (Natasha). In the evening he went with Bulos el-Araj, his occasional Arab instructor, to the cinema where they saw "Ben Hur" and Thomas was bemused and amused by the responses to the screen conflicts from Moslems, Christians and Jews in the audience. After more digging in Jericho Thomas contrived another outing the following weekend when he went with Eastwood (and a Wauchope relative, an Old Etonian and Trinity College, Cambridge, banker R.G.E.. Jarvis) for a barge journey on the Dead Sea. On 12 March Thomas climbed or scrambled to the top of Masada, high above the west shore where Jewish Zealots were besieged by the Romans in 72 to 73 A.D. (and nearly all chose suicide rather than capture). The season's digging at Jericho ended on 15 March and Thomas gave a dinner of sheep roasted whole to about a dozen of the workmen. The writing up of records and notes was demanded before Thomas could leave. He planned that as soon as he could escape he would transfer to an Italian nunnery, the Tantur Hospice some three miles out of Jerusalem in the hills on the road to Bethlehem. Meanwhile he made a weekend visit to the Baramki family about which he wrote to his own mother on 27 March: "I liked his Byzantine home. They were at various levels of social development - him at the top - his mother at the bottom. Arab mothers seem always to be kept rather in the background - the distinction between a cook and a mother doesn't seem to have been properly drawn - even in Christian homes she seems to be locked up in the kitchen while her children go out and scour the world for culture."

By 26 March he had packed his books and with his "first Archaeological earnings" - a ten pound cheque from Garstang - he prepare the move to Tantur. He wrote in the letter of 27 March that he would walk into Jerusalem most days to read history in the library in the mornings, return to the Nunnery to eat and to read "All Soulsish sort of subjects" till dinner. If time and strength allowed he would work at his novel after dinner. He was soon practising his Italian with a Sister Matilda and the Mother Superior. Thomas seeking a sense of Palestinian topography set off northwards on 2 April in a car belonging to an Indian army colonel, Ferguson, "for a Sunday expedition which turned into a Monday one too". He took Sir George Adam Smith's standard "Historical Geography of the Holy Land" in preparation for reading Josephus and other Jewish texts on the Roman period. Ferguson and Thomas climbed Mount Tabor. On Thomas's twentythird birthday on 3 April they began with a cold bathe in the Sea of Galilee. They followed with a visit to a fourth century Byzantine mosaic pavement of animal and bird designs and a fast drive by Ferguson to Jerusalem for a late lunch with Baramki's cousin Natasha. She was taking over from Bulos el-Araj as an Arabic instructor and she told Thomas that he spoke Arabic like a Bedu. Dorothy and Robin were at the end of a brief holiday at Bullaven Farm Hotel, near Ivybridge in South Devon. Dorothy wrote on Thomas's birthday of the "lovely possibility" of All Souls, and relayed a report of the sudden death of the Warden: "I wish he were going to be there to greet you again - since he was one of those who wanted you to come back. Holy Week brought a crowded calendar of religious ceremonies from 8 April to 16 April for the Christian denominations, including the Orthodox, Latin, Armenian, Copt and Syrian Orthodox churches, Moslem processions, and Jewish celebration of Passover with prayers at the Wailing Wall. Thomas familiar with his Plato was torn between a love of sights and a love of wisdom, and went to half a dozen services - Ferguson, a Protestant fanatic, "saturated himself with worship". Thomas wrote to his mother of a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: "The rotunda is full of boxes round the walls - about three tiers of them - and in them people camp and take their families - their noisy babies and larrikin youths. They sit all day -and all night often - with picnic baskets - sucking oranges and eating peanuts - throwing the peel and husks at their girl friends below, or shouting at fat uncles who are arguing with one another on the ladders that lead to the upper tiers of boxes." Thomas was arranging with a teacher at the Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Francaise in Jerusalem, a Dominican Father A. Barrois, to join the school's excursion of about a dozen priests through northern Palestine and Jebel Druse from 19 April to the end of the month. He and John Richmond were to be the only laymen. Thomas went on the eve of departure to the French Consulate to secure a visa for travel in Syria. In England many of Thomas's Hodgkin relatives were gathering in Lancashire for the wedding on the afternoon of 19 April in Winwick Church, near Warrington, for the marriage of Lucy Bosanquet to Michael Gresford Jones. Dorothy, Robin and Teddy drove to Lancashire for the wedding. Teddy who was an usher arrived "blue with cold after making the journey northwards journey in an air taxi from Oxford. The taxi was to allow Robin to be in Winwick for the wedding and back in Oxford for a college reunion dinner on the same day by returning in the aircraft - his first flight. Diana Bosanquet wrote from the Playhouse in Oxford on 23 to Thomas about her sister's wedding and

asking that Thomas write an article on drama in Jerusalem for her house journal "Repertory". In Palestine the Dominican priests with Thomas Hodgkin and John Richmond followed the path of the Crusaders and saw the Crusader castles of Belfort and Baniyas By 23 April the party had reached the Hotel Royal in the Syrian town of Soueida. Thomas drew sketches of third century Roman architecture and went on to Tiberias, from where he wrote to his father on 25 April that the Jebel Druse landscape was not loveable: "But the Druses are - and handsome and gentle: they paint the insides of their eyelids black in order to look more handsome still". Thomas lamented the difficulties of trying to express deep and important ideas in French to the Dominicans: "I cannot sustain a conversation about St Thomas Aquinas or Rome in the 3rd Century or How Long an egg ought to be boiled - or any of the things that I try to launch conversations about." He went by way of Capernaum and a stormy day of being rowed around Lake Galilee but close inshore because of the poor weather. He returned to Jerusalem on 28 April in time to hold a belated birthday dinner on 30 April that was also to bid farewell to Wauchope's nephew, Jarvis, so the guests were a mix of Government House gentry and Arab neighbours. A grand guest was Katy Antonius, described by Thomas in a letter to his mother on 2 May: "A highly cultured Syrian called Mrs Antonius [the kind who has read more of the sort of books you pride yourself on reading than you have - and all French, Italian and German literature - or at least has the air of having done so] " Thomas, mindful of the showing he must make in a second bid for All Souls, was ready to make his way in Jerusalem society, and wrote to Dorothy on 9 May: "I ought to begin to know Jerusalem properly. I ought to begin to get to know some important Jews. How else can I face Sir John Simon over All Souls' dinner table [if I do have to face him] unless I can gossip with him about what the Zionist leaders have most recently been thinking. So far I don't know in the least what they've been thinking. Tomorrow I mean to call on the Head of the Hebrew University - perhaps one Jew chum may lead to another: but if you or Daddy know anyone who is friendly with the great Jews here perhaps they might send an introduction. I would be thought ill of to neglect foreign politics. But never mind about the introduction. I'll push my way through to them." Simon was Britain's Foreign Secretary at the time; the Chancellor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was Judah Leib Magnes. Robin in early May had to stay a German former pupil, Carl Brinkmann, now a professor at Heidelberg, who was giving lectures in Oxford and recounted the changing attitudes in Germany. Robin wrote to Thomas on 5 May: "This Hitlerism is turning the time clock back to so many distant ages. The Anti-Semitism is of course 18th century." Dorothy in Oxford was concerned that Robin was being passed over for the post of Provost of Queen's, vacant on the retirement of the Reverend Edward Mewburn Walker whose successor was due for consideration on 10 May, and was classifying Robin's colleagues as real faithful friends or traitorous conspirators. The choice went to Canon Burnett. Streeter who had christened the Hodgkins' daughter Betty and discoursed on the problem of pain to Thomas and other schoolboys at Winchester. Robin was content for Streeter to take the Provostship, but had not wanted it to go to an outsider from the college. Thomas's parents thought Thomas might compete for a Craven Fellowship, an Oxford award for the promotion of classical learning and taste that required approved residence abroad for at least eight months of each year of tenure. Robin put in an application in

Thomas's name to the Craven Committee. Thomas saw the two year award as a possible discourtesy to Magdalen since the college would be likely to extend his demyship if necessary. He consulted Christopher Cox, who had been on the Craven Committee, and he urged his parents to follow Cox's advice. Cox telephoned Dorothy and came round to see her. They discussed Thomas's letter of doubt, and Cox argued that the Craven fellowship might label Thomas as set on a career of archaeology or ancient history and lessen the chances of an All Souls Prize Fellowship. In the light of Cox's feeling that a Craven application might be deferred for the following year Robin wrote to the committee secretary to cancel the application. Thomas's meeting with Magnes did not come until late in May, and meanwhile Thomas consolidated his initial good impression of Katy Antonius, daughter of a prominent Egyptian editor and political figure Faris Nimr. She was married to George Antonius, from a Greek Orthodox family in Alexandria, who was a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, and had been assistant director of education to Bowman from 1921 to 1927. In Jerusalem they lived in a stylish house at Karm al-Mufti, where Thomas was a guest at a small dance held within a few days of his meeting with Mrs Antonius. In a letter to his mother on 16 May he described the host George as "a man with rather the manner of a young fellow of All Souls and a mysterious profession of controlling governments travelling expensively round, interviewing Amirs, Sultans, Grand Rabbis and Secretaries of State - and opening all their eyes." Antonius had in recent days returned to Jerusalem from visits to the new sovereign state of Iraq and meetings with its King, and on 5 May had a two-hour discussion with Britain's Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister on a brief visit to Palestine. Antonius was also in touch with Magnes and the historian and lawyer Norman Bentwich who for about a year had been considering forming in Palestine a national committee of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation - Antonius thought the plan premature. Thomas put the sociable Katy almost on a par with Helen Sutherland who was the exemplar to the Hodgkin and other families of stylish hospitality - "platefulls of truffles and asparagus-tip sandwiches". Dorothy, writing to Thomas, on 17 May recounted Lionel Smith's resistance to the idea of taking the headmastership of Eton, and commented on international affairs: "I seem to write nothing of 'public affairs' - like Jane's novels, with no mention of Napoleon. Today the papers have Hitler's Speech - full of his pacific intentions and desires. Are these genuine though, one can't help wondering - or because he sees that Germany isn't yet ready for War. It feels awful even to write that word - to believe it possible that the world could so soon again plunge into such suicidal madness." Judah Magnes wrote to Thomas from the Hebrew University on 23 May saying that he would be glad to see him, and on the same day Katy Antonius was writing to Thomas to encourage a plan of going to the pictures with him - "1st house and we could eat sausages at the Vienna or German Caf do ask any of your friends". Thomas was still in the job market and following up a proposal made by Colin Hardie who since early in the year had left Balliol to become director of the British School At Rome, where Nicolete Binyon was studying. They talked of Thomas and dreamed up a way of bringing Thomas to Rome. Colin on 9 April wrote to Thomas with a suggestion that he consider being Librarian of the British School: "The duties are not really very heavy, really only half-time You would have ample leisure to work at what you wanted and to know Rome and its many grades of society and Italy too." The post would

make Thomas second in command of the school, pay a salary of 300 and free rooms, food and services. Colin suggested that Thomas consider the post from October or after the All Souls examination (to allow six months notice to the incumbent, a history graduate of Merton College, Oxford). The Rome letter sent to Jericho was slow to catch up with Thomas in Jerusalem. In late May he replied to Colin that he would stand for the Librarianship. Dorothy in a letter of 23 May was fairly enthusiastic about the possible offer: "In some ways quite a perfect job - Rome, books, Colin, leisure for writing -and you would find it fun meeting the interesting people one surely does in Rome, after your rather barren year - barren I mean in the way of 'people of your own kind'." Thomas's father was cautiously encouraging about Rome as an alternative to Jerusalem, and wrote on 26 May: "At Rome you would have round you one of the most interesting experiments of the modern world - not to mention the survival of the greatest of the ancient and medieval worlds. You would be in the centre of things instead of being at a bit of the circumference where the two elements of the population look as if they were going to go on hating one another and obstructing one another for centuries." Robin saw the post leading on to higher journalism or literature, and not seriously in conflict with the conditions of an All Souls' Fellowship. He noted too a sentimental link: "There would be a peculiar fitness in this Thomas Hodgkin looking after the books of the other T.H. which are in the Library at Rome and helping the School which he did something to found". Robin left the decision wide open ("We shall accept and commend whatever you decide to do") and offered to take unofficial soundings from Ralph Furse if Thomas's chances of a Palestine job were any better than they were in the earlier round. Thomas was experiencing a prickling of political stimulus through the curious route of reading Morley's on Gladstone and was impressed by the politician's 15-hour a day industry. He wrote to his mother on 29 May: "It almost fires me to go into Parliament. I mean I am quite fired to, but know I should be bad at it." He was hoping that he would be brought or sent more books on nineteenth century political history "and on the growth of Socialism - and perhaps one or two not too technical books on 19th century economics". Thomas on 2 and 3 June was at Sebastiya, Samaria, where John Crowfoot was conducting a successful archaeological dig jointly with Harvard University and the Hebrew University. Crowfoot was joined by Molly Crowfoot who had become an authority on ancient weaving, and by their second daughter Joan Crowfoot, who gave up reading medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in London because of eye trouble and became extraordinarily skilled at classifying flint instruments. The expedition dug down to King Ahab's palace and found ivory panels from the couches on which the inhabitants lolled in Samaria according to the Biblical account of the prophet Amos. Thomas described his reception in a letter to his mother on 6 June: "Crowfoot delightful - friendly in a rather gnarled way - gave me very kindly almost a day of his time showing me buildings and explaining them - which is more than that old curmudgeon Garstang would have done for anyone short of a Duke: and the people seemed pleasant there - mostly young women. The daughter seemed a gay and well-featured young woman. I don't think that she can have been the one you had out to tea, who I think you called mute." On return to Jerusalem Thomas pursued his contacts with important Jews. Through Christopher Eastwood he met the Jewish Agency's government liaison officer, Joshua Gordon, who was showing off Jewish life and culture that Thomas found "all very

efficient but gruesomely go ahead - what I imagine England must have been like in the Lancashire parts in the last century, and America till quite lately." They had tea with the Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meier Dizengoff, and the Town Clerk. Gordon on 6 June took Thomas to Tel Mond where he saw groves of oranges and a state of the late Lord Melchett "in the position of a policeman on point duty, as Progress". Thomas writing home commented on what he was shown: "One can understand how all this bumptious prosperity must grate on the Arabs who see it. For the one who profit from the Jews being here (which Jews say everyone must do) are only the town ones, most of them Christians, who drive buses to Jaffa and that sort of thing. The labourers have their lands sold over their heads and become really unemployed - but so long as they have a patch of grounds they're not registered." He excused his outburst: "I'm sorry - but you don't often have politics. I expect I ought to mention these topics more often. But as you know they're not my strong point, though my increasing admiration for Gladstone makes me feel they ought to be. Anyhow I feel I can face the politically minded in England now without utter ignorance." Thomas heard from his mother's letter of 5 June of the election as Warden of All Souls of William George Stewart Adams, who had come to Balliol in 1896 from Glasgow University. Adams, a founder of "Political Quarterly", had been Sub-Warden and was becoming Warden on the death of Lord Chelmsford. The family regarded Chelmsford as well disposed to Thomas, but so was Adams of whom Dorothy wrote: "An old Balliol man - very nice - and devoted to grandfather - and fond of us I think." Thomas left Jerusalem and arrived on 8 June to stay with Baldwin in Beirut (confirmed as vice-consul since 11 March), catching another stomach chill on the way. Within a couple of days he had recovered enough to take a look at Damascus and to gather advice on the journey he wanted to make through northern Syria - on horseback for a month's "dirty travelling", to be followed by a week of "clean travelling" with John Richmond and another Oxford friend, Tom Boase. He began the expedition with a weekend visit on 17 and 18 June to Jerash in the mountains of Gilead to stay with archaeologists from the United States and to see the Roman and Christian remains (recent expeditions by the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and Yale University had involved several members of the Crowfoot family). Thomas returned to Jerusalem and crossed into Transjordan on 22 June and on to Syria (via Mafraq and Dara'a). He was in a road vehicle somewhat plagued with punctures but reached Baalbek by 23 June, met more archaeologists - from France - and carried on to Hama to don khaki riding breeches and hire a horse for phase two of the journey. This involved some hard riding of six or more hours a day and visits to churches and halts for meals or rest at the homes of village dignitaries or French administrators. While Thomas was on his travels the Librarianship Committee for the British School At Rome met in London on 26 June to consider an appointment, and chose a New College graduate from the National Gallery, Ellis Waterhouse (who had been shared a flat in Hampstead with Basil Gray). Thomas was in Idlib by 2 July and wrote home that he felt magnificently healthy - "bronzed thinned and handsome". Generally he rode with one Arab attendant (notably a "type fidle", an ex-gendarme named Abu Sherif assigned at Hama by Monsieur le Commandant le Comte de Maurepas) although the Idlib commander lent him two soldiers as a military escort more for show than for need. Thomas reached Aleppo on 7 July and leaving Richmond and Boase to make the Syrian

expedition without him he returned to Jerusalem for a hasty final packing of his possessions from the Tantur Hospice and farewells to acquaintances in the administration such as the Bowmans. He left on 24 July for a sluggish train journey to take ship from Alexandria for five days of sailing to Europe. Thomas's planned return to Europe had been the topic of a convoluted correspondence between family and friends. Thomas wanted his parents and Teddy to join him in Europe, he wanted to tie in with the holiday plans of members of the Lynd family (wavering between Salzburg and northern Italy) and with the plans of his friend Derek Kahn to whom he had also promised a visit. Dorothy, although eager to see Thomas after half a year's absence, was concerned for the work that Robin had to do in preparing his history book for publication. She and Robin considered going to France or Austria but preferred to stay within reach of Oxford if possible before going north in the latter part of the long vacation. Thomas's parents - and even Teddy - were hesitant about a holiday shared with the Lynd family, as seemed in prospect. Teddy had his own thoughts of meeting German friends in the south of France. Derek was torn between going to Salzburg and to Italy to coincide with the family of a Balliol contemporary, Guy Branch, and to go on to Greece with Guy. The evolving compromise was for Thomas to spend a week with some of the Lynds, for Teddy to join him somewhere in Europe where they would see Derek, and for the family to reunite in Northumberland at the end of August, first as guests of Helen Sutherland at Rock Hall, and then in the Neville Tower of their favoured Bamburgh Castle. With plans still rather in the air many of Thomas's circle gathered in London on 20 July for the wedding of Nicolete Binyon to Basil Gray, in a Roman Catholic ceremony since Nicolete in Italy had been confirmed in Rome by no less than a Cardinal. In London the wedding was conducted and a sermon preached by the highly regarded Jesuit Father Martin D'Arcy. The wedding reception was held in a marquee in the forecourt of the British Museum and Father D'Arcy asked Dorothy if Thomas would secure an All Souls fellowship, since D'Arcy hoped Thomas would be in Oxford. Helen Sutherland, Lesbia Cochrane (working for the John Lewis Partnership as was Sylvia Barrington-Ward) and B.J. were also at the wedding. Dorothy had a brief moment with B.J. and found that the Lynds were going to the Hotel Splendide at Portofino, near Genoa, but forgot to ask the dates. B.J. was perturbed that the holiday plan was known. Dorothy and Robin were apprehensive that Thomas's Italian journey would reawaken past pain, but remained supportive. Robin wrote on 14 July: "We are with you in everything in spirit, longing and praying for your lasting happiness and blessedness." Dorothy wrote on 25 July: "Will it all be rather a hard time for you darling I wonder? I think these things are bound to be, which concern so intimately another person, not only oneself. You know we shall be with you, whatever comes of it or doesn't come of it." What was intended as a week in Portofino turned into a scramble around Italy in which Thomas's flimsy other arrangements broke down. The Lynd sisters, Sigle and B.J., in Italy were not travelling with their mother as Dorothy had supposed, but chaperoned by a widowed novelist, Frances Harrod a sister of the actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. She was the mother of a brilliant Christ Church don, the economist Roy Harrod, who with Isaiah Berlin made up the holiday group in Portofino (where Derek Kahn was

planning to join Thomas about 5 August). The visitors found the Hotel Splendide perched too steeply above the sea and the Portofino beach over-crowded. By the time Thomas arrived at the end of July and enjoyed "the pleasantness of unloosening one's tongue among beautiful people", the others had already decided to move on to Lake Garda on 2 August - to a resort where the Lynds had stayed en famille during the previous summer. At short notice the Locanda at San Vigilio could provide rooms only for the Harrods, and the others stayed in the Eremitagio, an annexe along the lake shore, and returned to the Locanda for all their meals. A complication for Thomas was that Derek and Teddy were both intending to arrive at Portofino. Thomas could write to Teddy but did not know how to communicate the change of plans to Derek. A further complication was that Sigle and B.J. were due to return to London on 6 August and little time was left. In this company Thomas and B.J. were almost never alone to rebuild an understanding between the swimming and rowing and seemingly endless amusing conversation over leisurely meals. Roy Harrod was showing B.J. how to dive. Thomas and B.J. managed one boat ride on the lake and a pre-breakfast walk up a hill where they saw golden eagles at the top. On B.J.'s last full day of the holiday they took a walk back to the Eremitagio along the shore; they were not close enough for a renewal; there seemed no way forward. She and Sigle left next day for London. Thomas reviewed the situation in a letter to Robin on 7August: "This has been a necessary time but not an easy one. The distance between Maire and me has grown greater since last winter even - though we both wish to be together we remain apart. I don't see how that can ever now be remedied. This week in each other's company had to be in order to find that out." Meanwhile Derek had reached Portofino and cabled on the afternoon of 4 August to Thomas at Locanda San Vigilio the ambiguous message "Arrived Splendide deserted vill you meet me Bolzano miserable Derek". Thomas to keep company with Isaiah was going on to Austria: Thomas, Teddy and Isaiah walked round and round Bolzano looking for Derek's name in hotel registers without success. The Hodgkin parents were away from 2 August on vacation at Campden in Gloucestershire, and the Oxford house virtually shut up. Isaiah and Thomas separated - Thomas to the village of Patsch in the Tirol near Innsbruck, where he and Teddy took the cheapest rooms in a modest boarding house, the Gruenwalderhof, so that they could study quietly for a few days. They were invited by Isaiah to join him in Salzburg from 20 August where they could have study and music. Thomas mused on the matter in a letter to his mother on 10 August: "Berlin knows Salzburg well, would be the best sort of person to be there with a safe un-Nazi figure. One feels this may be the last year of Austria remaining Austrian and that would affect Salzburg I suppose - if not kill it." Thomas was thinking about his own future career now that the Rome offer had fallen through. He was keen to settle an alternative before the All Souls examination and to arrange interviews before going to Northumberland. He thought the possibilities were something in the near East (improbable but possibly worth the effort of arranging an interview with Furse for 25 August when he planned to be in London), or WEA work or some form of adult education ("One could exist on a very small salary so long as the work took up one's full or almost full time."). He wrote on 14 August to Isaiah in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia, committing himself to the Salzburg meeting, and on 15 August he wrote to Sligger suggesting himself for a day's visit to Switzerland on his way

back to England, and after Salzburg: "Good education for Teddy and for me. Music and the company of an Intellectual at the same time." Robin wrote on 16 August that Thomas should not hurry to resolve career questions on return but wait and see what happened at All Souls. Then Derek after nearly a week in Italy waiting for an answer to his telegram surfaced in Switzerland, near Interlaken, He succeeded this time in contacting Thomas who felt he must visit Derek as well as Sligger before rejoining the parents - the return date had slipped from 25 August, Teddy's birthday, to 27 August. Thomas and Teddy went on to Salzburg - and left on separate trains on 23 August. Thomas's return date had slipped again and he went to keep his engagements in Switzerland. He managed to find Derek and Sligger but to lose his field glasses at the Hotel de la Dent du Midi in Bex where Sligger was staying. Suddenly after nine months of travel Thomas was on familiar ground in the Neville Tower of Bamburgh Castle "among a mass of small male cousins" - mainly Bullard children - and then alone in a tower room to read the Cambridge Medieval History. He also caught up on the details of the Rome appointment. He found in a letter from Hardie that Hardie had not pressed Thomas's claims to the committee as he had come to the conclusion that Rome and the school was not Thomas's "billet". Thomas was irked at the handling of an appointment he had taken to be in Colin Hardie's gift and he wrote on 2 September to express pained anger. Distractions and other ambitions were still in sight. He wrote from Bamburgh on 3 September to Sligger: "The Alps are better than Palestine and to be back among you and other friends is better than the company of even the most romantic royal Arabs." He was reading for the All Souls examination and wrote to Sligger again on 14 September for advice on "a good fairly short original Catholic book about the Reformation". He added: "It doesn't matter its being controversial for with so little knowledge I'm bound to have to try to make up with ideas for my lack of facts." Sligger, with the Buckler family in Oxford, responded with a detailed reading list. Thomas sat for All Souls in early October and went north essentially as a volunteer in his first job in England - treading a path reminiscent of his maternal and paternal grandfathers. Working class adult education had been one of Oxford's concerns since the late 19th century and one in which Dorothy's father A.L. Smith took keen interest. Thomas's venture into adult education was with the Unemployment Committee of the Cumberland Friends or Quakers and in the Cumberland port and industrial town of Whitehaven where Robin's father Thomas Hodgkin had gone in 1856 to work in a bank. The flourishing mining and fishing centre of the mid-19th century had become a place of exceptional unemployment in the slump of the 1930s. Lindsay, Smith's successor as Master of Balliol, bestowed his benediction on Thomas's task and by 9 October had written about Thomas to the Unemployment Committee's organising secretary, Wilfrid Lunn, and to Cumberland gentry including the Bishop of Carlisle at Rose Castle and a Miss Claribel Walker of the National Council of Social Service. Thomas sent a report to the President of Magdalen College on his "year" as a Senior Demy and explained his decision not to apply for an extension. Gordon replied on 18 October:saying that it was the kind of year he would have liked for himself and added: "Your decision not to appply for an extension of your Demyship must make your connection with the College episodic, but I hope that in spite of its brevity you will always consider that you have a Magdalen connection." With Oxford obligations settled

Thomas travelled north in the third week of October, using part of the train journey to correct an article he had written on Hamlet { have text }. He made an overnight pause to hear a WEA class on disarmament given in Birkenhead on 18 October. Thomas was put into "bourgeois" lodgings at 7 West View, Hensingham, Whitehaven then taken by Lunn for an overnight stay at the Friends' School at Wigton where the committee's chairman and paymaster, David Reed, was headmaster. Thomas warmed to Reed's Quaker wisdom and to Lunn - "his reticence reasonableness and intelligent revolutionariness seem perfectly suited". Thomas wrote to Robin on 22 October for books on German history - Frederick the Great and Bismarck - and on 25 October gave his first talk - on Palestine - to a group in Whitehaven. Despite the hilly countryside he hired a bicycle so that he could visit clubs on his own. He was hoping to talk about Germany: "I've begun to struggle through Mein Kampf." In Oxford Dorothy encountered Teddy with Isaiah Berlin outside All Souls - she was carrying Bentwich's "A wanderer in the Promised land" - another of Thomas's requests. They spoke about Bentwich, but not about the All Souls examinations whose results were expected within a few days. Thomas wrote to Robin on 27 October with a further request for a quantity of spare books from Oxford - "thousands rotting there unread" - to add to the sparse collections in the workmen's clubs, and for old boxing gloves. He had Sunday lunch on 29 October in the countryside with the Walker family - "nice capitalists". The book requests were promptly met. He played football on 2 November - in shorts and boots against men in corduroy breeks and clogs - and led a discussion on Germany. He was discounting to Dorothy her high expectations for All Souls, in a note of 2 November: "You mustn't even remotely expect anything, and in this place one doesn't believe in nurseries of the rich like All Souls existing." He urged against attempts to find out how he fared if not elected. Dorothy waited at home in Oxford on 3 November "for the telephone that didn't ring". All Souls College elected only one prize fellow for 1933 - another Balliol classicist, John Austin, whom Thomas had earlier described to his family as by far the cleverest man I know. Dorothy and Robin wrote consolingly to Thomas, with Robin noting that Thomas was "hourly rubbing shoulders with men whom the world without any deliberate intentions has treated so unfairly and deprived them of so many of the occupations and interests which make life beautiful". Thomas, who was spending the weekend with Lucy and Michael Gresford Jones in their Blackpool parish, responded calmly about All Souls: "Sometimes I think that I ought - if I contemplated All Souls at all - to have worked for it definitely last year - not gone to Jericho and read too little and that discursively but worked to more of a plan at the modern stuff they like and got more material of history - and done that concentratedly. But even so one would have been quite likely to fail." He asked to be sent the Louise Creighton biography of his Hodgkin grandfather with its account of his Whitehaven years: "It must really have been nastier then when it was prosperous than now when it's miserable". Thomas was thinking too of moving from Whitehaven to Cleator Moor where he was finding congenial people. His work was expanding with the possibility of a couple of plays going into rehearsal and three places where it might be possible to begin classes. Dorothy in Oxford, although bidden by Thomas not to probe into the All Souls decision, could not help hearing the conjecture and gossip proffered by family friends among dons and undergraduates. She gave a lunch party on 6 November for Helen Sutherland who

was spending a few days with her and the guests included Felix Markham and Isaiah Berlin. Isaiah disclosed that the five examiners had submitted only one name - Austin's for election. The examiners' report provoked heated debate with several fellows, including Warden Adams, speaking in Thomas's favour as an addition, but other fellows argued for the tradition of accepting the examiners' judgement - the latter view prevailed by one vote. Isaiah wrote later that day direct to Thomas with a similar narrative: "Let me tell you all I can without breaking my oath of secrecy. You werent elected because the examiners recommended only Austin. Consequently all those who either had no chance of reading the papers or trusted the examiners voted for Austin alone. A large party mustered round you including the most distinguished names you could you [sic] wish for. There was a long and closely run contest in which you lost by literally the narrowest possible margin. Everyone old and young made speeches about you, whether they wanted to have you or not, saying how nice you were, how well you got on with everyone you met, how anything you said was bound to be original and interesting, and how fond of you everyone who knew you was. This went on for a very long time. The Warden was in tears after the result was known." Isaiah urged a third attempt - on recent experience third tries did better than second tries. Thomas replied on 8 November: "This last year was a very ill planned one - I should either have worked much harder or not at all. So I deserved and expected this result - and though it is beautiful to hear of all these great men taking my part (I cant bear to think of the Warden weeping bless his heart) I think really that if I had succeeded it would have been by Office and Affection, and not by old Gradation where each second stood heir to the first." He ruled out a third attempt at All Souls: "At the moment I think of trying to be a Labour Exchange official learn about the Means Test by applying it." Sligger sent a consoling letter from the Hotel Mont Fleuri in Bournemouth on 8 November, and included a comment on Wauchope's difficulties: "What is to be done about Nationalism, Tommy? It seems to defile everything. It is based, surely, on a totally false appreciation of values. It sacrifices everything, a quiet life, reasonable good will, opportunities of intellectual artistic and even material development, it sacrifices all this to politics, to the craving for making a noise, for self-assertiveness, etc. Of course we gave a bad education to the East we talk so much about political liberty but then with us it had been a more or less sober pursuit, while these hotheads of the South and the East go mad about it. [T]he East has caught our diseases, Nationalism which begins with the cry of Liberty may go on and do any monstrous thing set up any great idol. Thomas wrote to congratulate Austin on his success. Austin replied on 9 November with a letter of commiseration: "They ought of course to have chosen you as well, and then things would have been admirable. But as it is, when theyre mean enough only to choose me, one can make little of it." The All Souls outcome rekindled the discussion between Thomas and his close family about longer term career prospects. Thomas expected to remain in Cumberland till about April of 1934. Robin noted from the Oxford Calendar that All Souls had rights to make appointments to the Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies (heir to the extension teaching schemes inaugurated in 1878), and he was looking out for openings in WEA work. He offered on 9 October to talk to M.B. Hutchinson at the Delegacy and to make soundings of his friends among the vice-chancellors. Thomas was spending 9 November in hasty

final preparation for a talk on Germany he was giving that evening in Maryport, and was realising how close he had come to the All Souls prize. He wrote to Dorothy on 9 November: "I must say it shakes my attempt at a philosophical attitude to failing to think how nearly I didn't fail But never mind now - it's a stimulus towards something else." He wrote next day about his ideas of teaching at a provincial university, or further dealing with unemployed but as a government job. He had in mind the proposed Unemployment Assistance Board. This would keep Thomas on his present track rather than breaking onto a completely fresh track such as journalism: "I do think one ought to have precise knowledge of one subject before one writes about any. Not that it there was a journalist's job dangling I wouldn't jump for it." He proposed to seek advice from Warden Adams in his capacity as chairman of the National Council of Social Services about obtaining a job under the new board. He was dining that evening - in dinner jacket - with the nice capitalist Walkers: "Two or three hours of luxury will be a pleasant change" (from the pressures of an intrusive landlady). Helen Sutherland was keen for Thomas and Teddy to join their mother for a piano recital at the Wigmore Hall on 16 November by Vera Moore. Thomas decided to go and at short notice wrote to Isaiah inviting him to dine and to attend the recital, but Isaiah declined as he had spent several days in bed "pursued by a nameless and undiagnosable disease". Thomas was reading the biography of his namesake grandfather that Dorothy had sent to Whitehaven. He wrote to her on 14 November: "Of course a Capitalist like grandfather would have gone on employing people although it was at a loss. But finally even the greatest humanity doesn't seem able to repair what happens to Capitalism - you can only go on running things at a loss till you go bankrupt and then the Unemployment and misery becomes what it would have been with a hard employer to start with." He was preparing talks on Bolshevik Russia and on what had happened to England's prosperity? The jaunt to London gave no opportunity for a family conference. Teddy brought books for Thomas's lectures borrowed by Robin from the Oxford Union library - Beveridge on unemployment, Croce on Marx, Rowse on the younger generation. Thomas, after brief sight of Teddy and Dorothy, returned to Whitehaven by a night train: "That short sight only whetted my appetite without satisfying it", he wrote next day. Dorothy in a crossing letter commented: "It must have felt strange almost incongruous perhaps to come from your world of poverty and want, and how to get enough of bare material necessities, to that world of ease and comparative wealth and beautiful things of the mind." Robin relayed on 19 November (in a long letter typed by Dorothy) his interview with Hutchinson about work prospects in tutorial classes: a full time staff member with four or five classes could earn from 450 to 500 pounds a year, with very hard work during the winter months that could not be kept up for long. A provincial university post might be appropriate, but a junior lecturer was set to do the dirty work: "he evidently doubted whether you would appreciate it". Thomas on 20 November cabled to Teddy at Balliol for "Lenin Russia up to thirty shillings" on his Blackwell's account. Teddy responded by sending books including Lenin's "State and Revolution" and the first volume of Stalin on Leninism that Thomas acknowledged on 21 November: "I have to talk on Russia on Thursday: and if I read Trotsky and Max Eastman and some of the little Lenin I ought just to be able to have a smattering ready by then. I curse myself among other things for never having read anything about this exciting subject before."

Thomas gave his Russia talk in Maryport on 24 November - after three days of reading hard, mostly Lenin, and for the "unLenin" view he drew on recollections of the opinions of Haji Bullard - "I was rather strongly pro-Communism - saying that it needn't essentially be either atheist (Lenin and Derek wouldn't like that) or bloody". Robin was returning to Oxford on 23 November from a visit to the British Museum and by chance was joined in his railway carriage by Sandie Lindsay to whom he recounted Thomas's interest in the new unemployment scheme. Lindsay through his chairmanship of the unemployment committee of the National Council of Social Service was much involved in the issues, but said that Thomas had been suggested as possible for a teaching and organising post they were thinking of creating in North Staffordshire. Robin and Lindsay agreed that Thomas and Lindsay should talk at Lindsay's vacation cottage in Eskdale. Thomas visited his Gresford Jones aunt and uncle at Winwick Rectory, who were keen that Thomas in pursuit of employment should see their friend Walter Moberly, the Manchester University Vice-Chancellor. Thomas assented: "I don't know that Vice Chancellors like things being done unofficially through aunts and uncles. But it is a blessing to have such helpful aunts and uncles - and it would be stupid not to make the most of it", he wrote to Robin on 27 November. Robin had another straw in the wind as he heard a rumour of a temporary vacant post in philosophy at Manchester University. He went on 28 November to an official tea-party at Oriel and sought more information from a former Balliol classicist, the philosopher David Ross, now Provost of Oriel College. The rumour was confirmed: Manchester was seeking a temporary replacement for J.L. Stocks (who was going to spend a term in the West Indies) and Ross was willing to recommend Thomas. Stocks on 30 November sent Thomas a meticulous account of the courses and classes to be covered - for which he would provide his own lecture notes if Thomas were available and met the requirements of a small appointments committee (the job would pay about 100). Sandie Lindsay wrote about Thomas to Stocks. Stocks wrote to Robin in advance of the interview that Thomas seemed "just the man" for the Manchester task and told Ross that Thomas seemed promising. Thomas visited more of the Cumbrian villages: at Frizington he addressed the Women's Bright Hour about Palestine, when he had also to read a lesson from the Bible. On 1 December he did a round with Lunn and his wife of Workington, Cockermouth, Distington and Oughterside to see the workmen's clubs that were being created from disused buildings and largely from local initiatives and means. Thomas asked Teddy to send him a book on. On 3 December he packed for a move from Whitehaven to new lodgings with a Gidley family on the High Street of Cleator Moor. Thomas travelled to Manchester on 6 December, and spent the evening with Moberly in a discussion he found encouraging: "In a university like Manchester there would be two things I want most, discipline of associating with people that I can learn from, and scope to try to interest people in philosophy apart from the actual teaching of it". He spent the morning of 7 December with Stocks who showed him lecture notes and explained the sort of people and subjects he taught. Thomas thought there was a good deal of nineteenth century political theory and political history of which he was ignorant but at which he was very willing to work. He met another of the selectors and gathered that only one other man was in mind - the appointment might be made at once or the alternative candidate might be called for interview.

Thomas spent 10 December walking in the Lake District hills with Geoffrey Cross who had come from his lodgings in Manchester for the purpose: they climbed to the top of Scafell Pike. Thomas returned to Cleator and found the Manchester University response. Stocks wrote that the selection committee had met that on the afternoon of 7 December decided to recommend Thomas for the job: "There is no likelihood of the recommendation being rejected - so you can act as if it were settled". The remuneration would be assessed by yet another committee. Stocks invited Thomas to come and stay with him in Manchester for a day or so in the coming week for a handover of all the notes. Thomas relayed the news to Robin on 11 December, including his gratitude to "goodness in pulling strings" of Ross, Lindsay and others. Robin replied in haste from his club in London next day as he dressed for the annual dinner of the Queens College Association at the Trocadero Restaurant: the Manchester vacancy seemed almost to have been made for Thomas and would teach him a lot. Thomas in sharing the news with Sligger responded also to the diatribe Sligger had written on nationalism: "But don't you think that intense political consciousness is a stage that any person or community must go through: even if you had given Arabs and Indians a much wiser more cultured less factual education - and encouraged them much more to enjoy what was already theirs encouraged them into their own life rather than twisted them into ours. Wouldn't the dislocation in their lives which our mere presence and our commercial relations and whatever book education we had to give them set up have forced them to think terms of ideas like self-determination, Arab countries for the Arabs, Parliament for the people." Robin wrote on 15 December after the London dinner to pass on a message from the Archbishop of York, William Temple, who was expecting Thomas to propose a visit and was keen to see him: "You would find him useful not only with advice about philosophy but also as an ex-Bishop of Manchester and for long Chairman of the WEA". Thomas was committed during Christmas to duties in the Cumbrian villages (plays and hospitality to the friends he made in the clubs), so invited Dorothy to make a brief visit before he travelled south at the end of the month. The parents had in the previous month rented and furnished a weekend retreat in the Cotswolds village of Broad Campden, Gloucestershire, and it was to the Corner Cottage there that Thomas travelled on 30 December to spend nearly a fortnight in preparation for his new role as temporary university teacher. His reading included contemporary commentaries by Alexander Boyce Gibson on "The Philosophy of Descartes" and Charles Morris on "Idealistic Logic" and in early 1934 Stanley Victor Keeling's "Descartes". Chapter 10 Philosophy, Palestine and politics When Thomas transferred to Manchester in early January 1934 he was in part returning to the fold. He joined Geoffrey Cross (now a schoolteacher at Manchester Grammar School) in lodgings at 20 Longford Place, Manchester 14, although he did not find the landlord and landlady congenial. His own university teaching schedule bequeathed by Stocks covered six tasks: three small groups and three large classes. Half a dozen students had three hours a week on the history of modern philosophy - covering Descartes, Leibniz and Kant in Thomas's remit. An essay class of four considered 19th

century political thought. Four classical honours students were on a refresher course in Greek philosophy for one hour a week. A class of thirty had a weekly introductory class based on Russell's "Problems of Philosophy". A class of forty had a weekly hour on the history of philosophy, and a similar course was given as an evening class to some forty-five participants. The tasks fell from Monday to Thursday at mid-day, leaving a long weekend for further lecture preparation and for country air, although Thomas soon took on additional weekend commitments. As a relief from this lecture preparation Thomas and Geoffrey went on 13 January to a performance of "Henry V", where the cast included Valentine Dyall (the lead player in the OUDS "Othello" of five years earlier when Thomas was Third Gentleman). He wrote to William Temple proposing a visit to the Archbishop's Palace in York, as he had been encouraged to do after Robin's meeting with Temple in London. Temple replied on 13 January offering the following week-end in January or a choice of three in March. They agreed to meet at the Archbishop's palace in York for the weekend from 24 March. Meanwhile Temple asked Thomas to look over the manuscript of the Gifford lectures he was preparing for publication, so that they could discuss them during the March weekend. The University provided Thomas with a study, a fire, a table and a large window. He began a companionship with other teachers and was a guest of the Moberlys for an occasional lunch or tea. At the end of the first week of teaching Thomas wrote to Robin on 18 January that he felt "as if he had just run 40 miles - but that is a pleasant feeling". The Descartes class - "six embryo Methodist ministers and a scientist" - had the most carefully prepared lecture. Thomas went armed with six typed foolscap pages of virtually a complete text. He tackled the political thought topics from very full notes, and introductory philosophy from less full notes. Thomas had intended to dash to Oxford on 18 January to take his degree but put this off till March because of the pressure of work. He returned the following day to Cleator Moor to give the first in a fortnightly series of classes and stayed over to meet friends among the unemployed. In the second week he added to the regular lectures by speaking as a proxy for Stocks to a tea and social club on the issue of unemployment in Cumberland. At tea with Mrs Moberly on 25 January he heard a recommendation from a geography teacher of an attractive village in Derbyshire. He wired for accommodation and took his books off to Monsall Head for Saturday and Sunday in the country. After the third round of Manchester lecturing he went again on 1 February to Cleator Moor for a session on the Pope: "I delighted the Catholics to the disgust of Protestants and Freethinkers by praising an authoritative Papacy interfering in political affairs, monastic charity as healthier than the dole, and Christendom as more cohesive than the League of Nations". He took with him a suitcase that Dorothy had sent as a belated Christmas present and had chosen the size because the shop assistant seemed to think anything smaller would not hold dress clothes. Thomas reported back that the suitcase was exactly right: "I need there to be room for anything up to about 20 books as well as evening clothes and it will take that." He stayed in Cleator Moor with an unemployed miner, John Farrell, with Thomas in one room and Farrell and his wife and five children in another. The morning of 1 February brought "a country rinsing in a cold bucket with the family before breakfast".

Thomas went on for a weekend with Herbert and Lily Gresford Jones in the Winwick Rectory in Warrington: "I am being magnificently treated here with fires in my bedroom, bottles in my bed and biscuits beside it". In Oxford on 4 February Dorothy entertained Mrs Moberly and her two older sons (pupils at the Dragon School she was visiting in Oxford). Thomas's next weekend break was with Michael and Lucy Gresford Jones at the South Shore Vicarage in Blackpool. The Moberlys proposed that Dorothy and Robin come to them for a weekend in March while Thomas was still teaching in Manchester. For the Cleator Moor class on 15 February on "Hobbes, Dictatorship and the devilishness of events in Austria", Thomas stayed two nights with the Lunns (in Vienna the Socialist Party had been declared illegal, and armed clashed occurred between socialists and the Austrian Government forces). He was pleased to find that he was going to be paid for the fortnightly lectures since they qualified as an extra-mural course. Thomas's tight schedule was further crowded by connections he made in Manchester. He met a music and drama teacher of his own age, Frida Stewart from a Cambridge family and a graduate of the Royal College of Music who was teaching the unemployed in Manchester and living in the Manchester University Settlement. She invited Thomas to dine on 21 February and to join in a Shakespeare reading at the Settlement where the warden was keen to know him. The warden, whom Thomas met at tea with the Moberlys on 18 February, was Tom South, a recent pupil of Robin's at Queen's. The warden reinforced Frida's invitation and Thomas took part in a "Macbeth" reading, taking half of the title role. Frida had warned that South wanted to "ensnare" Thomas into the settlement - with its Philosophical Society - but this fitted in with Thomas's increasing discomfort with the lodging house keepers. He wrote on 22 February that after an end of week that included a visit to the Potteries he would on 26 February leave and accept the encouragement to move to the University Settlement in Every Street, Ancoats. The Potteries visit was to renew acquaintances, but Thomas found that a lecture was expected and he agreed to return on 1 March to give one. He also succumbed to an invitation from a Manchester pupil to open a discussion at another local Philosophical Society. He snatched a fleeting visit to Oxford to take his degree on 3 March - and for a glimpse of his family - and was back in Manchester in time for his lectures by catching a train at three in the morning. The extra visit to the Potteries meant that Thomas was in Cleator Moor again on 8 March for a talk about Rousseau that turned into a session on socialism: "I found most of them were very weak Socialists - believing simply either in the expropriation of the rich by the poor, or the control by the State of bad Capitalists leaving good ones to go their own way." He stayed in the "clean and friendly" home of a Fred Steele and his family: a house with no lavatory. He was in Manchester for tea on 10 March with the educationist Lady (Shena) Simon - "gracious and fine-looking and vigorous" - and other members of the University. Thomas's dinner companions that evening were Frida Stewart and a young professor of Greek, Thomas Webster from Charterhouse and Christ Church. Thomas dined on 16 March with Dorothy and Robin who had come for their weekend with the Moberlys. Thomas left the family reunion early to give a talk about philosophy with fellow residents at the settlement. Dorothy arrived in Manchester from Edinburgh where the Jamesons' son, Andy approaching his eighteenth birthday, had after a bout of pleurisy fallen seriously and possibly dangerously ill with a bacillus in the blood. The situation was sufficiently alarming for two Edinburgh doctors

to have been joined in consultation by Andy's neurologist uncle, Hugo Cairns, and another London doctor. Thomas's parents returned to Oxford and received on 19 March a "bombshell" of a letter as they saw it - affecting Thomas's career prospects. The Colonial Office was renewing an interest in Thomas of which he was unaware. General Wauchope who met Thomas at the Jericho dig on 5 February 1933 had been alerted to Thomas's presence there in a despatch from the Colonial Office of 5 January 1933. About a year later Wauchope on 12 February 1934 wrote to Cunliffe-Lister, the Colonial Secretary, requesting provision in the revised budgetary estimates for the current year for the engagement of two additional British cadet officers (he pointed out that there had been no such appointment to the Palestine Government since 1929 when Hugh Foot was posted there). The Colonial Office supported the request and put it to the Lords Commissioners of Treasury on 22 February with a plea for a "very early reply" so that candidates could be selected before 1 April. The Treasury indicated approval, initially with a telephone call to the Colonial Office on 27 February and next day the vacancies were being handled by the promotions and appointments staff. A confidential message was sent on 6 March to Wauchope that appointment of two cadet officers was approved, but recommending that to secure the best candidates he should wait if possible for the annual selection process due in August. A wide and strong field of university candidates could be expected; "Selection now would be made from very small and inferior field with exception of T. Hodgkin if you think him suitable and if still available." Wauchope replied on 10 March with a suggestion that Hodgkin be appointed and that he would wait for a second cadet in the annual selection. Furse was instructed on 13 March to sound out Thomas Hodgkin and submit his candidacy if everything was correct. Accordingly Furse on 14 March sent an official letter inviting Thomas for a discussion in the following week if possible. The letter went to Bamburgh (where Thomas had been at the time of the abortive Gold Coast appointment in September 1932), and was forwarded to Oxford and then to Manchester, after Robin seeing the official envelope had first opened it. Thomas had no doubt that he did want to attend an interview at the Colonial Office (and had a tip-off from Eastwood about the possibility of Palestine). He wrote to Dorothy immediately that he had been happy as a temporary assistant philosophy lecturer, but was attracted by more practical work: "Palestine remains the pinnacle of my hopes - not permanently but say for 10 years: it is European in importance whereas Cyprus is Asiatic and trivial. With the increased European pressure on Jews Palestine becomes more and more vital It would be miserable to have another long parting: but my heart leaps at the thought of Arabs and my tongue tries to shape Arab remarks." His parents had mixed feelings, although they were emphatic that they would support whatever decision Thomas made. Robin wanted Thomas to take a long view that he might spend many years in foreign service and must consider how Palestine might affect an eventual marriage and children. His own talk with Moberly showed a possibility that Manchester might find a way of keeping him on, and Robin had little doubt that Thomas would have enough to live on if he decided to stay on in England where he could be reasonably sure of reaching a professorship if he stuck to philosophy. Thomas sat in an examination room on the evening of 21 March, half-dozing over Archbishop Temple's proofs for publication of the Gifford Lectures and invigilating his

first examination (in philosophy and political philosophy). He wrote back to Robin about the Palestine prospect: "Nationalism being most of the trouble - and that being due a good deal to sentiments as well as interests - and sentiments being alterable by social intercourse: and it is an advantage to have on the whole a liking for Jews - which not all I think, of the officials there have. Palestine is bound to reflect what happens in Europe immediately and violently - so that one wouldn't feel oneself cut off from the real movement of events." Robin, whose initial comments written at Oxford railway station were interrupted by the arrival of his sister Nellie's train, returned to the theme on 21 March with a prescient warning about Thomas's adaptability to official codes: "There is one other feature which I want you to be clear about before you make a definite decision. You must remember that when you enter the government service you will cease to be a free lance, and will be in duty bound to a discretion both in views and actions such as you have not had to endure in the past. You will have to learn to be businesslike and methodical and to bear fools gladly." Thomas resumed his unfinished letter of 21 March on the following day, and responded: "The practical life of a Government official might be the best possible discipline for removing my unbusinesslikeness. Even if painful it must be possible." Thomas spent the next day at a series of "non-committal" encounters with government officials in London. He had breakfast with Helen Sutherland and they walked down to Whitehall together for Thomas to visit the Colonial Office and meet Furse who asked him if he were certain that he wanted to go to Palestine but would not take an official answer until Thomas had talked to Eastwood. Thomas went through the motions of half an hour's talk to Eastwood about Palestine. He telephoned Furse to confirm that he would like to apply for the vacancy in the Palestine Administration. He met other officials (a son of Henry Newbolt and Furse's brother-in-law, and Owen Gwyn Revell Williams, a Lancing and Hertford high-flier of the Palestine department who told Thomas he was much bothered with Zionists) and had to write a note to the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies making the application. Furse explained that the decision went before a selection committee but as the members had seen Thomas two years before they would probably not want to see him again, and a decision could be expected before Easter. Thomas's sent his account of the London interviews to his mother in Treworgan from York where he was spending his weekend with the Archbishop after an overnight stay on a divan as a guest of Eastwood and his wife. Robin thought that Thomas would be offered the job and Dorothy suggested that her birthday present to Thomas might be new riding boots. Thomas had another session at Cleator Moor, rejoined his parents for a break from Easter Day, 1 April, without a response to his application to the Colonial Office, and was back in Cleator Moor for 13 April. He drew on the writings of G.D.H. Cole to lecture on Marx and lead a discussion (to shake Claribel Walker's Tory foundations). Dorothy went to her relatives in Edinburgh where Andy Jameson continued seriously ill. By 16 April it was clear that Andy had only a day or so to live, and he died on 18 April (he had turned eighteen the day before). When the funeral was held at Ardwall on 20 April Thomas walked grievingly from Cleator Moor most of the way to Whitehaven. He had heard from Eastwood that despite formalities and delays of four weeks an official letter was being sent from the Colonial Office offering him the Palestine appointment he so much desired. From Cleator Moor Thomas wrote to Dorothy: "I am tremendously

thankful to think of this future of the possibility of twenty, or even I suppose of forty perhaps, years of seeing things under discipline - detailed experience - dealing with people as I try to do here but dealing with them according to a plan which I don't have to try to invent, and all the time be uncertain of because I haven't really enough evidence to make a plan." Dorothy wrote that at dinner in Edinburgh after Andy's funeral the bereaved father Johnny Jameson asked the family to drink to the success of Thomas's career: "The whole family were shining with happiness at thy happiness." The letter from Downing Street, signed by Williams and dated 20 April 1934, advised that Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister proposed to select Thomas for probationary appointment to the Colonial Administrative Service as a cadet in the Palestine Civil Service - subject to his being passed as medically fit by the department's consulting physician (Thomas would pay the one and a half guineas' fee). He would be given a passage to Palestine, but must bind himself to repay to the Palestine Government the cost of the passage in the event of leaving the service within three years of the date of arrival in the colony for any other reason than mental or physical infirmity. Thomas must indicate the earliest date at which he would be prepared to leave for Palestine. In the last days of April Thomas packed his Manchester possessions and moved back to Oxford for the preparation. Robin and Dorothy waved him off on 12 May as he sailed from Southampton on the P & O steamship "Rajputana" on the India Mail and Passenger run. He had Oxford acquaintances and even a distant cousin on board with whom he could dine and share onshore excursions at ports of call. He found the voyage pleasant but negative: "too many meals, I am grown fat, too many English, too much organised indolence". Most of the passengers were government servants and the sailors seemed the most lively. Thomas was uncomfortable with the racial arrogance of passengers serving in India and was looking forward to Jerusalem and friends. On arrival he lodged in the old city of Jerusalem at the Austrian Hospice - "This island of German cleanliness and Catholic godliness seems strange and out of place and overprivileged", he wrote to Dorothy on 27 May. He could walk through a warren of little streets a quarter of a mile to the Secretariat opposite the Damascus Gate where he worked. He felt his own obligatory tidy dress an obstacle to chatting with the "beautiful slovenly people" he walked past. He was introduced to the task of drafting official letters: "I suppose like all beginnings it is a matter of learning a new language - and that is a long business. At dinner with Wauchope on 25 May he voiced respectable opinions: "In fact sheepishly and treacherously Tory, so that I was ashamed of myself of course I should never have the courage or folly to label myself Communist here (knowing what a red rag that is to people - nor even Socialist - which means the same but is a degree less frightening)". Robin in England was negotiating to buy as a weekend and summer home Cherry Orchard Cottage in the Broad Campden village he and Dorothy already new well. Thomas dined {check date } with Iliffe from the Palestine Archaeological Museum whom he had known during his archaeological stint. He went to Sunday lunch with Mrs Antonius and found himself dragged awkwardly into argument as she became passionate about the Arab cause and Thomas felt obliged to note the balancing case for Jews: "With the best will to be discreet in the world I don't see how one can avoid defensive argument sometimes even if one manages always to be avoid offensive". Thomas's immediate taskmaster in the Secretariat was the acting assistant chief secretary, Downing Charles

Thompson, a genial and talkative former Balliol exhibitioner who had recently married a Cypriot Marie Tacos - and this endeared him to Thomas. Thomas understood that he was expected to make formal calls on the wives of a dozen British officials - and even to leave cards though he had none. He did leave his name for the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem and he made and found friends of his own. During Thomas's first days at the Austrian Hospice he saw "a strange great bearded man like Tolstoy dressed in yellow and black striped silk, an Arab skirt, with Arab headdress who could only talk English". This turned out to be the sculptor and calligrapher Eric Gill, who had been invited by the government architect Austen Harrison to carve panels for the walls of the Rockefeller Museum. Gill spoke of a friend flying in from Cairo. Thomas eavesdropped and guessed correctly that it was the artist David Jones whom he knew well through Helen Sutherland (Helen bought from Jones a portrait he had painted of Thomas at Rock that was shown in 1930 at the Wertheim Gallery). Jones arrived by the end of May and Thomas began to meet up with him and with Gill for dinner and to talk and drink with them in his room afterwards. Jones was in poor physical and mental condition and found the streets of Jerusalem stressful. In Thomas's room he would talk till eleven or so at night. Thomas renewed contact with the Bowmans, went to them for Sunday lunch on 3 June and was forgiven for a rather a disorganised departure from Palestine nearly a year earlier. He broke away in time to take Gill and Jones for tea at the Tantur Hospice and to see Sister Matilda with whom he had tried out his Italian during the earlier stay. This first month in the new post was a strangely ambivalent time for Thomas, as Secretariat colleagues (and Robin) told him it took three to six months to understand the administrative system. He was cultivating his own contacts and broadly seeking to conform to official expectations. A colleague who returned to the Secretariat from secondment to the Government of Aden, Reginald Champion, was a brother-in-law of Thomas's Balliol tutor Duncan Macgregor: Thomas described Champion as "the right sort of picturesque desert-hankering near-Eastern Colonial servant". He wrote to Robin on 14 June about his long conversations with David Jones at the Hospice (where food was "troublesome") and dinner with Arthur Wauchope. David was "learned and wise and interested in the things that I am interested in, Jews and Crusades and the British empire, and makes admirable judgments about all of them, having Catholic wisdom without those particular Catholic prejudices that one doesn't like". At dinner with the High Commissioner he was regaled on Moselle and old brandy, roast pigeon and crme burl and could impress his host by boasting of a family connection to Johnny Jameson's older brother, General Sir Andrew McCulloch. Then in late June he accompanied the Gill family on a journey to Lake Galilee (Eric Gill was joined by his wife and the youngest of his three daughters, Joan Hague, by 8 June). In Jerusalem again on 26 June he attended a "Conversazione" of the Anglican Archbishop's and found himself in discussion on Oxford philosophy with the Jewish philosopher Leon Roth (as he recounted in a letter to Isaiah Berlin who was due to visit Palestine in September and to whom Thomas promised "a bevy of notables": "I know you expect to be critical but it would be much easier to understand or attempt to understand Zionism in your company and with your comments and explanations than it could be on my own".)

Wauchope's Private Secretary left for England at the end of June - "mysteriously", wrote Thomas - and Thomas after just a month in post found himself as acting Private Secretary to the High Commissioner, feeling rather as he had in his first term at Winchester, and sharing a little room of maps, red and blue pencils and telephones with ADCs, one moderately kind and the other "simply cold and handsome, a Seaforth Highlander of alabaster". From 1 July letters home were written on the crested writing paper of Government House and Thomas had to leave "the beautiful day-to-day life of living with the Gills and David" for the last ten days or so of their visit to Jerusalem, except when he could snatch a break to "creep back like a rather reformed Prince Henry". He thought the position "on the whole rather terrible" as it brought frequent official dinners and entertainment, much dressing up in ready-made tails, and no time to himself, especially to read, to write letters or to reflect. Poor compensation came from "the fun of jumping out of a car with a flag on it, springing to attention, being saluted by policeman" as he accompanied Wauchope on a visit - to see the mosaics at Bethlehem. Thomas was not used to diplomatic discretion: "I cannot help first beginning to talk politics with every foreign stranger I meet, second, always running down the country which I imagine he wants me to run down", he commented to Dorothy after a fortnight, but was learning how to avoid Palestinian politics. The ambivalence continued: Wauchope in the following week entertained Emir Abdullah ibn Hussein of Transjordan, son of one king and brother to another, and in the suite was Fuad Pasha Khatib who claimed a friendship with Thomas's uncle by marriage Haji Bullard - "that was a pleasant link to carry us through what might have been otherwise a rather strained lunch". Thomas made his first air journey - to Haifa for a return visit to the Crusader castle at Athlit. Thomas had previously been with John Richmond and Tom Boase; this time Thomas and an ADC flew in the cockpit of a tiny aircraft, Wauchope in another aircraft, and a police escort in a third. Then Thomas was in Wauchope's entourage for the Emir to receive displays of loyalty from Arab horsemen, and Thomas was forgiven for going to sleep at the Emir's dinner and during a long story told by the Emir. For much of the following week Wauchope was canvassing opinion among prominent Palestinian Jews about a Legislative Council whose establishment had already been under consideration for twelve years, as Britain contended with Arab and Jewish sensibilities and the possibility of boycott by one community or the other. Thomas, already looking forward to returning to routine obscurity and the Austrian Hospice when Wauchope would go on leave in late August, wrote to Dorothy on 29 July: "It is the Jews who are particularly against it now: they want to wait until they are in a majority in this country - though not every one supposes that they ever will be in a majority." He went to tea in the afternoon with Bowman and returned for another of Wauchope's consultation dinners with a guest (presumably David Ben-Gurion) whom Thomas described as "a lovely white-haired Labour man, a Russian Idealist who mumbles ". He continued the letter next day with the confession: "It is rather glorious to feel oneself one of the only three or four people in Palestine (I think) who knows the numbers which H.E, means to allot the Arabs and Jews and British Officials - even if I don't do more to the numbers than blot them". He was also meeting representatives of the Syrian nationalists. Dorothy and Robin had ordered tailor-made evening tails for him after the ready-made coat had been slow in arriving.

When Wauchope was away to celebrate 12 August by shooting sand-grouse at Beersheba, Thomas astonished the staff at the vast Government House by planning a long walk from Hebron to the ancient Herodium that would dispense with any of the "three stately well-bred Humbers" in the stables. Wauchope on 25 August wrote Thomas a warm letter of thanks for his two month stint as acting Private Secretary, described as no easy job taken on at short notice: "Apart from your work as Private Secretary it has been the greatest pleasure to have you as a companion in this house. I hope I may think that we have made good friends this summer and will continue to be so." He gave the letter to Thomas at the airfield where Thomas waved him off next day. Thomas then moved back that evening to the Austrian Hospice, writing from there next day to Dorothy: "I was really sad to see him go - it has been a happy period on the whole - the tension of his rather exacting ways probably helped to make it so - and I grew very much to enjoy evenings alone with him - when we talked as freely as Mary [Jameson] or Aunt Helen [Sutherland] about Shakespeare and Eternity." Thomas was eager to return to his lessons in Arabic and to learning his trade. He was finding congenial colleagues. In the early part of the year Wauchope had assigned an additional assistant to help deal with riots in the Northern District occurring by detaching the scholarly Stewart Perowne from the Secretariat to Haifa and then to Samaria. Perowne returned in August to Palestine for district duties but was retained in Jerusalem for a month because of staff shortages. An assistant secretary returning from leave, an Irish Jew named Max Nurock from Trinity College Dublin, was a new and helpful acquaintance to Thomas. Isaiah Berlin arrived in early September with another fellow of All Souls, John Foster, for a month's visit to Palestine. Thomas tried to find good company for Isaiah in Jerusalem, mostly Jews but able to ensure that he lunched on 9 September with George Antonius: Berlin "speaks Zionist opinions (without quite calling himself a Zionist) and I try to answer with British official opinions (without in the least calling myself a British Official), and as we neither of us claim to be expressing our own sentiments it is very amicable and pleasant". For the following weekend Thomas and Perowne took Berlin and Foster to Jerash - they slept out of doors, something Berlin claimed he had never done before. They went on to Amman. On return to Jerusalem Isaiah and Thomas dined with Leon Roth and the commissioner for immigration and statistics - a former scholar of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Eric Mills who was "reputed to be the most intelligent administrator in Palestine" and so chosen for Isaiah's benefit. The All Souls visitors went to Syria and northern Palestine for a few days, Perowne went off to Jaffa and Thomas under Nurock's guidance was learning about land questions. He sat up late on the night of 22 September chatting with Jews in a caf, including **** Levi Billig, the Professor of Oriental Languages at the Hebrew University. The talk went on until after midnight and Thomas found the door of the Hospice locked: "Knowing that I can sleep always anywhere and under any circumstances I lay down like Jacob - putting my coat under my head for a pillow, and a mat under my thigh for softness, and slept in the full moon." The sleep was broken by the loud noise of a wedding feast in the house opposite and the beat of drums. He dined rather sleepily with Thompson of the Secretariat on 23 September, and looked in on Isaiah at the boarding house to which he had just returned in Jerusalem: "I found him in bed pretending to be ill so as to avoid the Feast of the Tabernacles".

Thomas and Isaiah dined most nights for a week and on 29 September went for a donkey ride at sunset to the Mount of Olives. Isaiah was otherwise with a Jewish orthodox aunt and uncle, Ida and Yitzhak Samunov. He introduced Thomas to them and to one of his school friends, Emile Marmorstein, from Cambridge. Thomas on 30 September took Isaiah to a farewell lunch with Antonius: "The talk when it wasn't politics was music about which Isaiah bubbled brilliantly as he does - and the Antoniuses were pleased and impressed, glad to meet a fellow-highbrow and I got some of the reflected credit and sat quiet and drank my Volnay". Wauchope during his home leave accepted an invitation from Helen Sutherland and made a brief stay at Rock Hall, where David Jones and Thomas's father and brother were also guests. Helen was preparing to visit Thomas in Jerusalem on her way to Kenya where Heinrich Enderle, a German protg who had long been under her roof, was to be set up in a coffee farm. Wauchope invited Helen - with Thomas - to stay at Government House for the Jerusalem days. Thomas was reading the journals of the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, sent by Teddy. Thomas, with guidance from the inspector-general of police and prisons, R.G.B. Spicer, spent 30 on buying a pony: "This means that I shall get exercise twice a week I hope - huntin' it on Sundays and hackin' it on Wednesdays". He could keep it fed, exercised and groomed at the polo stables for another 4 a month, and was introduced on 21 October to the Ramle Vale Jackal Hounds - 5 subscription to the hunt. He asked Robin if a second-hand saddle could be bought for which he would pay and that might be brought out by Helen if this would not lead to "messing up all her exquisite luggage". Thomas went cubbing again on 28 October - "a Philistine and British activity" - joining the meet before dawn and feeling relieved that no jackal came directly his way. Thomas went to the hunt again the following Sunday on his pony - "trying not very successfully to make it distinguish between the quiet controlled canter that I wanted and the bolt that it wanted". He followed the early morning exercise with giving lunch to Wauchope's Arab private secretary, Ihsan Hashem (whose father-in-law Ibrahim Hashim was the Prime Minister of Transjordan), and dining with an Irish colleague, Pat Domvile, "a romantic Kiplingesque intelligence officer, who loves to moralize about life, the passions and God". He was about to lose the companionship of Stewart Perowne, who going as an assistant secretary to Malta (the Colonial Office officials in London were looking to appoint another assistant district commissioner for Palestine). Thomas, writing to Dorothy on 5 November, reported a rumour in Jerusalem that he might have to do another spell as Private Secretary when Wauchope returned from leave: "I pray not though I love him: I am bad at the job and I want to be independent". The rumour was confirmed but for only a fortnight pending the arrival of an appointee and by 13 November Thomas was writing again from Government House where he had moved back to prepare for Wauchope's return. Thomas succumbed to the extra comfort and it was convenient that Helen Sutherland who was on her way by ship (with the saddle for Thomas's pony) could be spared the chill of the Austrian Hospice and its poor cuisine. Thomas went hunting again on 18 November when Wauchope went to the opening meet of the new season - Thomas's pony was "much too full of beans but jumping like an angel - or an ostrich might perhaps be a truer simile". He hurried back for a walk with Bentwich, whose book "The Promised Land" he had been reading - and attended a dinner party of soldiers "during which I went to sleep but was forgiven".

Wauchope's flurry of nightly dinner parties was soon compounded by Helen's arrival by train at Lydda on 22 November for her visit to Jerusalem. Thomas snatched moments to show her the old town, the Damascus Gate and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She was impressed at Thomas's ease of contact in Arabic with street traders, but was finding the obligations of conversations at frequent mealtime meetings with Wauchope a strain. Within a couple of days she thought of moving to the Austrian Hospice but Wauchope pressed her to stay on (Helen confessed in a letter written over the days from 22 to 25 November to Dorothy as her confidante: "He was charming and kind and I felt it wasn't possible to do anything but accept"). She did go and see the Austrian Hospice - "These large generous sparsely furnished rooms and nuns all about". Thomas and Helen went sight-seeing on 25 November with another of Wauchope's house guests, the British Minister in Teheran Sir Reginald Hoare - whom Thomas characterised as "the blue-eyed scholarly restrained quietly humorous sort of old Etonian". Wauchope was in Amman on 26 November as Emir Abdullah's guest for a celebratory luncheon the eve of the marriage of the heir apparent Talal - "with a lot of fuss and food" - and this gave a welcome private space for Thomas and his godmother. Thomas had a further week of Government House official entertaining and more agreeably a long walk with Wauchope on 8 December to mark the end of the acting assignment - with the post now held by the "young High Church" Ralph Poston (whereas Wauchope was a member of the Presbyterian Church). Thomas saw Perowne off to Malta. The Colonial Office in London appointed another cadet for Palestine, Christopher Pirie-Gordon, to serve from early 1935 since Wauchope felt short-staffed in the districts. Thomas in Jerusalem dined with John Richmond who had been in England and Austria and was returning to Garstang's Jericho dig: Richmond "talked extremely sympathetically till eleven about Communism". Thomas was resettled at the Austrian Hospice from 9 December, at peace but feeling the cold and wondering whether in the long term he should move to "somewhere warmer and equally peaceful". He went to Humphrey Bowman for a few days at Christmas - "his flow of conversation is very easy to live with: his deeply ingrained Tory and Etonian prejudices are tempered by his affectionateness". Thomas had made a new acquaintance, an architect Pierce Hubbard - "young handsome and revolutionary" - a Rome Scholar who had run away from the British School At Rome, unhappy to work on imperial monuments rather than Byzantine churches. Thomas sensed friction with Colin Hardie and recounted his own mild quarrel over the abortive "offer" of appointment as librarian. Wauchope invited Thomas to dine on Christmas eve. Robin sent Thomas a telegram on 27 December to tell him of the death of Lucy Anna Hodgkin at the age of ninety-three. Thomas immediately wrote in condolence to his parents: "She and Treworgan have been such a recurrent thread It is the removal of a great area of beautiful life from all of us". Thomas took advantage of the holiday on New Year's Day of 1935 to walk down to Jericho in "still and sparkling" sunshine. He had planned to go with Iliffe from the Museum but ducked out when he found that Iliffe had asked several other people and came on some two hours behind the gaggle. He spent the whole day walking and in the evening met Garstang under whom he had conducted the archaeology apprenticeship of 1933 and he stayed as John Richmond's guest in the little house that had formerly been his own. Thomas kept up good relations with Wauchope - with an occasional walk or a discussion on Shakespeare, and some private secretary-like duties.

He was reading Tolstoy's "Resurrection" and in a letter to Mary Jameson on 19 January he questioned a common misapprehension that good servants enjoyed being servants, but could not enjoy a more varied and splendid sort of life. He was out hunting again next day. But more to enjoy the scenery - "The earth is tipsy with rain this winter" - and the Ramle market than for sport. Helen, on her way back from Kenya, spent a week at the Austrian Hospice and startled the nuns with her expectation of hot water four times a day and other comforts, but exercised beneficent pressure on the standards of cooking. Thomas and Helen entertained several of Thomas's English friends and they went for Sunday lunch on 27 January with the Antonius family - George and Katy and their small daughter Soraya known as "Tutu". After lunch they went on to visit the "runaway architect" Pierce Hubbard at a hillside village some four miles from Jerusalem, Ain Karim. Thomas looked at a house that he thought he might rent as more satisfactory than continuing hospice life - although the house had an elderly Greek nun as a sitting tenant in one bedroom. Thomas and Helen went to Galilee on 31 January and to Nazareth for an overnight stay and dined at Government House on 2 February on the eve of Helen's departure. Thomas, compiling reports on serious flooding in the districts and feeling that the information coming to the Secretariat was inadequate, was in February hankering for a posting: he wrote on 11 February: "It has reminded me that I want as soon as possible to be in a district, where one is or ought to be a factor in the events of the district and not only an observer and recorder, but perhaps the latter is what one is fated to be." Meanwhile he was going to rent the Ain Karim house at 30 for the year, would commission some additional furniture from a local carpenter and could secure the services of a Russian woman to cook and tidy cheaply. He went to the village on 12 February to see that some of the unwanted furniture was moved from the house. Thomas's pony was recovering from a cut so Thomas instead of hunting on 17 February went for a simple ride through orange groves. John Richmond, who finished his stint with Garstang in early March, joined Thomas, (who had twelve days' leave), for a riding expedition from 3 March to Transjordan (postponed from the beginning of the year when rain had made tracks impassable on horse or by car). Thomas drew on the slight connection he had to Prime Minister Ibrahim Hashim. This brought introductions to various hospitable sheikhs and Thomas noted in a letter of 8 March to his brother Teddy: "The world becomes one's oyster - and even if one sometimes may get tired of too many oysters it is a better diet than eating always the sopping brown bread of relations with the peasantry as in Bosnia." Thomas stayed, however, in what he categorised as the cheapest lodging house in Petra. He overheard two Arabs in the next door cubicle saying what seemed to be that he was the High Commissioner's Private Secretary sent to look for lands in the country for the Jews to buy. On return from leave Thomas took on the Ain Karim house and as servant and cook a Bethlehem Christian, Michail Jadallah Jagoman, while planning to keep a foothold at the hospice. He began with the untried cook some ambitious entertaining: on 15 March dinner guests were John Richmond and his mother Ann Richmond, Laurence and Cecily Binyon passing through after a lecture by Binyon in Egypt, Robin Furness, the Palestine Government Press Officer, and an English literature professor from Cairo University Christopher Scaife (who had connections with Thomas's cousin-in-law Rolf Gardiner

married to Maribel Hodgkin). Michail, the cook, made an omelette in the morning that he proposed to dish warmed up for the dinner guests and Thomas persuaded him to prepare the food fresh. The second dinner came on 16 March for Barbara Buckler (of whom Bickham Sweet-Escott had been unsuccessfully enamoured in Oxford in 1929) and a highbrow chaperone, Miss Evans. A third meal was given on 17 March for Austen Harrison and the Binyons who arrived at lunchtime at the cottage when "all the scents and colours and bird-noises which had been present during the damp cloudy morning became suddenly manifest and alive". Thomas was on his second night of moving in and had on the first night found sheets and on the second night blankets and the bed. The cook was found to be good at baked custard and could be accommodated in the house as he was apparently able to sleep through Thomas's late night typing of long letters home. Thomas attended parties in Jerusalem and continued the entertainment at Ain Karim. He gave Sunday lunch on 31 March to Furness again and his artist niece Diana Furness who was on a visit to Jerusalem and to the Chief Justice Sir Michael McDonnell and Lady McDonnell. Another visitor was Thomas's Balliol tutor, Duncan Macgregor, who had taken a term off for illness. Thomas wrote home with a gentle hint about a cookery book or two from which he might translate the simpler recipes into Arabic for the cook. Dorothy for Thomas's twenty-fifth birthday on 3 April sent a cake baked by May Fox, the family's cook in Oxford, and this was shared with dinner guests Pierce Hubbard and his wife Frances, Ann Richmond and an assistant district commissioner Lewis Andrews, a middle-aged Australian whom Thomas described in a letter to his mother on 8 April as "about the best administrator in the country". Thomas intended a reunion on 5 April with George White, who was travelling between Ceylon and Ireland, and set off for Port Said. He reached only as far as Gaza when he found that he had forgotten to bring his passport and could not think of a way to placate the Egyptian officials in time to reach Port Said before George White sailed on. Thomas attended a low mass on Palm Sunday on 14 April and that evening Frances and Pierce Hubbard were dinner guests again along with Harrison. Michail's usual baked custard was replaced by the second of his two puddings, Spanish bread - a variant of sponge pudding. During the following weekend - of Easter - Thomas was a guest of the Antonius household, and he reported in a letter of 22 April to Dorothy: "Katy Antonius I find now the most sympathetic and friendly person to be with of people in Jerusalem - and her home the pleasantest to be in." He walked on 23 April to witness part of a Moslem festival: "The Mufti and his sheikhs at home to anyone who likes to come - on the day that I was there there must have been about two or three thousand people there - every sort and degree - townspeople, fellahin and Bedus." Dorothy wrote to tell of the death of "Carr B, Robin's Bosanquet brother-in-law since 1902, and Thomas's replied that the thought of the child about to be born to Lucy might be a comfort to the newly widowed Nelly. Thomas had now spent a year away from home and wrote to Dorothy recalling their farewell at Southampton. He went in to Jerusalem early in the morning to work part of the day, attended a Benedictine church, returned to Ain Karim - where John Richmond was his house guest - and he entertained the Hubbards and Pat Domvile: the latter "is an Imperialist by conviction - the Hubbards are not - and will not even keep up British prestige in Jerusalem by wearing the right sort of trousers and hats". Thomas was enjoying the country life of Ain Karim and on 19 May he and Richmond gave a party in

the garden for fashionable Jerusalem friends "brought, along with some exquisite food, by Katy Antonius, a dainty proud reactionary Parisian Turkestan princess who is on her way to Mecca", and including the French and German consuls-general. Thomas had reservations: "It seems clearer and clearer that it is only simple people whose company one can really enjoy; bright amusing clever gay and odd people are a waste of time - I don't mean in themselves but as far as I am concerned." Thomas had secured a small room on the top floor of the Austrian Hospice where he could rest in the middle of the day or sleep at night if he did not want to return to the village. He had not ridden his pony for more than two months as it was stabled an hour's drive from Jerusalem and he arranged for the pony to be moved to Jerusalem where Ralph Poston would share the cost of stabling and either of them would ride the pony for exercise. The Secretariat closed for the King's official birthday in June and Thomas took the chance for exercise on a long walk with Richmond from Nablus down through the Jordan valley - though Richmond's feet became much blistered on the second day. Diana Furness on 15 June went back to England after some ten weeks' visit - the last days of which she spent with Katy Antonius. Diana had made a strong impression on Thomas but their encounters had been argumentative. He wrote to Dorothy that the parting had woken him up: "One must love people simply as themselves, not for the satisfaction to be got out of them or out of knowing them, I saw what a tremendous amount of self-love was included in what I thought was love for all the people that I am fond of." Thomas's work changed briefly in July when he was assigned to a district for three weeks to stand in for Pirie-Gordon in Haifa. He spent the first week staying in a Carmelite monastery above the harbour and the town (stretching a rule that permitted guests only a three-day stay) then moved into Pirie-Gordon's rooms. He also had a two-day break with Wauchope on a return visit to Athlit - sea-bathing and pleasant conversations with Wauchope and Poston. Thomas had been doubting the usefulness of his Secretariat work and was stimulated by the taste of the district: "If this sort of work could be made to continue it would give a different aspect to all that I said in my letter about a career", he wrote from an eating-house in Haifa on 15 July. Through the work in Haifa he was "compelled to deal with people" - especially the Arabs and their housing problems. He worked in harmony with a Russian Jew, a Persian and an Arab Moslem. From Haifa Thomas went with an Arab district administrative officer to visit the large prison at Acre. They saw little of the inside: "Soon after I arrived came a lorry load of prisoners covered with blood whose lorry had overturned on the road coming back from doing forced labour". One prisoner was dead and Thomas and his colleague stayed with the injured as they were carried to hospital and went round with warm water and iodine to the less badly hurt. He was troubled by the international context. He met a soldier in Haifa who had just done four years service in India - "horribly tamed bourgeoisified". Thomas commented in a letter to Teddy contemplating a tutoring post in India: "It is fearful how saturated with imperialist propaganda the army is." He argued further: "The beastliness of Mussolini's naked imperialism in Abyssinia ought to turn Liberal minded people who are imperialists in the ordinary way into anti-imperialists." Thomas travelled by train to Jerusalem on 21 July. He travelled first class on an official ticket and had time to read but regretted missing the people he might have spent in the third-class carriages: "One would probably have learnt more interesting things from them and enjoyed oneself more than reading".

He spent the night at the Austrian Hospice, returning to Ain Karim on 22 July after a day in the office. It was a kind of homecoming to the clerks, the bus driver, and to Nurock who was sensitive to the satisfaction Thomas had derived from the work in Haifa. Thomas, writing to Dorothy from Ain Karim on the evening of 22 July, reported: "From today I have started smoking cigarettes when, as a moment ago, I feel myself falling asleep: a good plan I think, though I have not learnt to keep the smoke out of my eyes." Thomas's anxieties continued. Some fourteen Communists in the Jerusalem prison were on hunger strike in the latter half of July because they were forced to wear prison clothing rather than their own clothing as political prisoners, since English law did not recognise a distinction. This was a tightening up on a rule that had been administered in a lax fashion. Thomas went to the prison and saw the prisoners through the bars but did not speak as he thought they would not listen to his views. He was also moved by the situation of some hundred and fifty imprisoned illegal immigrants, and compared them to the British colonists who sailed on the "Mayflower". Thomas wanted the hunger strike to stop but knew no Communists in the country who might be effective intermediaries. He went with John Richmond on 29 July to Tel Aviv to the Habimah theatre group, thinking that some of the players with their Moscow Arts Theatre background were partly sympathetic with Communists and might be listened to by the prisoners if the Government would let any of them go. He attended a play and sat afterwards with the actors for after-hours drinking of beer out of cups. The talk was inconclusive as it was with such "Labour people" as Ben-Gurion. He was also perturbed that the German Consul-General Wolff was being dismissed from the German foreign service (on a pension payable only in Germany) since his wife Ilse (with whom Thomas was becoming friendly through the Antonius connection) had a non-Aryan Jewish grandmother. Thomas rejoiced when Teddy was awarded a "glorious first" in history finals, and later offered cautious advice about a possible marriage between Teddy and Mary Jameson notwithstanding parental reticence about first cousin marriages. Thomas cited Lucy and Michael Gresford Jones "with every appearance of happiness" and expecting their first child. Thomas enjoyed sessions with village neighbours in the Ain Karim caf and being one of a handful of Wauchope's guests for a farewell dinner on 10 August before the High Commissioner's annual leave. Thomas remained after other guests had gone and talked about Palestine with Wauchope. Wauchope was taking to read on the voyage home a gift from Helen Sutherland of Robin Hodgkin's newly published first volume of "A History of the Anglo-Saxons". John Richmond after a long stay with Thomas in the Ain Karim house left on 15 August to study architecture in England as further preparation for archaeology. Thomas had valued his companionship - "the first person that I have thoroughly enjoyed living with since George White in Beaumont Street". Thomas read T.E. Lawrence's newly published version of "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" - given to him by Robin and by Wauchope. Thomas found lacking in Lawrence the appreciation "that British Imperialism was bound to have no use for Arab independence except as an idea to stir up Arabs with for its own imperialist ends". He included a poem mildly derisory of Britain and of Lawrence in a letter for Teddy's birthday on 25 August, and commented that though in contemporary Palestine the High Commissioner had a sense of obligation "that doesn't have any effect

on the broad national policy, in this country or elsewhere - for which I think a Marxist explanation (in so far as I know what that is) is the truest that can be got." Thomas was finding his way through his Secretariat work more speedily and proposed from the end of August to begin inviting half a dozen clerks to Ain Karim once a fortnight to discuss non-Palestinian politics. He wrote to Robin on 26 August that he would begin with Abyssinia about which he knew little: "Manchester and Cleator Moor have made me believe that you can have a fairly satisfactory discussion without much knowledge - more satisfactory of course if you have some." He was broadening his acquaintances in Ain Karim and in Jerusalem. His neighbour Aziza John was the Palestinian widow of a Northumbrian fancy-goods shop keeper and had brought up her family in Newcastle then returned to Ain Karim with two grown daughters who spoke in Northumbrian accents and were homesick for the north-east of England. Thomas visited the family on 8 September for tea and Chelsea-bun-like cake, gossiped in the village and gave supper to the Hubbards and talked of Communism until nearly midnight. Later in the month he entertained Clarissa Graves, (an older sister to the poet Robert Graves) who was in Jerusalem to prepare the setting up of a local broadcasting station and fulfilling a childhood wish to be in Palestine. Thomas saw her as "this side of middle age" (she was 42) and he was impressed by her eagerness to understand the country and the people. At the end of the month Thomas travelling with an Arab companion, Salim Husseini, visited Beduin tents on a three-day journey between Hebron and the Dead Sea. He wrote to Teddy on 28 September: "It is bad to drift like this into Lawrence-like idealization of the Bedu - but their manners are beautiful and their jokes what I can understand of them, good, and so is their appreciation of what they can understand of mine". One purpose of the ride was for Thomas to consider his future in the colonial service against a background clouded by Italy's impending invasion of Ethiopia and a glimmering of war in Europe. He sent the September letter to Teddy with a long further letter of 4 October: "It isn't war that makes my position illogical but it's war that shows up how illogical my position is, and it is bound to make me either withdraw from it or from my opinions. That suggests that it might be better to withdraw from the position, give up Govt. service now, while the going is good. The only clear thing is that I would welcome circumstances which would drive me out of the Government and though I can't now envisage clearly what they would be I pray that I may have good sense to recognise them when they occur. But I have agreed, so long as such circumstances don't arise, to stick in the Govt. - for the next few years anyhow." Thomas's agitation about the future of the world continued and he wrote to Dorothy on 14 October: "Italy's actions, which we see to be horrible, are the direct result of the greed and inhumanity of our class, not of the Italian ruling class, but of the ruling class of all European and Europeanised countries. Fascist society is not anything distinct from our society but another manifestation of it - in a more obviously brutalised form because its greed is less satisfied." Arab workers and shopkeepers went on strike on 26 October against Jewish immigration - and the smuggling of arms into Palestine that each side claimed were intended for the other. Since the buses were not running Thomas walked to Jerusalem from Ain Karim and spent Saturday evening in a long discussion with Katy Antonius and stayed overnight at the Austrian Hospice. He walked back to Ain Karim on

October 27 in time to entertain to supper his Hubbard neighbour's and Berlin's friend , an anti-Zionist but orthodox Jew who was becoming a friend of Thomas too. Thomas spent the evening of 6 November in discussion with Jews in Jerusalem of Zionist sympathies but "too intelligent and sensitive to feel altogether comfortable about it about living I mean a practically segregated life among hostile Arabs protected by British bayonets". Thomas perceived them on the edge of a bonfire or volcano and that the remedy lay in Communism or Socialism. He was continuing a political debate in his own mind and in family correspondence, and wrote to Dorothy: "If you look at the relation between rich and poor dynamically instead of statically, it shows itself as a permanent oppression of the poor by the rich simply because the rich is content to preserve the state of things in which he is comfortable and enjoys privileges and the poor man is uncomfortable and unprivileged, when that state of things could be altered." He wanted to take advantage of Teddy's forthcoming visit to stock up with a few pounds' worth of leftwing books that he could put on a shelf for Secretariat clerks in his discussion group to read. He was also discussing politics with Arab interlocutors: Sami Sarraj, a Syrian expelled from several neighbouring countries for writing articles against European intervention; Musa Alami, a Palestinian "dispossessed landowner" who had served as Wauchope's Arab private secretary. He noted an incident on 20 November when five Arabs and one English policeman were killed in a fight in the hills near Jenin in the beginning of what appeared to be a crusade against the English and the Jews: "Truly, all imperialism is fundamentally alike, I think - imposed by force and maintained by the fear of force and from time to time by actual force." He suggested the distinction between Italian and English imperialism was only a difference of degree. He was also beginning to think that even if he secured a transfer to the district administration it would be better not to stick for much longer in work that was on a small scale contradictory to his beliefs since it could lead to something contradictory on a larger scale and being "responsible for Police firing on Arab crowds for instance - not at all an impossible event if one was in a District". Katy Antonius remained the person with whom he found it easiest to talk politics, and he found some congenial minds among the English. He enjoyed the liberal nature of Robin Furness - "believes in people being as happy and as free as possible". He was meeting R.A. "Tony" Rendall (three years his senior in their house at Winchester), a BBC staff member who was seconded to the Palestine Government as adviser on broadcasting and expressed private fears that the corporation was becoming a government instrument. The circle was broadened with the arrival on 21 November of a close friend of the artist David Jones who recommended her to Thomas (and to Teddy). She was the personable Lady Prudence Pelham (younger daughter of the sixth Earl of Chichester and three days younger than Thomas) who through study under Eric Gill had become expert at lettercarving. David Jones took her in the summer of 1935 to stay with Helen Sutherland where her exhilarating character made her an incongruous guest for the refined delicacy of the hospitality at Rock Hall. Prudence followed up the introduction to Thomas and wrote to David Jones from the Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 November: "We talked and talked till it made us quite ill - I hadn't talked to anybody in English since the two buglers." Thomas took to Prudence instantly: "She has been travelling with beautiful independence through Syria, in the best way, meeting the human beings she happens to

come across, staying as long in a place as she likes it - the only check on her is how long her money will last out." Teddy was arriving in Palestine on 28 November. Thomas set out on the first bus of the day from Jerusalem for Jaffa intending to meet the boat early in the morning, only to find that the boat would not dock until mid-morning so he returned to work at the Secretariat where Teddy found him in the afternoon. They went off to talk over beer and sausages, had tea with the Bowmans and supper with Furness and Prudence on Teddy's first evening in Jerusalem. Thomas had been thinking about expeditions for Teddy - and Katy Antonius offered the hospitality of her father's Cairo house in Maadi for early December - but Thomas could not secure leave from the Secretariat until 15 December. Through the first days of December Thomas worked at the Secretariat and Teddy read in the Rockefeller Museum library about Edward I's thirteenth century "crusade" to Tunis and Acre before his accession. The Hodgkins were in the evenings entertained by a succession of Thomas's colleagues and friends in Jerusalem while Prudence spent some time in and around Amman. They settled in principle to use Thomas's three weeks of leave to ride to Petra and Aqaba and into the Sinai - this meant braving winter cold. The Hodgkins had reckoned without Prudence's ill-health (a chronic problem for her) and final arrangements became uncertain. As Thomas and Teddy prepared on 16 December to set out Prudence telephoned to say that she was ill in Amman - "a cold, a temperature, and a lump over the eye" - and could not start with them. Thomas and Teddy made a belated going by horse southwards from Bethlehem to the Dead Sea with Howeitat Beduin guides, Mohammed and Ali. They rounded the southern end of the sea and went up to Kerak where they stayed with an Irish Catholic Liverpudlian priest and were joined by Prudence on 22 December. They went south through the Wadi Arabah to the Crusader castle at Shobek, spending a cold night on the mountains with Bedus and a warm night in a room in the castle tower, then on to Petra by 28 December. The settled into a cave where log fires could be made on the sandy floor. They had camp followers in half a dozen Arab travelling companions and in the owners of camels they now hired and their dependants: "It is like paying for the upkeep of a mercenary army that you've hired when you can't fight because of the rains", Thomas wrote to Dorothy on 30 December. They grappled with the cold, with bites from bed-bugs, with Prudence's malaria and an unidentified sickness that ailed Teddy. They carried on to Maan where they had supper with Hamid Sharari Pasha, the mayor, and next day went on by car to Aqaba. Their caravan then turned into the scantily populated Sinai peninsula: eight days of arduous journeying on a diet mainly of home-made Arab bread, bully beef, sardines, dates and halva. This was slower travelling than the six days Thomas had allowed and about a week into the new year of 1936 they reached the relative comfort of St Catherine's Monastery where twice a day the cook asked what they wanted for the next meal. They were the only guests and Thomas tried out his "very ineffective halting Greek" with the monk looking after the visitors. Thomas wired the Secretariat about his late return from leave, joined the monks for predawn services, and with some difficulty organised motor transport for Teddy, Prudence and himself to got to Suez and to Cairo. Teddy was able to see a doctor (his malaise was diagnosed as jaundice) and he and Prudence were introduced by Katy Antonius to a

widening circle of interesting people in Egypt. Thomas on 15 January rushed reluctantly back to work in Jerusalem and was cheered only by the friendly welcome of the typists and later by a gift from Austen Harrison of Sidney and Beatrice Webb's approving book on their 1932 visit to the Soviet Union. Thomas made two long expensive telephone calls to Teddy in Cairo and uncharacteristically put off for five days a letter home to announce his safe arrival and to share his news: Teddy and Prudence "enjoy one another's company a great deal - I enjoy theirs and wish I was back there with him". He looked forward to the prospect within a month of a visit by Dorothy and Robin with Mary Jameson and included guidance on clothes for the seasonal climate and details of the accommodation he had booked for them in the Austrian Hospice: "one palatial one (in size), with frescoed angels peeling off the ceiling a nice small room for Mary on the top floor next to the ones Teddy and I use when we sleep there". Prudence and Teddy returned to Jerusalem early in February and shared their time between the city and the village house at Ain Karim. Prudence with a commission from Wauchope carved an inscription stone for an extension to the agricultural school at Tulkarm. Dorothy and Robin travelled to Palestine later in February, taking their niece Mary Jameson with them. They reached Jerusalem early on 20 February and were met by Thomas and Teddy. The purpose was not only a family reunion after some twenty months' absence from Thomas. It was a clear understanding on both sides that this would be the opportunity to discuss Thomas's future and whether he would choose to continue in his job with the colonial administration. Thomas was wavering between an early resignation and waiting to try the experience of a district assignment in Haifa. Thomas and Teddy saw Dorothy, Robin and Mary off from Haifa (on the Jugoslav-Orient ship "S.S. Princesa Olga on the afternoon of Good Friday 10 April). Thomas's parents were in little doubt about the choice he would make. The Secretariat officials already had a sense of Thomas's disquiets; verses he wrote and left in his office had in February fallen into the hands of a senior colleague. Thomas discussed his thoughts of resignation with Nurock who in turn alerted Wauchope. Wauchope let it be known through Nurock that he was sympathetic and would not put pressure on Thomas to remain. Nurock relayed this to Thomas on Easter Sunday, 12 April. Robin wrote to Thomas on 11 April from the ship on the voyage home: "I do feel for you now having to decide this problem and when and how you announce your resignation". The outstanding question was whether Thomas would take home leave in the summer to consider the step he would take after leaving the service (the course favoured by his parents and by Nurock) or offer an immediate resignation. Robin prepared an explanatory letter of his own to Wauchope in case Thomas wished to submit this along with a letter of resignation. Thomas worked on the text of a resignation letter and by 14 April he had a complete draft for Teddy's approval. Thomas was on the eve of a temporary transfer to Haifa to replace a colleague suffering from scarlet fever . A year earlier Thomas had pined for a district but this sudden assignment meant going away from Ain Karim, from Teddy and from Prudence who had just returned from another bout of travel in Transjordan, and at a critical moment in Palestinian history. Thomas took a room in the German Hospice at Haifa and began working under the acting District Commissioner for the Northern District, Morris Bailey.

In a hold-up incident in Nablus on 15 April one Jew was killed and two seriously wounded. The killing on 17 April of two Arabs was, according to news agency reports, believed to be a Jewish reprisal. During the funeral of the Arab dead Jewish crowds demonstrated in Tel Aviv and tried to move towards Jaffa. Police who prevented the movement were stoned. On 18 April came reports of assaults on Arabs by Jews in Tel Aviv, and rumours of more Arab deaths. Clashes between Jews and Arabs brought more police intervention - "The Times" of 20 April 1936 carried over a Reuter report the headline "Racial riots in Palestine", although the main foreign news space was devoted to the Italian war on Ethiopia. Thomas letter of resignation prepared before the outbreak was dated 20 April and sent on 21 April from Haifa. He applied formally to the Chief Secretary for permission to resign from the public service of Palestine with three months' notice. He asked for leave to remain in Palestine and Transjordan privately for about six months after his resignation had taken effect - partly among Arabs in a village or among Beduin and partly in a Jewish settlement. Thomas sent Robin's additional note to Wauchope and he himself wrote at length to Wauchope to explain the reasons that had made him decide to resign. He argued that the previous two years had confirmed him in Socialist views that he had held more vaguely when he came to Palestine. If he had been sure of them earlier he hoped he would have been sensible enough not to apply for a Colonial Office appointment. He regretted that he had partly misled the Colonial Office. What now interested him was the establishment of Socialist societies in countries that presently had Capitalist societies. Living or working in a Capitalist country was bound to make one to some extent the servant of Capitalism, but it would be possible to find a job that gave more opportunities of working towards a Socialist society or making conditions more tolerable for people within the existing Capitalist society. Thomas felt that he had not been precipitate as a year had elapsed since he first thought of resigning. The contradiction lay in his dislike of the concentration of wealth and privileges and political power in the hands of one class at the expense of another class and in the hands of one race at the expense of another race; Palestine showed both phenomena. His sympathies were with the exploited class and with the exploited race. His work consisted in trying to preserve the status quo. What Thomas hoped to salvage was time in the Near East to study the regional issues more deeply. The volatile situation in Palestine and strike action on 19 and 20 April spread to a general strike by the Arabs from 23 April on the lines of similar protest in Syria in January and February of that year. Thomas in the District Commissioner's Office in Haifa found himself with the "unpleasant" task of receiving and writing and passing on telephone reports on the opposition action: "These bare police accounts written in hackneyed terms don't give any idea of what is really happening - and I am too tired and lazy to try to find people in the town to tell me what is happening at night when my work is finished," he wrote to Robin on 23 April. He was seeing Pierce Hubbard who used the Hospice as a Haifa base. Teddy in Jerusalem had met in the King David Hotel Thomas's Balliol contemporary, Henry D'Avigdor-Goldsmid from a family prominent in Anglo-Jewry and who looked Thomas up in Haifa. Both were among Derek Kahn's converts to Socialism, Thomas wrote. Wauchope replied privately to the resignation letters: "I am no lover of the capitalist system: but I don't feel capable of even helping to put another in its place. So I try to lessen the evil I find."

Official action against the strikers made Thomas thankful that he would soon end his participation in the Palestine government actions. Crowds were fired on, prison sentences up to six months were given for picketing, and up to three years for stone throwing at policemen. He wrote to Dorothy on 30 April about arrests without charge of 75 Communists "on suspicion of being the sort of people to cause a breach of the peace". The Chief Secretary, John Hathorn Hall, sent on 2 May an official reply to Thomas's formal resignation. The application was granted and he was permitted to resign: "His Excellency trusts that you will be prepared to remain in the public service until arrangements have been made for the arrival of your successor, which will be expedited as much as possible." The request to be given leave to remain in Palestine and Transjordan for six months was rejected on the grounds that it could cause embarrassment to government and give rise to local comment and surmise as to his objects and intentions: "His Excellency is sure, therefore, that, having reflected on the matter in the light of these considerations, you will withdraw this particular request." The tail of the letter carried an intimation that the government would not press for recovery of any part of the cost of the free passage provided him on first appointment - and he would be allowed a passage allowance for return to the United Kingdom. For the closing week of Teddy's visit to Palestine Thomas moved briefly to the Stella Maris Carmelite monastery overlooking the sea to be joined by Prudence who had delivered the inscription stone, the Ain Karim schoolmaster Abdelrahman Sinokrot whose pupils were on strike, Michail the cook and again by Teddy who had collected his luggage from Ain Karim. They made an outing on 3 May to Athlit and Tantura and spent an evening at Acre. The three-day limit on guests made them move on to the German hospice and Teddy was given a send-off when he took the boat from Haifa on 6 May. Thomas and Prudence were "turned out" of the German hospice and had a tavern supper with Pierce Hubbard on 8 May. Prudence was thinking of staying on in Haifa for a while. She borrowed Hubbard's room for one night, stayed another in a hotel and a third dossing on the floor of Thomas's office in the District Commissioner headquarters with desk baize covers as bedding - while Thomas slept in a corridor. Thomas that day - and with much hesitation - responded to the Chief Secretary's letter of 2 May and confirmed his willingness to remain in public service until arrangements had been made for the arrival of his successor. He rented on 11 May two stone-floored rooms (each at one pound a month for himself and for Prudence) in the house of Butrus the potter and his wife Dora on the Khayat beach some two miles southwards of Haifa. He spent as little of the day in the office as possible and much of it as possible with Prudence in these new surroundings. In the light of the government's handling of the strike and the disturbances Thomas was reconsidering his undertaking to remain in the service by working out his notice or until he was replaced. He felt that ordinary work of administration was reduced almost to nothing and that he was being forced into what was virtually War Office work. Prudence had taken a notion (from reading "Tancred") of going to Jebel Ansariya in Syrian a centre of worship for the goddess Ashtoreth or Astarte. Robin in London for his historical research spent a night with the Cairns family and asked Hugo if he could suggest the right plan for tackling Thomas's rather bad case of the "sleeping sickness" that ran through the Hodgkin family. Hugo told him of new discoveries of the effect of excess of insulin in the system, and that in any case Thomas

might be showing the result of a faulty metabolism. Thomas should come into the London Hospital for a full examination when his resignation took effect. Robin urged in a letter of 15 May that Thomas should postpone the plan of living somewhere amongst the Arab people until he had had the tests. The Chief Secretary's office on 25 May sent an official reply to Thomas's undertaking of 10 May. Recruitment of a successor to the cadet post would be held for August but the High Commissioner had requested that an officer already serving overseas be appointed to take Thomas's place in Palestine. Thomas's application for local leave or for permission to spend some time in Palestine or Transjordan was put on hold "until normal conditions have been restored in the country in view of all officers of the District Administration". Prudence on 26 May took the train to Jerusalem to settle her accommodation bills and pack up her belongings. Dorothy was uncomfortable about the propriety of Thomas and Prudence sharing a house, as she reiterated in a letter of 26 May from Cherry Orchard Cottage (where she and Robin were spending the summer). She had entertained to lunch the previous day Robin's relatives, Ella Pease and Flo Maclean (who lived at Ross-onWye nearby): "Flo's son Peter is teaching at Marylebone Grammar School and was 'never so happy in his life'. He lives in digs with U. Lambert who is doing the same work . I gathered that both his choice of a career and his happiness in it were a source of great surprise to his family." Peter Maclean was a Cambridge graduate who had taken a teacher training course; Uvedale Lambert was Thomas's friend and cycling companion from Winchester days. Thomas had already decided it was time to leave his appointment in Palestine: he wrote letters to the most senior Palestine Government representatives asking to be allowed to resign at once. He handed to Bailey on 27 May his letter to the Chief Secretary with its argument that as long as the government's attitude to the Arabs was mainly defensive he had thought it possible to remain, but now that the government appeared to have taken up the offensive against the Arabs he found it not only repugnant but morally impossible to participate in government's repressive measures. He instanced deportations of political leaders and punitive raids against villages carried out by police or troops or both. Since a decision on his remaining in Palestine or Transjordan was deferred Thomas proposed instead to stay some time in Syria or the Lebanon. Nurock had again alerted Wauchope to Thomas's anxiety to leave the service at once and Wauchope was again sympathetic. In a hand-written personal letter to Thomas written on 27 May before the arrival of Thomas's formal request Wauchope replied that he would accept the fact and resignation: "I agree with you that differences in political opinion need not interfere with friendship, and I hope very much you and I will meet again when we are both living under happier conditions than either of us are at present." After the formal letters arrived Wauchope added a further note on 29 May that the request to leave government service would at once be granted: "Let me know if you are coming to Jerusalem before you go if you'd like to meet." Nurock telephoned Thomas on the evening of 30 May to say that a letter was being sent from Jerusalem to Bailey in Haifa that Thomas was released from the government. The violence of military raids against villages in the Northern District in the preceding days made Thomas more than ever certain of his decision: "I feel that when a Government behaves as this Government is behaving the only sensible course for me is to desert it,"

he wrote to Robin on 31 May. He was half-done on an article the could be sent to the newspapers "now so deluged with the Zionist and Imperialist statements of the case". Wauchope was still taking a personal interest in Thomas and wrote again privately on 31 May sending a pamphlet about schemes of working on a non-capitalist basis and recommending him to a personal contact at Friends House in London. Wauchope commented: "I look back on the months you worked with me here with nothing but pleasure and memory of happy hours. Bless you my dear Thomas - a French woman once said of me Arthur, coeur de chrystal. I do not deserve that. I believe you do." George Antonius arrived in Haifa, en route from Turkey to Jerusalem, and when they met on 1 June Antonius supported Thomas's resignation decisions and the article he was writing and offered hospitality in Jerusalem. Thomas finished the article and at the end of the first week of June he sent it to Sigle Lynd (she worked for the publisher Victor Gollancz who with John Strachey and Harold Laski had just initiated the Left Book Club to oppose Nazism and Fascism). Prudence sent another copy to Teddy. Thomas sent a cheque dated 6 June to Michail and instructions on dealing with personal effects in Ain Karim. Dorothy and Robin were in Bamburgh on 8 June for the dedication of a stained glass window in the village church commissioned to commemorate the brief lives of Andrew Jameson and Betty Hodgkin. Dorothy went on to Edinburgh and Robin returned to Oxford to find from Thomas a long exposition of his plans to write about the worsening situation in Palestine - he forwarded it to Dorothy. Additional emergency regulations were published in Palestine providing for the imposition of a death or life imprisonment sentence for discharging any firearm at any member of the Crown forces or the police force, and for the throwing of any bomb or other explosive or incendiary substance with intention to cause death or injury to any person or damage to any property. The Arabic press reported Thomas's resignation and he was billed as "a noble great Englishmen" resigning for the Arab cause. Dorothy wrote to Thomas on 11 June of her anxiety that although he was free of government "the fact remains that for two years you have been in their confidence and employment, and have still the friendship of many who remain working for it". Robin replied to Thomas on 12 June that he must be careful not to use any information that came to him in his official capacity: the publication would be suppressed and the author and possibly the publishers could face criminal proceedings. Dorothy had written to him pressing the legal and moral constraints that he endorsed. Thomas, who was planning to go to the Lebanese port of Sidon while Prudence stayed on in Palestine, worked on a "restrained letter" about Palestine to the "Manchester Guardian". The article had in principle already found a home. Sigle wrote on 12 June: "I have immediately placed your excellent article, and the paper has asked me to ask you at once what should be done about mentioning its authorship" (she did not identify that she was dealing with Hugo Rathbone for the July issue of "The Labour Monthly", a Communist journal founded by Rajani Palme Dutt). If Thomas intended to stay on in Palestine Sigle doubted that his name should be used: "Anyone criticising British administration at all may be thought an undesirable in that country just now?" She also drew attention to a particular news interest in Arab evictions through sales of land. The Palestine authorities were already reacting. Thomas was instructed by Bailey to leave Palestine within two days. Prudence remained in the potter's house but felt she was

followed and that her room was being searched when she was out; it was possible the British authorities thought that Thomas had not really left the country despite his being "seen off" by police. Thomas left for Sidon on 15 June and booked into the Hotel Phoenicia. As a stranger in town he was immediately invited to supper by a new acquaintance, a local worthy Hassan Effendi Zain. He wrote to Dorothy: "I feel great relief at being out of the Govt. The Govt is probably relieved too that I am out of it". Thomas's first thought on Sigle's question was that the article should be published under his name since the authorship would in any case be recognised by the government. On reflection he decided that his parents and other family members would prefer the article to be anonymous - for the general sake of the Hodgkin name. He asked Sigle to let the article appear without his name but with a note to the effect that the writer of the article had lived in and been closely acquainted with Palestine for some years. He also made minor cuts to conform with his parents' concern that there should be no information drawn from his past privileged position within government. The journal chose the by-line "British Resident". Teddy had offered his copy of the article for anonymous publication in "Left Review" (Harry Pollitt, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, liked the piece), but Teddy and Sigle in consultation agreed that "The Labour Monthly" should remain the platform (there was overlapping readership between the publications). A substantial debate on Palestine was held in the British Parliament on 19 June in which the Secretary of State for the Colonies W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore (who had taken the portfolio on 29 May) confirmed earlier indications that once "order was restored" the King would be advised to appoint a Royal Commission to visit Palestine. Teddy wrote on 21 June that he thought Thomas's first article admirable as a short exposure and that in Syria he should write a really full article on labour, land and housing conditions. Trade between Lebanon and Palestine was hit by the strike and public sympathy in Sidon lay with the Palestinian Arabs so that Thomas noted an anti-Jewish anti-foreigner feeling. He found himself in the ironic position of being harassed in the street by young men and boys taking him for a Jew. He was drafting more articles - one on Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom and another about Zionism in Palestine. He was considering medium term plans and he wrote to Robin on 22 June that he was thinking of coming home in September and seeking more information about the chances of teaching in grammar school or possibly an elementary school. Prudence sent him a cutting from "The Palestine Post" about a scheme to use the Royal Engineers to demolish part of the old city of Jaffa to build new roads. Thomas wrote a brief ironic piece about improvements to "the conditions of native populations in the Empire" and "these splendid slum-clearing Royal Engineers". The first birthday honours of the reign of Edward VIII (since his succession on 20 January to George V) appeared on 23 June and Dorothy wrote to Thomas of a knighthood for her brother-in-law Haji Bullard Minister designate to the King of Saudi Arabia; Robin wrote to him of the third peerage to be created among his Pease cousins - for "Montie" Pease (the Lloyds Bank chairman J.W. Beaumont Pease). Thomas sent his news comment on "Slum clearance in the Empire" to Sigle who offered it to the "Daily Worker". Thomas travelled on to Beirut at the beginning of July and stayed with the British viceconsul Baldwin (whose guest he had been in June 1933) whom he found "intelligent,

especially about Arab matters - useful to talk to, and very easy going: the best type of person to stay with". Prudence arrived in Beirut suffering from fleabites from the pottery that had given her a poisoned leg. Thomas in his first article sought to counter misreporting in the English press of the Palestine disturbances and especially the falsehood that Britain as the holder of mandated authority used gentle methods to repress the disturbances. He suggested that the Arab struggle against Zionism had obscured the struggle against British rule and identified three demands of the strike: "They are:(i) the immediate stoppage of Jewish immigration; (ii) the introduction of legislation to prevent further sales of land by Arabs to Jews; (iii) the setting up of a responsible national government." He contrasted England's attitude to Italy's treatment of Abyssinia and her own treatment of the Arabs of Palestine: "Palestine, like Abyssinia, was conquered in the course of an imperialist war." Robin on 3 July wrote to comment on Thomas's article: "What the intelligentsia will want to know is - Where and when did we go wrong? Was the Zionist Plan hopeless from the outset? (I suppose it was) Are the Arabs capable of selfgovernment now? If so, what is to be done with the Jews already in the country?" Thomas in his second discussion of the Palestine issue was drafting a fuller article starting from the House of Commons debate and "trying to point out the futility of the thesis - 'Zionist immigration has made the Palestinian Arabs prosperous: therefore the Palestine Arabs have nothing to complain of'", as he explained in a letter to Teddy on 3 July. The article was going slowly and he thought it would take another week. He sent to Teddy on 12 July the manuscript over which he had sweated: "It is rather messy - a good deal owing to my having sweated onto the pages." Thomas thought it might be suitable for "The Labour Monthly" again - or an extract would show the self-contained refutation of the Zionist prosperity argument. He also disclosed to Teddy (to be kept quiet from parents already anxious about the journalism and Prudence) that Baldwin had told him that his consulate for Lebanon had instructions from Jerusalem not to give Thomas a visa for Palestine if he applied for one: "So I am banished. Banishd. It is a nuisance - I don't know the reason. But I seemed to be very much under suspicion the last fortnight when I stayed in Palestine after having resigned ". He concluded ironically: "Anyhow I hope that the High Commissioner will go to Ain Karim and pack my boxes - if he won't let me come to Palestine to pack them myself." With the second article finished Thomas felt free to travel again and he went north the Lebanese port of Tripoli, from where he wrote to Teddy that he and Prudence thought that the second Palestine article might be published as a pamphlet. He asked Teddy to see that the first article in "The Labour Monthly" should be sent to friends including Eric Gill, George White, Isaiah Berlin, John Fulton, Helen Sutherland. Randall Swingler, Wilfrid Lunn and John Richmond "and anyone else that you can think of". He asked for a dozen copies to be sent to him for distribution in Palestine. Prudence had sustained her idea of visiting the votaries of Astarte and was making the journey by motor car. Baldwin thought she should not go alone and Thomas accompanied her, although he planned to go only as far as Aleppo in Syria. They were in Tartous on 19 July where Thomas thought the church one of the loveliest he had ever seen. He wrote to Robin explaining about the journey and his respect for Prudence: "Her intellectual

honesty, dislike of hypocrisy, kindness to people, dislike of sentimentality are all qualities that I admire and possess in a much less degree than she." They made a round of crusader castles - to Hama through Markab, Kadmous (staying in the house of a Christian Gendarme) and Massiaf (after a car break-down that made them plus a hitchhiker sleep out under the cover of bushes with a fire all night to keep off hyenas, wolves and lions). Dorothy and Robin house hunted in Gloucestershire for a permanent home to replace the house at 20 Bradmore Road in Oxford (his retirement was close and they expected both sons to be living elsewhere). They had been thinking since 15 July of an old house on the outskirts of Chipping Campden with a fine garden and a barn turned into a Badminton court. They made a prolonged inspection on 22 July with Robin's sister Violet Holdsworth who had just arrived on a visit from Cornwall. The Hodgkins had almost decided to take the house despite its expense and defects (no back stairs and only one bath). Robin formulated a letter offering almost the asking price and Dorothy planned to type it for the early morning post on 23 July. The breakfast post brought particulars of another house that seemed a better proposition. The property was on offer as a principal residence, three cottages, four garages and gardens with orchard paddocks, or as an entire estates with an additional four secondary residences. Robin was keen to see but Dorothy was hesitant since it was a wet day. Violet recounted the outcome in a letter intended to be passed along her close family network: "So we went off to see it in the rain and R and D felt at once that it was THE ONE they have been waiting for all this time: 'Just dropped from Heaven' D says. Robins face was all wreathed with smiles coming home (most lovely to see) and he had actually bought it - and three cottages before I came down for tea!!!" Robin had telephoned the agent with an offer of 6,250 and a return call was made with the seller's acceptance. The house that had gone through several transformations since its sixteenth century origins was Crab Mill, named for crab apples in the orchard, in the Warwickshire village of Ilmington (where the Manor House belonged to the Flower family, brewers and patrons of the Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon). It was a substantial house built of Cotswold stone, with six main bedrooms and three double bedrooms for servants, and was for sale since the recent death of Caroline, Lady Borwick. While Robin and Violet attended a performance of "King Lear" at Stratford on the evening of 23 July Dorothy wrote to Thomas that a large library was the special attraction of a house that she and Robin believed their sons would like "and other people too - friends who want peace and beauty". She sent on an information sheet about teacher training that had arrived. Dorothy and Robin returned to Crab Mill on 25 July and met the barrister owner. They looked at the other houses on offer and Robin decided to raise his offer by some 5,000 and buy the whole estate of eleven houses and cottages to include rental property as an investment for retirement. Teddy was taken on 26 July to see Crab Mill and found it pleasing. Robin wrote on 27 July to Cyril Humphries about this purchase of "a permanent home in the country with some nice cottages attached to it". He asked if Cyril and Annie (with their small daughter Christine, Teddy's godchild) would like to try the country instead of the town life in Oxford - with Cyril helping with the garden or the car. This would make them neighbours and helpers for Cookie (still May Fox). Dorothy and Robin showed the Humphreys the estate and their prospective cottage on 2 August and they too were pleased.

Thomas collected the family news in a sheaf of letters at Aleppo where he suffered an eruption of carbuncles, treated by a Syrian nationalist friend of George Antonius named Abdul Rahman Kayyali ("has a general view of imperialism and not a merely local one"). Prudence's constant illness and his own feebleness threatened to change "our pleasant friendship to a state of nervous antipathy", he confessed in a letter to Teddy, but a temporary improvement in Prudence's health made them friends again. Thomas proposed to return to England by mid-September to begin a teaching course at London University "to begin it and to try to make up my mind whether or not to continue it". Thomas wrote to Dorothy on 8 August that he hoped to settle in some Druze village in the Lebanon - where it would be cool enough to write - before the next term's course at London University. Thomas was trying at a distance to settle domestic affairs in Ain Karim - since his ban from Palestine thwarted his plan of returning to deal with matters in person. The bank had failed to cash Thomas's June cheque to Michail (Thomas wrote two letters of query to the bank and the June statement showed sufficient credit). He sent Michail a new cheque and fresh instructions. Thomas's pursuit of the prospect of school teaching had taken his parents rather by surprise although they had assisted in the collection of information. Robin wrote on 8 August: "I wish I could feel more sure that your teaching plan is the right one." He feared that working in a government school would be not unlike working in the civil service in Palestine; he raised a spectre of Thomas's "Marxian principles". He wrote again on 10 August of his concern that Thomas would be returning at the last moment for the training course, and his continuing preoccupation that Thomas should allow time to tackle the problem of his "sleeping sickness" before settling down to his next career move. The Hodgkins in Broad Campden on 12 August had an unexpected visit from Jocelyn Morton, a Queen's College undergraduate under Robin's moral tutorship, who brought his older brother Alastair Morton - they were in the third generation of a family textile firm prominent in Scotland and the north of England. Alastair Morton was involved with Quaker action over unemployment in West Cumberland and described plans to widen this work and increased funding in the offing. Dorothy and Robin cabled and wrote to Thomas about employment possibilities opening up since they felt that Thomas would be warmly received if he were ready to go back to Cumberland. Thomas returned to Beirut by bus on 13 August, leaving Prudence to go on by car to Damascus as planned before a brief return to Beirut. In Ain Karim the cook Michail with some helpers and Madame Sophie Moutafidis from the Greek Orthodox Convent in Jerusalem were at Thomas's former home on 15 August in an effort to fulfil Thomas's wishes (Madame Sophie's aunt Sitt Sophie Kostanda had already handed to Abdelrahman Sinokrot Thomas's typewriter and a dozen books in accordance with a separate authorisation from Thomas). Michail collected an inventoried list of clothes and the remaining books to be delivered to the Thomas Cook bureau for eventual shipment to their bureau in London. Ralph Poston went to Ain Karim on 16 August in the expectation of packing up Thomas's books and found that Michail had already taken up the task - and was missing only a small sum for the hire of donkeys to transport the luggage to Jerusalem. Thomas responded to Robin on 18 August about his parents' anxiety over career moves: "I am certainly not at all sure that teaching in a Government school would be the best plan. It only seems to be a possibility, and I can't at the moment think of any other

possibility." The telegram about Cumberland unemployed clouded the issue: "Perhaps, if they want me to go there, it would be best to go for the time being and give the course a miss for this year at any rate". Meanwhile he remained in a Beirut hotel (Baldwin had gone to Cyprus for a fortnight) and worked slowly on his Lawrence article. Teddy after missing a London University appointment he tried for in July was on 19 August in Manchester and found a foothold in the "Manchester Guardian" editorial offices. While job-hunting he had been staying in London from 5 August with one of Robin's numerous first cousins - his own godmother Margery Fry, who was one of nine children including the artist Roger Fry (who had died on 9 September 1934 after a fall). She had been Principal of Oxford's Somerville College, elected in 1926 and leaving in 1931, and soon after afterwards she had from 1932 set up and kept comfortable open house in west London at 48 Clarendon Road. She sent Teddy to Manchester with an introduction to the "Manchester Guardian" editor William Percival Crozier who was willing to give Teddy a trial at leader writing for a month or so: he would begin on 26 August a day after his twenty-third birthday (Margery had school, university and career connections with C.P. Scott's niece Dorothea and was Somerville principal to Crozier's daughter Mary; the newspaper customarily took on young graduates on trial and as relief for staff members in the summer holiday period). Robin had agreed sale of the Broad Campden cottage on 8 August and on 20 August he took a three year lease from St John's College on a flat in Oxford from the end of September. Thomas was corresponding with Derek Kahn and George Antonius among his mentors and floating the idea of spending a year in Russia to which they responded with modest encouragement. He was also corresponding with the University of London's Professor of Education, Sir Percy Nunn, who assured him that he could do a month's teaching practice in a London school without committing himself to the full year's training course. He wrote home again (to Dorothy on 21 August) that he felt he should stick to the teaching proposal he had made: "While in London I can find out more about teaching and my suitability or unsuitability for it and consult you and Daddy and others." He would write to Wilfrid Lunn about work prospects in Cumberland. George Antonius wrote from Jerusalem to Thomas on 23 August with concern over Thomas's symptoms of ill-health, and counselled a change of scene: "I still think that you should remain in this country (Syria and Palestine), and still believe that there is something for you to do. But I also believe that you should go back to England for a bit. You have been out here too long without a break, obviously. Boils and anaemia are a sure sign. Mentally, too, one needs to go away from time to time. If you can afford it, go by the first boat." The tail of Thomas's letter to Robin of 18 August had contained the postscript: "I have grown a red beard which I hope won't shock you when you see it. I think it is rather fine." Dorothy was fiercely stung into an urgent response on 28 August even though the letter was to Robin: "I know it's unreasonable - and I have no right - and in fact no excuse for writing of it at all. But I can't not say it - for my sake shave the beard." She urged that it be gone before their reunion even if he grew a beard again later. (Dorothy's letter reached Beirut after Thomas had begun his journey home and was eventually returned to her in Bamburgh where she and Robin had taken the Neville Tower for four weeks in September). Poston, writing from Government House in Jerusalem on this 28 August,

declined Thomas's suggestion that he hand on the proceeds of the sale of Thomas's pony to the Arab strike fund -"you would be helping violence, a terrible thought". Thomas and Prudence said farewells in Beirut at the end of August and Prudence went on by ship to Europe and to the Austrian Tirol where she met her mother and sister and rested in Mosern, a small village high up in the mountains. Thomas left Beirut to make his way back by way of Turkey but his goal of being in London by 14 September was thwarted. He was delayed at a hotel in Pera, Istanbul, by passport trouble. As Thomas travelled into Turkey from Syria the police on the train took his passport for checking and failed to return it. Inside Turkey Thomas changed trains at Adana and realised that he was without his passport. He went on and cabled from Istanbul to the police at Adana asking for the return of the passport. Thomas found the British consulate helpful. The consul-general in Istanbul was the same William Hough to whom as consul in Athens Haji Bullard had sent a letter of introduction of Thomas for his undergraduate travel to Athens in March 1929. Hough now wrote a letter to the local governor guaranteeing Thomas's character. The British consulate was willing to provide a laissezpasser travel document but the police wanted more. Thomas reported all this in a letter to Robin on 10 September: "I hope that in future I may manage to make myself a more practical traveller. Though if one is still a stupid one at 26 it is a bad look-out." He had written to Sir Percy Nunn apologising for a two or three days' lateness in arrival for the teaching course. Thomas (still red-bearded) reached London and just after seven on the evening of 17 September cabled news of his safe arrival to his parents in the Neville Tower at Bamburgh Castle. Since London was the only address given, Dorothy could neither dash down to see Thomas, nor wire nor write and she had disturbing dreams of the beard that she construed as a symbol of a strange new Thomas. Chapter 11 Portrait of a marriage The England to which Thomas returned on 17 September 1936 after twenty-eight months of Palestine and related travels was greatly troubled by the growing threats of Nazism and Fascism. German troops had occupied Rhineland in March. Civil war emerged in Spain from General Franco's Fascist coup against the Leftist Popular Front government in July. Nazi triumphalism was manifest in the Berlin Olympic Games in August. The prospect of war loomed. Thomas went straight into his teaching practice of several lessons a week with boys at the Brecknock Elementary School in Holloway, and was renewing contact with family and friends. Teddy by 18 September had confirmation that he was being retained by the "Manchester Guardian" after a successful try-out as a leader writer (he was soon assigned India and housing as subject areas for his particular attention). Thomas was in time for a mass event organised for 20 September by the London District Communist Party and under the aegis of the CP leaders Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher. The event with an accompanying pamphlet - "The March of English History" - was from the Embankment to Hyde Park. B.J (Maire Lynd, who had joined the CP in 1934 and was in the Marylebone branch) was surprised to see Thomas - with a beard - on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road as she set off for the procession. They marched together on the demonstration (with

a reported 20,000 participants) - and afterwards went their separate ways (B.J. had a suspicion that her sister Sigle had tipped off Thomas where he might find her). Dorothy and Robin drove south from Bamburgh to London and checked into the Thackeray Hotel in Bloomsbury for two nights from 22 September. Thomas joined Dorothy after dinner on the first evening but when he came to her room she could not look at the beard. She turned out the light and she held his hand in the gloom. Robin came later in the evening. Thomas was giving a trial lesson on the morning of 23 September and met Dorothy for lunch. She spent the afternoon looking at possible lodgings for Thomas and they had tea and dinner together at the hotel. Dorothy gave Thomas a list of lodging house addresses. He had three lessons on the afternoon of 24 September, and made the boys read the ballad "Binnorie". He found pupils friendly but not always ready to listen to what he had to say. Thomas and Teddy at the weekend were together with their parents for the night of 26 September at the Cherry Orchard Cottage in Broad Campden. Thomas was still bearded and Dorothy offered fifty pounds if he would shave it off. It was a moment of change for all the family. Thomas was making a first and last visit to a parental home whose sale had already been agreed. Within the following week: Dorothy and Robin had their furniture moved from Broad Campden to the flat they had taken at 38 Belsyre Court in Oxford; Thomas went into lodgings at 32 Holford Square, London WC1; Teddy took a flat at 9 Oak Road, Withington, Manchester. Robin offered his house at 20 Bradmore Road to Queen's College for the Michaelmas term to house undergraduates. Thomas had dinner with Helen Sutherland in London on 29 September - without the beard. He explained in a letter to Dorothy on 4 October: "It really came off by accident. I went to a swell barber's to Piccadilly to have it trimmed before dining with Aunt Helen, and before I knew what had happened the man had shorn off one whole whisker - his idea was I suppose to make it one of those tufts on the chin, with no whiskers - one of your French crown beards, which would have been impossible - so I told him to shave off everything, and turned up to supper with Aunt Helen with my new smooth face." He suggested that the reward be halved though the more he could send to the Spanish workers the better he would be pleased. The boys at Brecknock School had been divided - some said that the girls would like Thomas more clean shaven and others said that he was better-looking with a beard. B.J. with whom Thomas had supper on 2 October took Dorothy's view. He postponed a visit to Oxford as he had corrections and additions to make to his draft pamphlet on Palestine for "The Labour Monthly" and he wanted to see how the Fascists, the anti-Fascists and police would interact in Oswald Mosley's proposed Blackshirt march through the Jewish quarter of the East End. Thomas on 4 October went with Diana Furness with the anti-Fascist demonstration to prevent the march. He witnessed "a great deal of shoving by the police and one or two baton charges" in what became known as the "Battle of Cable Street". Thomas decided to pursue his teaching course with history as the main subject - in one of his last classes at Brecknock he gave a lesson on Roman Britain drawing on a text by R.G. Collingwood secured on tick from a Bloomsbury bookseller tick on the strength of the Hodgkin name and Robin's work on Anglo-Saxon history. Thomas spoke about Palestine in the evening of 5 October to the Wood Green branch of the Communist Party and next day he transferred for trial teaching at Marylebone

Grammar School where a kinsman, Peter Maclean, was on the staff and proved to be friendly and helpful. Diana Furness was staying in Claremont Square a few yards from Thomas's lodgings in Holford Square and they spent evenings seeing the avant-garde films and plays - and with Mary Jameson on 8 October as she travelled through London. He had supper with John Richmond on 9 October then went to the Belsyre Court flat for the weekend and took career soundings from such Balliol dons as Cyril Bailey and Charles Morris, a philosophy lecturer and secretary to the Delegates for Extra-Mural Studies with an interest in teacher training. Cyril provided an introduction to Sir George Gater, a Wykehamist and clerk to the London County Council, whom Thomas met on 14 October to ask about secondary schools. Thomas was becoming interested in the ideas of teaching and wrote to Dorothy that evening: "It all seems to be in such a state of flux at present: the old medieval dogmas about how to teach broken down, or breaking down, and no new dogmas formed to put in their place." He put the finishing touches to his Palestine pamphlet on 17 October (typing on Diana Furness's typewriter) and took the train to Blackpool to visit his cousins Lucy and Michael Gresford Jones. On return to London Thomas prepared a school lesson as a conversation about the Renaissance with the St Marylebone boys ("better that the boys should talk considering how ignorant I am about the subject", he wrote to Dorothy). He found time on 21 October to meet Teddy on a brief visit to London and they went together to a an exhibition of works by Picasso, Braque and Matisse. He had tea with Robin Furness on 22 October meeting the novelist E.M. Forster there and went on to supper with the Lynd family where J. B. Morton (the Beachcomber columnist of the "Daily Express") was a fellow guest. Prudence Pelham had returned to England and wrote to Thomas on 23 October to suggest a rendezvous with Emile Marmorstein on leave from Palestine. Thomas's next school lessons were on the disparate topics of trade unions and Babylon. From his modest lodgings in Holford Square (where he had no bath and he heated his room with shillings in a gas meter) he sought the privileges of the London Library with an application of 28 October and introduction by Derek Kahn, who had recently changed to the more "English" surname of Blaikie. Dorothy and Robin in London on 30 October met Thomas at the entrance to the Marshall & Snelgrove store in Regent Street then lunched with him and with Helen Sutherland and the art lecturer Jim Ede. Thomas returned in the evening to see Dorothy staying at the Great Western Hotel at Paddington, where he took a bath before they went to supper in a restaurant near Tottenham Court Road. He had a crowded Sunday on 1 November seeing Teddy at Margery Fry's house in the morning, meeting his Manchester University Settlement friend Frida Stewart at lunch going on to a meeting in Hyde Park calling for arms for Spain. He saw the Jarrow hunger marchers arrive in Hyde Park ("escorted absurdly by dozens of mounted police") and unexpectedly ran into his school contemporary Randall Swingler, now helping to edit "Left Review". The Hodgkins in Oxford gave lunch to the Moberlys from Manchester University and Walter Moberly suggested that Thomas should not abandon the idea of university teaching. Robin shared that view and with some enthusiasm forwarded on 4 November from Oxford a letter arriving that day from J.L. Stocks suggesting that Thomas could return to Manchester in the temporary post of university philosophy lecturer for the next two terms - with the hint of a subsequent permanent appointment. Robin wrote to Stocks

with an explanation how Thomas came to leave Palestine and indicating that Thomas began to turn towards socialism in Cumberland before the term of philosophy teaching at Manchester for Stocks in 1934. Thomas in November 1936 had a dual hesitation: he regarded himself as a Communist (he was a member of the Holborn branch) and thought this might be unacceptable to Stocks, and he wondered whether the work would be compatible with his new political perspective. Manchester offered more leisure, more interesting work, teaching of adults, and lodging with Teddy in the city. He put the issue to Teddy for advice in a letter of 7 November: "From the point of view of the class struggle could I do more good within the English educational system than in a University? Would the conflict between trying to put Communist views into practice and doing my job, which arose in Palestine, arise again in a University more acutely than in a secondary school?" He sought advice from Robin and from Charles Morris. Thomas mused on these matters at Rock Hall where he was spending the weekend of 7 and 8 November with Helen Sutherland and seeing Bosanquet relatives (Aunt Nelly, cousins Diana and Charles). Dorothy was open minded on an "interesting" suggestion and commented in a letter of 6 November: "Perhaps you will think it best to stick to already made plans, and not be diverted by a thing that is only temporary (but I suppose it might easily lead to a permanency)." Robin was cautiously in favour of Thomas's taking on another temporary post and thought the Communist tag would alarm Manchester business men. He wrote to Thomas on 8 November: "If it were possible for you to describe yourself as a 'Socialist with leanings to Communism', you would I think be speaking equal (? greater) truth and would less alarm people." Teddy weighed the arguments cautiously too and observed in a letter to Thomas: "But I imagine that what is really making you hesitate more than anything else is the feeling that you are becoming rather a butterfly about jobs, and that any temptation towards flitting must be curbed." Thomas had given Stocks a deadline of 12 November for his response on whether or not to apply to Manchester. He did feel that going to Manchester would indicate butterfly indecision rather than decisiveness. He wrote on 11 November to Dorothy: "I've decided not to accept Stocks' suggestion and try for that Manchester job - largely in order to curb this tendency to flit about. See Lavater's Aphorisms No. 338 'Search carefully if one patiently finishes what he boldly began.' Blake's comment on that is 'Uneasy'. Mine would be the same." Thomas's second article on Palestine that he had worked and reworked since the middle of the year now appeared in two forms, as an extract "Is Palestine Prosperous?" in the November issue of "The Labour Monthly" and as full text in a Labour Monthly pamphlet "Who is prosperous in Palestine?". Thomas for both versions used the pseudonym "British Resident" of the first article - out of deference for less politicised members of the family - but otherwise made no secret of his authorship and sent copies to friends and former colleagues. He was trying to explain the causes of the Arab strike movement in Palestine from 19 April to 13 October 1936 and to counter the Zionist argument that unrestricted Jewish immigration would bring prosperity and a higher standard of living to the whole of Palestine. Thomas's case was that the immigration would lead to further impoverishment of the Arabs. He challenged any assertion that the British Empire was democratic and suggested that under British rule the majority of Jews and Arabs would be exploited.

Mary Jameson moved to London to work with a settlement and lodge at Saint Hilda's, Old Nichol Street in Bethnal Green. Thomas went on 13 November to a meeting in support of the hunger marchers and then for a weekend visit with Prudence Pelham to Eric Gill's home and workshop at Pigotts near High Wycombe. He went on 16 November to a workers' theatre in London and heard recited what he thought an admirable poem on Spain - then found with additional pleasure that it was written by his friend Randall Swingler. He went in response to prompting by Robin to see a doctor on 17 November about the "sleeping ailment" that Robin suspected was hereditary. The doctor he saw was Dr George Riddoch, from Aberdeen University and the London Hospital, who specialised in diseases of the nervous system and had been recommended by Hugo Cairns in May when Thomas was still in the Middle East. Thomas was finding himself in modest demand as an authoritative source on Palestine, speaking to a WEA class in Worcester on the weekend of 21 and 22 November; and to Jewish Communists at Oriel College, Oxford, on 25 November. He had a hasty dinner with his parents and took the London train with the goodbye words "Don't you think you might take the Daily Worker". He had supper on 27 November with Randall and his wife Geraldine Peppin, and lunch on 30 November with Lionel Hale, an Oxford companion who had made a name as a playwright and literary journalist. Hugh Foot, a former colleague in Palestine, after reading Thomas's pamphlet wrote from Westminster on 30 November seeking a meeting later in the week. Dorothy came up to London to see Thomas on 30 November and they had supper together in Charlotte Street. Thomas told her that he would like to bring Diana Furness with him when he came to Crab Mill for Christmas. Diana remained a companion for suppers and visits to films. She had moved a few yards from Claremont Square to Myddelton Square and invited Thomas (plus Teddy Hodgkin and Mary Jameson) to an informal bottle party for 8 December. Teddy had suggested to Margery Fry that Thomas might like to come to stay with her at 48 Clarendon Road for a while and she wrote to Thomas on 4 December encouraging him to come: "I get lonely, and the house is too big, and I think we think enough alike not to quarrel. We shall each have our callers to ourselves when we want 'em, and the only domestic thing I mind about is some idea each day what meals you'll want provided." Thomas accepted and meanwhile went to Oxford to take up Cyril Bailey's invitation to the Dean's dinner at Balliol on 5 December - he borrowed dress clothes from Robin who turned out of the Belsyre Court flat to spend the night at 20 Bradmore Road so that Thomas could have a room in the flat. Thomas on 6 December called on his Smith grandmother. The topic of the hour was King Edward VIII's intention to marry a divorced woman, with Mary Smith arguing for duty and Thomas thinking the King should be allowed to remarry as he pleased. The novelist Louis Golding, who remembered Thomas as a don's small child in North Oxford, met Robin on 8 December and heard of Thomas's recent travel in the Middle East. Thomas on 9 December prepared his few possessions (uncharacteristically sorting letters of the previous six months into an alphabetical file) for a move from Holford Square to Margery Fry's. He spent the evening with Prudence Pelham and on 10 December - after the move to Margery's - he dined with John Richmond. Golding wrote to Thomas from St John's Wood on 10 December about his own imminent visit to the Middle East and requested a meeting to ask questions about routes and kit.

The family all change was continuing: Dorothy and Robin made what they believed to be the transition from Oxford to Ilmington as their principal residence and slept at Crab Mill on 12 December for the first time. Mary Jameson and Thomas on 12 December had supper together and went to a dance of the League Against Imperialism: "Mary of course was picked up and danced with by handsome negroes and smart Jews", Thomas wrote next day to Dorothy. Thomas had found time for a meeting with Golding and continued his teaching until 22 December before going on 23 December for his first sight of Crab Mill. Thomas with Diana Furness took a train to Moreton-in-Marsh and were met by Robin. Dorothy and Robin went to Rugby in the early hours of 24 December to meet Teddy on a train from Manchester and Teddy met Mary Smith on a train from Oxford that afternoon. Dorothy went to early communion on Christmas day with Mary Smith, and they with Robin and Teddy went to the morning church service. Thomas with Diana went for a walk through the meadows. Robin went to Oxford for the Boar's Head ceremony at Queen's College. The Ilmington Rector G.F. Clark with his wife and other visitors came to sing carols at Crab Mill. In the following days the party dispersed - Mary Smith to Oxford and Teddy to Manchester on 27 December; Diana to London on 28 December. Dorothy, Robin and Thomas went by car to Oxford early on 30 December for the Hodgkin parent to buy Thomas a Christmas present of a typewriter (Dorothy was apprehensive about giving Thomas expensive presents since he had left a previous typewriter in Palestine as a gift to someone else. Thomas returned to London on a midday train and Dorothy and Robin went in the evening to a party with the college servants at Queen's - to say "farewell" to them. Robin stayed on in the Oxford flat and Dorothy had new year's eve alone in Crab Mill, noting in her diary for 31 December 1936: "What a year - of things happening endings and beginnings. May this year bring peace & happiness and a happy job to Tommy - as last month most blessedly has to Teddy." Thomas in the new year of 1937 before the London schools reopened went up to Cumberland for a brief visit and into a lodging arranged by one of the Cleator Moor unemployed, John Farrell. He was joined on the visit by Prudence Pelham who went on to Manchester to see Teddy. Thomas discussed work prospects in Cumberland with Wilfrid Lunn as an alternative to pursuing a full teacher training course at London University. Literary journalism offered partial escape. Thomas's connection through Robert Lynd and Lionel Hale had brought book reviewing assignments for the "News Chronicle" - assorted new fiction. He offered the long essay on T.E. Lawrence that he had written over the previous summer months to John Lehmann, the editor of 'New Writing'. He spent the weekend of 9 and 10 January at Crab Mill and caught up with George White as a guest after a long gap and abortive attempts to meet. Thomas briefly considered going to the conflict in Spain (possibly with Prudence and by borrowing a car from his parents) but returned instead to the teaching at Marylebone Grammar School - mainly history classes. He consoled himself by meeting friends: he introduced Prudence to Derek Blaikie on 16 January and later that day to Margery Fry. He wrote on 21 January to Teddy: "I find myself getting worse at teaching boys. At times I much regret not having accepted Manchester. However, it probably does me no harm. I am learning a little history, but I doubt if I should ever be able to manage these young fiends, or teach them anything."

Thomas lunched on 22 January with Bickham Sweet-Escott. Clarissa Graves sent news from Jerusalem on 22 January of the Jews whom Thomas had seen as possible interlocutors with the Arabs: Norman Bentwich's lectures at the university were being boycotted since had given evidence to the Royal Commission that was not passed by the Jewish Agency and Judah Leib Magnes was in the cold for what was seen as his "Christian" and bi-nationalist points of view. John Lehmann wrote on 24 January with mild criticism of Thomas's article on Lawrence: "If you mean the article to be about Lawrence as a writer, you spend far too much time destroying his character and his politics. I think you need to work out and ground your aesthetic criticisms more carefully". He endorsed the political stance and offered to write a supporting letter if Thomas wanted to submit to journals that took articles as opposed to the original contributions of 'New Writing'. Thomas's political frankness on his visit to Cumberland rebounded. Lunn wrote on 29 January to say that the Cumberland Friend Unemployment Committee had just met to consider if a post could be found for Thomas in the distressed area. The committee members all recognised the inspiration and value Thomas could bring but thought employment of a member of the Communist Party would prejudice the work especially in the Roman Catholic districts. Lunn suggested that if Thomas could find a "formula" to cover the position he should write to the committee chairman David Reed for a reconsideration. Thomas was in Oxford for the last weekend of January taking up an invitation from Charles Morris so that they could talk about career prospects. He saw Dorothy and Robin with Lucy and Michael Gresford Jones and family friends. While Cumberland prospects remained in doubt Thomas took soundings of other openings. He heard from Richard Crossman that the Ruskin College vice-principalship would fall vacant within a few weeks, and that a candidate should have sound economics and be a good mixer. Robin was hesitant about Ruskin on the grounds that the trade union and Parliamentary Labour Party connections might make Thomas's political stance appear unattractive. Robin after his own soundings in Oxford wrote on 2 February that he heard that Ruskin liked its tutors to be as non-partisan as possible. Thomas was reading his latest batch of fiction for the "News Chronicle" including a novel by Randall Swingler "No Escape" that he enjoyed - although he thought the review he submitted was "too impersonal and colourless". He sent a formula for consideration by Reed in Cumberland that would make his employment feasible. In London on 9 February he saw Rowntree Gillett from the Cumberland committee and understood that there were still possibilities. The review of Randall's and three other books appeared in the "News Chronicle" of 10 February in a piece from which Lionel Hale - for reasons of space - had cut notices of two other novels. Reed wrote on 11 February that he would be putting a favourable recommendation to the committee due to meet on 14 February in the light of a Thomas proposal that should meet the difficulty: "By this, whilst not working with the local party, you would not be prevented for instance, from writing for reviews etc. or doing other literary work, or even speaking, I should think, in other parts of the country." Thomas was debating with himself the underlying question whether he should commit to the year of teacher training or not, but felt that in any case he should see out the school term. He visited the Moberlys in Manchester and found Walter Moberly supportive of the Cumberland plan.

Thomas's parents were anxious about his apparent poor health and a recent smoking habit that had become heavy. Thomas had grown up as a non-smoker but in mid-1935 had begun smoking in Jerusalem as a form of self-medication against unexpectedly falling asleep. Dr Riddoch's medical examination of Thomas in November 1936 was beginning to unravel the situation, but Riddoch wanted Thomas to undergo further extensive tests. The initial examination pointed to narcolepsy, a condition characterised by recurring moments of uncontrollable daytime sleepiness. This was a little understood disorder described and named in 1880 by a French clinician Jean Baptiste Edouard Gelineau. The causes even after half a century remained unknown, although cases were being studied in the 1930s at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. The condition typically began in adolescence or early adulthood. Thomas was prescribed a new treatment in the form of an amphetamine. Dorothy found in early February when she took a prescription of Thomas's to a pharmacy in Oxford that the pharmacist and his supplier had never heard of the amphetamine being prescribed for internal use. On the smoking issue Robin wrote on 16 February saying that he himself had abstained from smoking for the first week of Lent and asking Thomas if he did go to Cumberland to consider diminishing much of his smoking, if only for the sake of those who might model themselves on Thomas: "I found myself almost doubling my cigarettes after being with you for three or four days!". Robin sent a cutting from "The Times" with an advertisement of the Ruskin appointment and a reiteration that he did not see this as a job where Thomas would be quite happy. Thomas replied that he would wait to see what the Cumberland committee had decided. Thomas had a talk on 21 February with a cousin Herbert Hodgkin who suffered from narcolepsy, and wrote next day from Margery Fry's to Teddy: "I feel less annoyed with the disease now I know its hereditary. The bourgeois equivalent of haemophilia among the Bourbons." Thomas was heartened by a letter from the Cumberland Friends' Unemployment Committee confirming that they would like him to go and work there again. He told Dorothy in a letter of 24 February that he felt he ought to go to Cumberland the next available weekend. His parents urged that he consult in Cumberland whether he should now abandon the training in prospect at London University. Meanwhile Thomas was pledged for the last weekend of February to visit Prudence and her family in their Sussex houses at Falmer and Stanmer, and they were joined on the afternoon of 27 February by Teddy and Mary. Thomas returned to London for two Sunday conferences on 28 February. The first was held by the League Against Imperialism and the speakers included Krishna Menon from the Indian Congress. League's secretary Reginald Bridgeman made what Thomas thought a convincing argument against colonies being returned to Germany. Teddy had drawn Thomas's attention to Bridgeman after Teddy met Bridgeman in August 1936 and had written to Thomas in the Middle East: "I saw a particularly sensible man, whom you ought to meet when you come back, called Bridgeman who runs a thing called the League Against Imperialism. He was in the Foreign Office but became converted to Communism." Bridgeman had links with the African political and student lobby in Britain. Thomas, in a letter to Dorothy begun on 1 March, noted: "There was a good deal of warm argument between the African speakers." He made a five-minute contribution to the discussion on Palestine, but had not been given notice that he was expected to speak and

felt he had not done well. He went on to a Jewish conference, on Biro-Bidjan colonisation, in the afternoon but felt rather an outsider since the older men all spoke Yiddish rather than English. He saw his paternal aunt Violet Holdsworth during her visit to London on 3 March. He did a notice for the March issue of Randall Swingler's "Left Review" of Randall's own novel that he had reviewed for the "News Chronicle" of 10 February. A further batch of six novels sent from the News Chronicle to Crab Mill was forwarded to Oxford and reached 37 Belsyre Court on 5 March as Thomas was about to set off from Margery Fry's for a consultation weekend in Cumberland. Dorothy forwarded two of the books in case Thomas wanted to read them on his train journey and offered to read and comment on some of the others, as she had done with earlier consignments. Margery called in on the Hodgkins in Oxford unexpectedly on 7 March and brought news of Thomas; later there was a call by Ann Sitwell who had seen Thomas in London. Dorothy had little doubt that school teaching was not the right thing for Thomas but Cumberland offered work that needed Thomas's gifts. Thomas spent the weekend with Wilfrid Lunn and his wife. He learned that the main teaching tasks would not begin until the autumn, but the summer months would allow him to visit the unemployment clubs, to identify what sort of classes would be wanted - and to give individual classes or lectures before the main season. A salary was offered of 200 a year from 1 April. Thomas wrote to his mother from Margery's on 8 March that he had provisionally agreed with Lunn that he would go up to Cumberland late in March. He had not definitively abandoned the teaching diploma course but had reached the conclusion the he had better abandon it. Robin instantly approved the termination of the London course: "It will be a blessing for you to be more or less your own master again." He sent Thomas a bibliography on adult education from which he could order books up to 5 as a part birthday present. Margery from her years as Somerville Principal retained a range of personal obligations. One was to the Lady Margaret Hall lecturer Dot Wrinch who taught mathematics to women students from other colleges including Somerville. Dr Wrinch had moved from Cambridge to Oxford after marriage to a mathematician John William Nicholson, who was a fellow of Balliol from 1921 who suffered a severe breakdown, lost his job in 1930 and was confined in 1932 to an asylum. Margery was godmother to their daughter Pamela and kept a friendly eye on the child when the mother was out of Oxford on research missions or conferences abroad. In August 1936 Dr Wrinch had sought assistance as an additional "foster mother" for Pam from another Oxford research scientist Dorothy Crowfoot (the oldest of four Crowfoot sisters) to whom Pam could write a weekly letter from school: Pam was returning as a boarder to St Christopher's School, Letchworth, on 17 September and Dr Wrinch was sailing to the United States next day for a tour of centres of protein studies. Dorothy Crowfoot had agreed to keep an eye on Pam. Margery was deeply fond of Dorothy Crowfoot, had met her parents, had interviewed her in March 1928 for entrance to Somerville and was Principal through her early undergraduate years. When Margery left Somerville she encouraged this exceptionally brilliant student to keep in touch and offered her hospitality in London when she needed to be there for her work. Dorothy Crowfoot took Part I of the chemistry school in 1931. She returned to Oxford to begin research in X-ray crystallography and to complete the

formalities of Part II, since it was a peculiarity of this subject that able students were expected to do a fourth year of research under supervision and to submit a thesis. She then went to Cambridge to continue her research, this time with John Desmond Bernal ("Sage") in the crystallographic laboratory established four years earlier. After two academic years in Cambridge Dorothy Crowfoot returned to Somerville in September 1934 to combine her research with being a chemistry tutor. She was given on 25 October 1934 shining colourless crystals of insulin to examine (that were too small to X-ray) and insulin became one of her central research interests. The significance of insulin was the discovery by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in 1921 that diabetes was the result of the inability of the pancreas to produce insulin and process glucose that the human body needed for energy. Dorothy Crowfoot knew about insulin from a book she read as a schoolgirl - the second edition of "Fundamentals of Biochemistry" by T.R. Parsons, who described it as a hormone active in treating diabetes. She had continued to read about insulin; from 1934 she began to grow insulin crystals and from 1935 to publish her own findings on the subject. In early 1937 one of the leading scientists of the time, Sir William Bragg, suggested that she bring her crystals to the Royal Institution in London to photograph them with the powerful X-ray tube that had been built there. Margery Fry had become a confidante from whom she sought advice for major personal and career decisions, and had in the past invited her to come on holiday in France to La Croix in the Var. Thomas through three months of living in Margery's house was accustomed to a flow of other guests to the house. In late February he had helped Margery by swinging a baby grandchild of Roger Fry on a special indoor swing. Now in March there was Dr Wrinch's daughter Pam to fill in a brief gap between the end of her school term and being collected by her mother, and Dorothy Crowfoot to spend a few days in London to take her insulin photographs. The two adults were of an age - he about to turn 27 on 3 April and she on 12 May - and Oxford contemporaries although they had not known each other there. Each knew something of the other. Thomas's mother had in the summer of 1932 invited Dorothy Crowfoot to tea in Oxford to sound out the possibilities of Thomas joining an archaeological dig with the Crowfoots in Palestine, but this was when Thomas and Teddy were travelling on holiday through Europe. Thomas had met the Crowfoot parents and their second daughter Joan in Palestine early in 1933 and on several subsequent occasions, but this was during Dorothy Crowfoot's research in Cambridge. Margery had spoken to Robin of Dorothy Crowfoot's splendid qualities on hearing years before that Thomas was going to Palestine and had thought they should meet. On this first evening at Margery's they went on talking very late, filling in the gaps Thomas read aloud extracts from the novels he had been sent for review (Dr Wrinch arrived and soon Pam was taken home). They stayed on as fellow guests. The Alicia Markova-Anton Dolin ballet company was dancing "Swan Lake" from 8 March in the second week of a season at the Kings Theatre, Hammersmith. Margery treated her house guests to tickets for one of the performances (through much of which Thomas seems to have slept). Thomas had for some three weeks been committed to a visit to Peter Maclean's home in the country and late on 12 March was driven by Peter to the family house in Ross for an overnight stay. They were joined for lunch next day by Thomas's mother who drove

Thomas to Crab Mill for the second half of the weekend. It was the opportunity Thomas wanted to talk through with Robin the break with schoolmastering and the return to working with adults. Wilfrid Lunn wrote on 15 March to disclose a possible technical hitch in the Cumberland plan. The committee had a grant for an education officer up to 31 March of 1937 and were expecting but had not yet received a reply to an application for a further grant as from 1 April 1937 to 31 March 1938: "I am explaining all this because it may be that if you were not certain of coming here for a definite period you would not throw up your Training Course, in which case you would be annoyed if you threw up the Course and the appointment only lasted a week or two." Although the problem was not conclusively resolved Thomas decided to take the Cumberland venture. Dorothy Crowfoot returned to her routine of that time: in the Oxford vacation Patterson calculations on insulin; or on visits to Cambridge to keep in touch with Bernal's group of scientists. She would also go to the East Anglian village of Geldeston (in Norfolk close to the Suffolk border) where she had spent her late childhood and where her parents lived in the Old House. She helped cope with the personal crises of her younger sisters: Joan (whom she sometimes called Jo); Elisabeth (with an early career in repertory theatre and known there as Liz, although at home as Betty); and Diana (known as Dilly), who was thinking of coming up to Oxford. Dorothy (who was not keen on the form "Dot" and was conscious that Dot Wrinch - some sixteen years her senior - had that name in university circles) was known within the Crowfoot family circle as Dossie (sometimes abbreviated to Dos). Joan Crowfoot was the focus of a difficult courtship by Denis Payne, who was from an Oxford family and had met her in Cambridge where he worked in a bookshop. In March 1937 Joan was away on an archaeological expedition and Denis sought advice from the older sister who deferred any decision to Joan. Denis, in a letter from Cambridge on 18 March, revealed an ambiguity: "Dear Dossie Travelling back in the train this morning I realised that you're inevitably right." He had written to Joan so that she might decide: "It was difficult to avoid asking her outright to come back on the one hand, and seeming indifference as to her return on the other: and I'm not sure that I've succeeded." Margery was away for the Easter weekend at the end of March and Thomas stayed on in London with her housekeeper, Mrs Smith, and several of her sisters and cousins visiting from the Rhondda with whom Thomas sat downstairs and talked and sipped tea whenever he had a chance. He snatched a visit to the families of Eric Gill and his printer son-in-law Ren Hague in High Wycombe (Gill was planning a second visit to Palestine after his long stay in 1934). Thomas delayed his travel north an extra day when George Antonius turned up suddenly in London en route to the United States and they had lunch together on 30 March. Thomas left a letter of appreciation to Margery: "I think I must have been in many ways a bloody visitor. I dont remember any period of time in which I have been so riddled with indecisions, contradictions, depressions and all sorts of egotisms. I hope that the fit wont last much longer and that it wont recur when once its gone. You have really borne with me beautifully. Nothing could have been so nice and so understanding as your policy of benevolent non-interference. At a time when you feel that unpleasant people are exposing you as a failure and nice people are trying to shelter you, its a great blessing to live with a person like you who does neither, but whose advice and sympathy you know is always

on tap - will be given when asked for." He left a gift of expensive cigarettes and his washing for which he would call on his next visit (due in April for a meeting of the League Against Imperialism). Thomas returning to the familiar ground of Cleator Moor where he had lived in December 1933 found that funds had been approved for his next year's salary. He took lodgings with a Mrs Scrogham and her husband, an iron-ore miner in work, at 149 Ennerdale Road that were "more slap-up" than he had intended. The household included their daughter Maureen and son Bobbie, a brother Tommy and lodger Napier. He wrote to his mother on 2 April: "I am sitting in their large commodious parlour. I have a large bedroom and a huge bed." His first task would be to visit some 18 clubs for the unemployed, but he would begin at a carnival in the Cleator Moor Club where his granny's donation of pink vests was to be first prize in a tots' competition. He was writing on the eve of his birthday and on this point wrote apologetically to Dorothy: "It's a tremendous relief to have left London. The last few months have been rather a nightmare. I begin to see now how badly my worrying about what to do next and fear that I should never do anything at all have made me behave to you and most other people that I love. It's bound to be the effect of egotism I suppose - that it dries up your love for other people." He had begun to read D.H. Lawrence's novel "Sons and Lovers" on the train journey to Cumberland, and felt this had had a healthy effect. Margery spent the weekend of 3 to 5 April with Robin and Dorothy Hodgkin and they talked further about Thomas's state of physical health. The parents were glad to hear that Thomas had promised Margery and Prudence to see another doctor. Robin offered to pay all fees and expenses and wanted Thomas to secure a referral letter from Riddoch: " I am sure it is right for you to make sure that there is nothing else besides the narcolepsy, in order to get really fit before next winter." He provided a letter of his own for Thomas to present to Riddoch if he wished. Thomas for his birthday wanted his parents to send donations to the Spanish Republican cause. They agreed to send cheques but insisted on personal gifts as well: Robin offered a bookshop credit or money to buy books; Dorothy commissioned Teddy to choose and send a high-quality raincoat on her behalf. Thomas, making a swift visit to London for 7 and 8 April for the League Against Imperialism session, found time to see Riddoch and give him Robin's letter. Riddoch wanted Thomas to come into his clinic for a week but Thomas was doubtful of the need for the expense and fuss of such a week. He was irked by Riddoch's suggestion of seeing Robin and discussing Thomas's case with him. Thomas discussed the issue with Margery who proposed that Thomas should see her general practitioner in London on his next visit and arrange with him to have the necessary tests. Thomas wanted to test the beneficial effect of a month or so of country air. Thomas hurried back to Cumberland where he was launching individual evening talks since the clubs did not want regular classes during the summer; he sent off a set of fiction reviews to the "News Chronicle". He commented favourably on his first week in a letter to Teddy on 11 April and on Teddy's writing about India in the "Manchester Guardian". He suggested that Teddy might contact the CP specialist on India, Ben Bradley, who was active in the League Against Imperialism. Bradley went to India in 1927 but was deported after the Meerut Trial of 1929to 1933 over Communist activity in India (he wrote on India in "Labour Monthly" from 1934; and with Palme Dutt advocated that Communists should work within the Congress to make it an anti- imperialist people's

front). Teddy had sent their mother's raincoat gift with the hint: "I hope it fits, and you manage to keep it." Thomas riposted: " The mackintosh is magnificent. I shall keep it, luxurious though it is". He gave a talk on Spain at Cleator Moor on 14 April ( the headline on his fiction column on Robert Lynd's book page in that morning's "News Chronicle" was adventitiously "Romance In Revolution"). He spoke at Maryport on the background to the government's treatment of the unemployed. Thomas reported home that he was sleeping eight hours regularly a night and seldom falling asleep during the day. He was not sure that the work in the preparatory phase was sufficient in regularity or amount. Without a schedule to meet Thomas relied on internal compulsion to make him read books or visit clubs. He foresaw a demanding winter schedule with more clubs requiring classes than he could manage alone, so that he must find and allocate additional tutors. Conversely he could see that he might be under-employed during the summer. In mid April he sent letters inquiring about the possibilities of summer school work with the WEA - to Charles Morris in Oxford and to a former Balliol contemporary Alfred Ernest Teale now lecturing in philosophy at Manchester University. Thomas hoped to arrange an appointment to meet Teale combined with a visit to Teddy in Manchester, possibly on 24 April, and had proposed visiting Lucy in Blackpool on 25 April. Teddy planned to be away from Manchester on several days in April: to be with the Jameson family in Scotland on 17 April (that would have been a twenty-first birthday anniversary of Andy Jameson if he had not died just turned eighteen). Teddy would be at Crab Mill for 24 April on Robin's sixtieth birthday (where some of the Jamesons would be; in the family circle it was said that Mary had a new suitor who was without means and contemplated marriage). Teddy had a day off due on 29 April but thought of going to London to see Prudence Pelham and in response to Thomas's suggestion the CP's Ben Bradley. With Teddy away Thomas spent only a few hours in Manchester on 24 April (to see Teale who gave him a friendly reception and promised to try to fix Thomas up with WEA summer school work) and the rest of his weekend with Lucy's family. Margery wrote to Thomas on 25 April with the views of her general practitioner Dr William Alexander Hislop on a medical overhaul for Thomas. He could introduce Thomas to someone who did hospital work where Thomas could go into a ward for tests (Dr Hislop was the medical officer for the Kensington Baby Clinic Hospital and this was inappropriate). The alternative was for Thomas to stay with Margery and for Dr Hislop to arrange the routine examinations by sending specimens to laboratories or specialists. He could probably detect any obvious source of trouble - and advise if further help were prudent. Teddy saw Margery and Prudence in London on 29 April (inviting Prudence to visit Manchester for the week of Coronation around 12 May); and writing to Thomas on the night of 30 April and 1 May he gave a circumstantial account of his visit to Crab the previous weekend that seemed to resolve an assumption long shared between Thomas and Teddy that Teddy and Mary would one day marry. Teddy wrote: "Mary says she is going to marry a man called Anthony Cowan - I haven't met him but he's said to be pleasant. I don't blame her, because since the time when we discussed (and decided on) the question of marrying each other I have been shuffling and putting things off and behaving in a way which I know and knew must have been more than irritating for her in fact I gave no signs of wanting to do anything about getting married, and even when,

more exasperated than usual, Mary pressed me to say what exactly I did want, I hedged again. That was when she'd met this chap. Apparently he asked her to marry him almost a once and she accepted him - so she says - it may not be true that she has agreed to marry him, but I don't suppose it will be a lie for long." Thomas travelled overnight on 6 May to arrive at Margery's early on 7 May (although it was already understood between them that she would be away) and had a talk with Dr Hislop. Thomas had promised to lunch with Bridgeman on 8 May and he went on to Crab Mill for part of the weekend. He spent an afternoon with Prudence and Ren and Joan Hague - in a garden "thick with children" - before returning to Cumberland. Thomas spent the night of 11 May (eve of the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on 12 May) in Maryport at a dance given by the unemployment club until after midnight, missed the bus to Cleator Moor and slept over in one of the men from the club with whose daughter he had been dancing. He was fortunate that there were plenty of rough country dances and reels where enthusiasm counted rather than skill. Dorothy's Coronation concern was fitting out Christine Humphreys (the daughter of Annie and Cyril) with the attributes of "Peace" as her supporting role in an Ilmington village pageant. Dorothy managed gold leaves and sandals and gold braid but not flags of all nations as she had planned. In the Crowfoot family weddings were on the agenda: Molly Crowfoot in a letter of 11 May for Dossie's birthday on 12 May said that Joan was back in Geldeston and that Denis Payne had been visiting, as had a neighbour cousin Hester Wood-Hill with her fianc Reginald Burton, an Oxford don at Oriel College. Thomas and Teddy took a gentle sunlit walk up Eskdale valley on 15 May and took a miniature train back to Ravenglass where they separated - Teddy to Manchester and Thomas to Cleator Moor. They planned for Thomas to spend a few days with Teddy in Manchester where Thomas could do some work in the Manchester Reference Library. Thomas was finishing the "Sons and Lovers" novel he had begun at the beginning of April. He sent home an urgent request for a suit to be sent to him at Teddy's. For the first part of Thomas's stay in the rooms at 9 Oak Road, Teddy was away in Edinburgh (Mary Jameson wanted to see him again although she was engaged to Anthony Cowan). Teddy delegated tutelage to a colleague on the newspaper - John Douglas Pringle - with whom Thomas went on a short country walk on 22 May. Pringle was a Scot who was educated at Shrewsbury and at Lincoln College, Oxford Thomas in a letter to Robin described Pringle as "the Manchester Guardian Trotskyist" (more prosaically, Pringle for the newspaper had in January handled cables from Leon Trotsky in Mexico City denouncing Stalin's dictatorship). Thomas had further discussion with Teale about work prospects in Manchester and entertained him to supper in Teddy's lodgings. Robin wrote on 24 May lamenting the difficulty he had over the house 20 Bradmore Road since several attempts to sell had fallen down. He was thinking of converting the house into flats but this required permission from St John's College and the college wished to consult all the neighbours before granting such permission. Thomas went on from Manchester on 28 May to a weekend WEA school near Keswick that gave him a chance to meet WEA tutors in Cumberland and the Northern District Organiser B.W. Abrahart from Armstrong College in Newcastle (founded in 1871 as part of the federal University of Durham), but commented, in a letter to Teddy on 2 June: "It was a bit sombre at the weekend school - beautiful country and weather, but a rather

vicarage lawn tea-party sort of atmosphere - the sort of matiness that oppresses one instead of enlivening one - but there were some nice men from unemployed clubs there." Robin who was spending a few days in bed in Crab Mill laid low by "some unnecessary bug" (with the usual migraine and arthritis in his knee). He was reading Will Harvey's book "We were Seven" about a Quaker childhood and wrote to Thomas on 5 June of "the usual array of governesses, coachmen and all the rest of the retinue". Robin disclosed that he was more than ever convinced that he had done right to retire and to leave the work of teaching at Queen's College to a younger and more active man. Ann Sitwell was a guest at Crab Mill on the night of 7 June; she was doing relief work for Spain and was engaged to marry Christopher (Cubby) Hartley, Thomas's Smith family first cousin nearly three years younger than he. Ilmington had a village wedding on 8 June for Eunice Venables, daughter of the gardener at Crab Mill. Dorothy attended the service and the wedding party were settling down to a midday feast at Crab Mill when she went away to the flat in Oxford. Thomas was reading Engels' "Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844". News of another prospective village wedding was sent to Thomas from a former neighbour at Ain Karem near Jerusalem. Veronica John, the daughter of a Northumbrian father and Palestinian mother, wrote on 14 June of a wish to visit England in the summer: "My sister will be married in August and will leave for England for her honeymoon, she will be most of the time in Newcastle". Robin and Dorothy had a farewell garden party in Queen's in mid-June (their invitations brought nearly four hundred acceptances). They "raided" the Bradmore Road garden of most of its flowers - including masses of roses - to decorate the tables. Thomas went to London to stay at Margery's and to follow the round of medical tests discussed with Dr Hislop, who brought three specialists into the task. They were: Gavin Livingstone (an ear, nose and throat surgeon); a consultant physician Dr Frank Patrick Lee Lander (who had published on anaemia and rickets); and Dr Desmond Curran, a psychiatrist and specialist in diseases of the nervous system (British trained and with experience at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in the United States). Lee Lander required Thomas to have a chest X-ray to exclude the possibility of tuberculosis of the lungs. Thomas who had hoped to have the better part of a week at Crab Mill had to limit his stay to a long week-end from 18 June to return to London for further medical examination on 22 June. The medical men would discuss and prepare a formal written report, but Thomas collected initial verbal opinions. One tonsil was infected; Hislop did not think this could be enough to affect Thomas's general health and he would indicate what treatment was advisable. Thomas had a sore throat and must give up smoking (he did so from 23 June). Thomas might have some mild sort of bronchitis, hence the X-ray photograph of his chest. Robin would face a substantial bill for what Thomas deemed efficient and thorough examination. Thomas used his days in London to see friends including Randall Swingler, Diana Furness, John Richmond and Lionel Hale (who like Dorothy found Thomas's book reviews rather too sociological). Thomas was less concerned with the medical findings than with another report - of the Royal Commission on Palestine conducted by Lord Peel and to be published in July, although likely conclusions were already leaking into the newspapers. Thomas went with Bridgeman to call on Gallacher to consider what to do

when the Commission's Report was published. Thomas thought he might have to come back to London since he felt the Palestine issue was worth taking trouble about. It would be important to try to place articles in Left wing periodicals, and there might be small meetings where he could speak. His interest in WEA work had led to his being asked to take a pupil in philosophy at the Oxford summer school in the period from 15 to 29 July. This might be combined with whatever was to be done over the Royal Commission's report. He would be in Oxford off and on for the second half of July and did not even know where he would stay, except that he thought the summer school would provide accommodation. Thomas returned north by way of Shrewsbury where he visited his fifteen-year-old cousin Matthew Bullard at boarding school (and failed to find Alec Peterson who was teaching there). He sent all his tidings in a letter to Dorothy written at intervals of the long journey to Cleator Moor where he arrived on 27 June. Formal details were sent to Thomas on 29 June of the summer school obligations. The information came in a letter from Edward Stuart Cartwright who was organising secretary for the Tutorial Classes Committee of the University of Oxford Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies based at Rewley House in Wellington Square. Thomas was to give his student a total of four hours' tuition a week, preferably in the mornings but at convenient times that he could work out with the student. His first student was McVittie, whom Cartwright described as "an argumentative Scot" believed to have a pretty good mind. Thomas was offered a second experienced tutorial class student interested in taking the political thought of Plato and Aristotle who would require a separate four hours of tuition during the week. Thomas would be paid the usual fee of ten shillings an hour. The Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies was the institutional structure from 1924 of earlier extension work and a summer school at Balliol was heir to a tradition initiated by A.L. Smith in 1910, the year of his grandson Thomas's birth. Smith wanted participants in tutorial classes to be in touch with Oxford University and arranged hospitality at Balliol for a summer school for WEA students in the long vacation of 1910. The school became an annual event where Smith taught regularly and he insisted on individual tuition as the chief means of teaching. Robin wrote to Thomas on 1 July with relief about the medical findings; concern about the drift towards world war; and a wry view of the Hartley and Sitwell wedding in the Temple Church in London where Mary Jameson had been one of three bridesmaids who "lost the bride and bridegroom when they went to the Vestry - and it was a funny sight to see them hunting". Dorothy, writing on 6 July, noted that Derek Blaikie and Anthony Cowan were among the wedding guests. She was concerned that the latter was not only without a job but looked to her "rather backboneless". She offered Thomas the Oxford flat if he needed it during the summer school. Cartwright wrote on 6 July with details of yet another student whom Thomas might wish to take in his second week in Oxford. Thomas responded to Dorothy on 7 July that he had written to his grandmother suggesting that he should stay with her for the first few days in Oxford and would answer about borrowing the flat when he had heard from Mary Smith. Veronica John on 7 July wrote from Ain Karem Jerusalem in response to a letter from Thomas that she would come to England in the summer on respectable terms as he said. She would leave on 14 August, arrive in London on 26 August and return to Palestine at the latest on 23 October. She understood that there was no prospect of marriage between them. The Peel

Commission proposed partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. Japan invaded China. Thomas came south in July with Palestine on his mind. He stayed first with Margery in London. Mary telephoned on the evening of 12 July apparently expecting to find Teddy there, but Teddy was in Sussex seeing Prudence. In correspondence from John Crowfoot it had been agreed that Thomas should visit Geldeston for the first weekend in August. Dorothy (Dossie) Crowfoot wrote from Geldeston on 13 July indicating a possible change of timing since she was due to leave England on 28 July for a vacation in Yugoslavia: "My father thought I should warn you and suggest perhaps you would rather come some other time before then, say July 26th on. But it doesn't matter as all the others will be here August 1st - unless for other reasons you'd like to change. And don't bother to write except to alter plans. I'm coming to Oxford myself for a week on Thursday. The rest will be glad to see you whenever you come."(she signed "Dorothy Crowfoot"; her undisclosed thinking was to go on from Oxford to Cambridge on 22 or 23 July to see Sage - to walk and talk about their scientific work). Thomas had lunch on 14 July with Mary Jameson and with Anthony Cowan whom he was meeting for the first time. Mary felt shy, enjoying the lunch with Thomas but felt in an ambiguous position and was anxious whether he and Anthony were liking the occasion as much. Anthony spontaneously offered to find out about adult education in Finland where he and Mary were preparing to visit. Thomas was clutching at a binational solution for Palestine that would bring Jews and Arabs into some kind of progressive alliance. He went to Stoke Newington and stayed late into the night with Jewish members of the CP drafting a statement on Palestine to submit to the Politbureau of the party. The debate brought in Gallacher and Ivan Rennap from the CP and Jamal Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee. Thomas wrote from Margery's next morning to Teddy at the Chichester family seat: "The meeting with Gallacher was fairly satisfactory, I think. Jamal spoke well and was conciliatory. He was clearly surprised and pleased to find, listening to Rennap, that a Jew could be as downright anti-imperialist about Palestine as he was. Also he was impressed with Gallacher's good sense. I think that the meeting had at least the good result of establishing cordial relations between Jamal and the Extreme Left (Jew and Gentile). It also gave Gallacher some material. But what is clearly needed is that the Arab struggle against Partition should have wider support among the left than simply among the CP." Thomas, who was conscious of Teddy's ambiguous feelings over Mary's engagement, commented on Anthony Cowan: "He seems a pleasant gentle sort of chap - just the kind of person that no one could help calling a wastrel." Thomas wrote on 15 July a cordial letter to Dorothy Crowfoot explaining that he could not change the weekend that he had planned to stay at her home since he must be in Oxford from 17 to 31 July, working at the WEA summer school including weekends, but since she would be in Oxford from 15 to 22 July he asked if they might meet for supper on Monday evening 19 July when he could call for her at Somerville at about seven in the evening, and she could reply to Balliol (he signed "Thomas Hodgkin"). Thomas sustained his Palestine lobbying and pressed Husseini's conciliatory line with Norman Bentwich who was staying in Hampstead (Bentwich favoured Jewish negotiation and peace with Arabs). They arranged to meet in London on the afternoon of 21 July

when Thomas was scheduling other contacts. He was busy with preparations for a Cumberland summer school for Maryport in a month's time. Ben Bradley gave Thomas's name to the Manchester and Salford District Committee of the CP as a potential speaker on the Peel Report. The committee wrote on 16 July that this suggestion had been taken up with the Cheetham branch in the Jewish area of Manchester who could arrange an indoor evening meeting for 27 July in a local hall if Thomas would speak. Thomas was in Oxford in time for a preliminary meeting of the summer school students and tutors held at Rewley house on the morning of 17 July. He was staying with his grandmother at 14 Banbury Road (conversion into flats was well under way at 20 Bradmore Road) and Dorothy drove in from Crab Mill with her house guest Helen Sutherland to collect him on 18 July and take him to Ilmington. Thomas had letters to write and after tea went for a walk with Helen. Helen had an impression that Thomas felt he should not have left. Palestine which was much on his mind. Thomas early on 19 July went back by an early train from Moreton-in-Marsh to Oxford to agree his tutoring timetable with his first two students, whom he found agreeable and intelligent. He had lunch with Cyril Bailey and they walked beyond the university parks. He saw Dorothy Crowfoot in the evening. Thomas, writing to his mother on the night of 20 July, noted that he and his grandmother were getting on without quarrelling though he was out of the house for most meals. He had decided to spend the second week of the school staying in Balliol. He put the request to the Balliol bursar (Lieutenant-Colonel Augustus Cecil Hare Duke) who instructed his staff: "Give Mr Hodgkin a room - the best room you have - near his old rooms - as near the bathroom as possible." Dr Hislop provided a confidential report dated 20 July on the medical examinations and tests Thomas had undergone in June. The cautious main finding read: "Mr Thomas Hodgkin is suffering from symptoms very suggestive of narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is produced by different causes and an attempt is being made to discover the underlying cause here. A general examination showed him to be thin and there was evidence of undernourishment. There was also some bronchial irritation, apparently of fairly long duration. Beyond these, there was no obvious physical disability detected." Livingstone reported infected tonsils and slight pharyngitis (throat irritation) - probably due to over-smoking, and considered it would be wise to have the tonsils removed. Dr Lander corroborated the diagnosis of narcolepsy. The chest X-ray did not show any evidence of tuberculosis. Lander recommended several months of fresh air, good food, moderate exercise, etc. in order to get rid of the bronchial irritation. Dr Curran gave similar findings to Lander, but he suggested treating the existing narcolepsy with Benzedrine. Hislop supported a triple approach: the chronic bronchitic tendency treated along the lines Lander suggested; the Benzedrine treatment suggested by Curran to be given a trial; at the end of the trial Thomas should see Curran again, and consideration might be given to the removal of the tonsils. Benzedrine was a new medication (betaphenylisopropylamine) that in recent months had been under trial at the Mayo Clinic in the United States with a hundred patients and a broad range of conditions including depression and exhaustion. Benzedrine was the trade name under which it was marketed in tablet form by the pharmaceutical company Smith Kline & French, and distributed in Britain by Menley & James. The Mayo patients took tablets of 10 to 20 milligrams.

Thomas with two tutorial students, family visits and London commitments was finding difficulty in matching his timetable with Dossie's. She was characteristically working late night and early morning hours in the laboratory (for her first major paper on the crystal structure of insulin) so that even a meeting at midnight was a possibility. Thomas conducted a whirlwind wooing, partly in the form of notes exchanged between 14 Banbury Road and the Balliol and Somerville college mail services. After the meeting on 19 July he missed finding Dossie on 20 July. He rearranged his appointments in London on 21 July (including yet another Dorothy - the secretary of the Union of Democratic Control Dorothy Woodman) so that he could spend the evening with Dossie rather than in London. Dossie was unsettled by the attention, and wrote to Thomas: "I'll come with you tonight and stay with you tonight but I won't promise anything more because I feel all perplexed in myself and a little troubled by your urgency - but not fully knowing you or understanding it's too difficult to be sure." They went to a country inn (the Rose Revived near Witney, a haunt of his undergraduate years). They exchanged letters next day: he to her "Last night was deeply happy. I am thankful you burnt our boats and came. And you're happy about it too. This does seem a beginning, don't you think?"; she to him: "I'm feeling still very exalted though also really incredulous." Thomas's mother came in to Oxford from Crab Mill on 23 July and called at 14 Banbury Road for tea with Mary Smith and Robin and Thomas. Mary Smith was clearly disturbed about Thomas and critical of him but Dorothy forbore from asking any questions of her. She drove Thomas to Balliol where he was seeing one of the students. Thomas, who was going back to his parents at Crab Mill for the weekend and for a family outing to "King Lear" at Stratford-on-Avon, wrote to Dossie in the few minutes before seeing his student: "I feel very contented about us really. And I don't mind much it being three days until I see you again." He promised to do as much work as possible so as to have more time free during the next week. Dossie postponed her departure for the vacation journey to Yugoslavia. Thomas went by train on 24 July to Campden, with his student McVittie, a postman from Dumfries, and they were met by Teddy who came down for the theatre outing as did Sylvia Barrington-Ward. McVittie declined Shakespeare and stayed at Crab Mill with the gramophone; Robin was away for the day at an aunt's funeral. Thomas on 25 July surprised Dorothy by asking for some flowers to be picked that he could take back to Oxford. He sent her a note next day the he had spent the night at Balliol rather than at 14 Banbury Road and asked her to come early on 27 July so that they could use the car for him to move his suitcase from Mary Smith's and collect a small bag left at Oxford station. In the to-and-fro Thomas's shaving things were left in Dorothy's car and she posted them on to Balliol. She tried for Benzedrine for Thomas in Stratford unsuccessfully and wrote to Dr Curran for some to be sent to Thomas. He went to Manchester for the Cheetham meeting where he found an audience of about a hundred Jews. He was nervous and felt he lost his way in the initial presentation of the argument but the discussion went well and lasted so long that he came close to missing the midnight train from Manchester. He had only a few minutes of conversation with Teddy on the station - and a brief mention of Dorothy Crowfoot. Dorothy Woodman wrote from the UDC on 27 July expressing interest in a memorandum on Palestine by a Jewish friend of Thomas's that he had shown her and that she believed

should be given political circulation. Thomas sent the paper to his mother to ask if she could find time to type it and prepare ten copies - to be sent to him in Cleator Moor. He explained that he had found a Benzedrine supply in Oxford but would be glad if Curran sent more. He wrote independently to Curran about experimentation in the amount of the drug to be taken. Thomas on arrival at Balliol from the night journey from Manchester found a letter from Mary Jameson that had been following him around since shortly after their meeting in London on 15 July. Mary said that Anthony Cowan thought Thomas "the nicest person of mine - friend or relation he had met since the beginning of his meeting any". Thomas, responding before breakfasting, washing or going to the barber's, demurred: "I do mistrust this sort of superficial attractiveness that I find I have, which seems to be bound up with weakness of will and other evil qualities". He confessed the real motive of writing that he rather wanted Mary to marry Edward "mainly I suppose because I think he wants to marry you". If Mary did marry Anthony, then Thomas had enough faith in her to accept it as all right. Dr Curran wrote on 29 July with a prescription for Benzedrine tablets and advice on dosage: "Some people find it makes their heart palpitate if taken in doses which are too large; but I see no reason why you should not go up to 25 milligrams a day, or even more should the effects not be unfortunate, and I should really be most interested to hear how you feel it works with you." He was anxious to see Thomas again for other investigations, understood that financial considerations were of importance, and could easily arrange for the investigations to be carried out at a hospital. Thomas had supper with his uncle Haji Bullard on 30 July, and much of the August bank holiday weekend with the Crowfoot family in Geldeston, although in different circumstances from when the plan was made. The hasty, snatched encounters of the few days in and around Oxford had shown Thomas and Dossie that they wanted to marry. What had been envisaged as a routine social call to Geldeston turned into an idyll. They paddled along the canal cut from the River Waveney to Geldeston (for the maltings). They walked and sat in the sun. They went along a lane and looked for livelong the flower one may sleep with on Midsummer night and dream of one's lover. They found only the willowherb growing in profusion over the marshes. Thomas had been reading to her Turgenev's nineteenth century novel "Virgin Soil". The decision for marriage was allowed to trickle out to their families and friends. The Crowfoot parents were the first to hear and then Thomas wrote to tell his parents that he and Dossie loved each other. Robin and Dorothy received the news well and sent a congratulatory telegram on 4 August and letters to Thomas. They were at Crab Mill with Violet Holdsworth as their guest and took her to Stratford for "A Midsummer Night's Dream". On return Dorothy stayed up late to write a welcoming letter to Dossie and to share the news with Helen Sutherland; and confided to her diary: "I'm sure it is 'good' for I feel no slightest pang of jealousy." It may have slipped her mind that the two had met briefly in the summer of 1932 over the question whether Thomas might join the Crowfoot archaeological dig in Samaria. Thomas sent the news to Teddy with the warning that marriage or the setting up of a home together might be delayed. Thomas and Dossie spent 4 August visiting Eric Gill at High Wycombe and Ren Hague plus David Jones who was visiting. Although they did not explain their relationship they sat in the garden in the sun talking while Gill's grandchildren played and strolled about

naked or half-naked. They had supper in London and Dossie saw Thomas off from Euston on a night train to Carlisle for his return to Cleator Moor. They did tell Margery Fry in whose house they had met and who was one of the few who knew both of them well. She was frank in her estimations but sympathetic to the sudden and surprise idea of marriage. Dossie was with her on 5 August talking about Thomas. Dossie wrote to Sage breaking the news of her feeling for Thomas and pointing to a sudden dreamlike quality of two nights together with Thomas in strange country places and days wandering through woods. Thomas spoke on 5 August to the Whitehaven Toc H on whether colonies should be given back to Germany. He commented to Dossie, in a letter of 6 August, that it was interesting to find how anti-imperialist most of the audience were: "All except the parson who was afraid that the black races if left to themselves would destroy our spiritual heritage." He had received from the Left Book Club a book called "Modern Marriage and Birth Control" (by Edward Fyfe Griffith) and would send it on to her when he had read it since it looked helpful: "I'm not worry about the sexual side of our love - I hope you're not either - but I think we should understand it a bit better. I want us to marry and have a child as soon as can reasonably be." Dossie on 6 August left London for her delayed vacation in Yugoslavia - four weeks with a friend Mildred Hartley, a Somerville classics don since 1934, and Frances Collie {**** }. Thomas wrote to his cousin Lucy on 7 August: "While at Oxford doing a fortnights W.E.A. tutoring during the last half of July I began to love Dorothy Crowfoot; do you remember her at Somerville? Shes a don there now and works at the structure of crystals. Although it has happened quickly we feel pretty settled in one another and like to think of marriage." Thomas confessed the effect of Dossie's absence in Dalmatia: "I feel pretty lost on the other hand loving Dorothy has given everything so much newness and me so much more energy that in a way work is a great deal easier, and I have much more incentive to try to do it properly In the bottom of my heart I am sure enough that we shall marry but you know what absence is like for waking every sort of depression. I have felt a sort of security with Dorothy that I dont think I ever felt with B.J., and I think shes felt it too." Dossie was returning to England in time for the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science n Nottingham - and particularly for a session on the structure of proteins on 3 September. Thomas arranged that he and Dossie should spend the first weekend in September with Helen Sutherland at Rock Hall so that she could come to know his family circle. Thomas was leaving his lodgings in Cleator Moor. He spent a transitional week with Mrs Halley with whom he had stayed at the beginning of the year (when he was joined by Prudence Pelham). Mrs Halley had a quality Thomas found rare in landladies that she was forgiving if he forgot to return for meals; she offered meat at nearly every meal and served stewed peaches at tea time. Thomas was counting the days to meeting Dossie in early September, and they began writing to each other two or three times a week. Thomas offered to send (and Dossie was keen to see) a "Labour Monthly" article on Palestine. She wrote on 11 August: "I doubt that I'll have much chance of acquiring more useful information about sex till I come home. I read the whole of Marie Stopes when I was about 15 but was rather bored really and remember nothing accurately enough. But it'll be easy to learn now."

Thomas on 15 and 16 August., his last days at Mrs Halley's in Cleator Moor, was finishing his reading of two novels - A.J. Cronin's "The Citadel" and Ralph Bates's "Rainbow Fish" - he was reviewing for "Left Review". His new landlady in Whitehaven Mrs Hardy - was providing a sitting room and a bedroom in 6 High Street at the top of a hill overlooking Whitehaven harbour. The street had been grand in the days of the port's prosperity but with the economic collapse the street was a decayed adjunct to the town's slums. The house had inconveniences that Thomas took casually: the main bedroom was between his bedroom and the bathroom to wash at nights he had to go through a room where several people were sleeping. Dossie wrote to the Somerville principal Helen Darbishire about the sudden decision she and Thomas had made to marry. Thomas wrote of the decision to Prudence Pelham who had heard separately from Ren Hague and David Jones how well and happy Thomas looked when he brought "a beautiful calm girl" to Pigotts. Thomas relayed to Dossie on 16 August the news that Veronica John (about whom he had spoken to Dossie) had confirmed her prospective arrival from Palestine in London on 26 August and wanted Thomas to meet her. Thomas felt he must arrange for her to visit Whitehaven: "I'm not altogether comfortable about this; on the other hand I'm sure enough of your and my love for one another not to be much disturbed. You are too, I think." Thomas had written to Veronica about his falling in love with Dossie but this had crossed with Veronica's letter about her travel plans. Veronica wrote from the "S.S. Orama" on 17 August agreeing to a suggestion by Thomas that they meet in Carlisle rather than in London. Thomas had not found an opportunity in his few meetings with Dossie to talk about his own sister Betty and her childhood death in 1927. He wrote to his mother on 18 August suggesting that she bring to Rock a copy of the memorial volume to Betty so that Dossie could see it, especially as they would be visiting Bamburgh (where Betty was buried). He also asked for his expired driving licence since he thought of buying a car and for the second volume of "Virgin Soil". In his letter to Dossie on 19 August he suggested a Christmas wedding to be discussed when they met and that they make separate ways to Newcastle on 4 September when his mother would collect them and take them on to Helen Sutherland's. Dorothy from Crab sent Thomas his driving licence and the Turgenev though she was anxious about Thomas driving with his tendency to fall asleep. Robin wanted Thomas to consult the London doctor whether driving was advisable or to take on one of the Cumberland unemployed as a driver. Thomas went for the weekend of 21 and 22 August to Lucy Gresford Jones in Blackpool and Teddy came over from Manchester - and there was much talk of Dossie. B.J. (who knew nothing of these Dorothy Crowfoot developments) wrote on 22 August after months of silence as she travelled on the night train from Cornwall where she had been spending a few days with an old friend. B.J. (who had been unable to take up a suggestion by Thomas of an Easter meeting) inquired if Thomas was still working at Cleator Moor and would be there in September, since if she did not take her father to Ireland she might be visiting Ennerdale. She had recently conducted a course in Marxism for new members of the CP. Dorothy offered Thomas a ring to give to Dossie - a simple design with three pearls that had been Robin's gift to her when Teddy was born. Thomas, who was avoiding the expense and formality of an engagement ring, preferred that Dorothy be the giver to

Dossie unless the ring were better kept for a future wife for Teddy. Teddy had privately written of Thomas's and Dossie's intended marriage in a letter to Mary Jameson. Mary, in Finland with Anthony Cowan who was not well thought of by her family, wrote to congratulate Thomas especially since he had chosen someone beyond the criticism even of his demanding parents: "It will be a surprise to most people that you have chosen somebody quite strange but as for me I feel sympathetic to strangers having chosen one myself and I dont feel the least piqued that you have suddenly taken to yourself somebody of whom until a week or so ago I had never even heard". Thomas in Cumberland went down a coal pit where workings near the surface were mined informally by men seeking coal for their homes and he was looking at a recently overhauled 1931 Morris Minor that he might buy to travel between the various village unemployment clubs and halls. He admitted in a letter to Dossie on 30 August that he was finding Veronica John's visit difficult, but she was leaving on 1 September to join relatives in Newcastle. Derek Blaikie (who in August had been with Tom Harrisson in Bolton making a sociological study under the newly devised methodology of MassObservation) came to Cumberland on 1 September for two days' lecturing arranged by Thomas - for the employed and the unemployed. Dossie returned to England on 31 August to be in Oxford on 1 September. She saw Helen Darbishire early in the morning and then had a meeting with her first research student Dennis Riley from Christ Church to plan their future work together since he was interested in X-ray analysis and had made what was then an unusual choice to do his Part II research under a woman supervisor. Since Riley was also marking his twenty-first birthday Dossie took him to lunch to celebrate (and they talked about an international peace camp in Paris that he had helped organise in the vacation). She stayed overnight with Miss Darbishire and went on 2 September to Nottingham for the British Association gathering where she saw several of her Cambridge friends, including Bernal. Thomas and Dossie chose their trains on 4 September to arrive within a few minutes of each other at Newcastle station. Dorothy in anxious frame of mind collected them for the visit to Rock Hall - where Robin and for some of the time Teddy were also Helen's guests and where Thomas began to explain to Dossie about the lost sister. The weekend went well with Dossie winning the strong affection of Thomas's closest circle and feeling herself drawn to them in return. Between Rock Hall and Bamburgh Dossie was also under scrutiny from David Jones, Mary Jameson just back from Finland, and Thomas's grandmother Mary Smith who had the St Aidans house in Bamburgh. Dorothy and Robin stayed on in Northumberland for a few more days in Bamburgh including the 8 September tenth anniversary of Betty's death. Dossie and Thomas were confident about marrying - they thought of a December wedding at Geldeston (and declined Helen's offer of the splendid luxury of Rock Hall) but they were still chary of the half-&-half position of a formal engagement. Thomas returned to Cumberland where Derek had fallen ill with appendicitis and had to prolong his stay (Derek's mother came up to Whitehaven and took a room at Thomas's lodgings). Thomas on 8 September arranged that Dossie be sent as a gift from him a set of artist's proofs of David Jones's engravings illustrating "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Thomas had them with him in Palestine and they were left behind with other possessions when Thomas was barred in 1936 from returning. Eric Gill, who had rescued the set on his 1937 visit to Palestine, sent the pictures to Dossie and accepted a request from

Thomas that Gill should give a lecture in Cumberland later in the year. Thomas sent Dossie the modern marriage manual he had forgotten to take to Rock. Dossie recounted the Northumberland weekend in a letter on 9 September from Somerville to her mother: "I think you'll like Thomas' parents. His father has much the same colouring but a narrower face - that broadish shape comes from the A.L. Smith side. ... His mother is younger and very wrapped up in her children. Thomas says she has never quite recovered inside herself from the death of her daughter Betty when she was about 12. And it's partly as a result I think she is prepared to be almost frighteningly fond of me. But nobody has suggested I should give up my present work which is really nice and understanding of them." Joan Crowfoot and Denis Payne were thinking of marrying in mid-October and John Crowfoot was planning to be in Oxford for a Brasenose College gaudy on 4 October. The Crowfoot and Hodgkin families agreed to hold a parents' "conference" at Crab Mill on 3 October to consider arrangements for the wedding of Dossie and Thomas. Thomas was into his stride with three regular classes set to begin in late September: two on foreign affairs and one on British working-class history. He was arranging a lecture course in psychology for a group of women at Oughterside. He was also planning his next weekend with Dossie - in the south in mid-September to combine seeing her with visits to Dr Hislop and Dr Curran and to as many friends as could be crammed into one weekend: including Margery Fry, the Swinglers, the Antoniuses, possibly John Richmond and David Jones. Dossie received the David Jones illustrations and the marriage book and sent Thomas presents she had already chosen for him: a volume of Yeats and a green & grey tie. Dossie who was changing library books in the last minutes before closing chanced on Lon Blum's "Marriage" newly translated by Warre Bradley Wells, and took that with her, commenting in a letter to Thomas on 11 September: "I think on Blum's principles we don't qualify very well for the married state but at least we are not in the worst category." Robin's resignation from Queen's was due to take effect on 29 September but his and Dorothy's contemplation of their life of retirement at Crab Mill was jolted when the Provost of Queen's Canon Streeter was killed {check} in an air crash in Switzerland on 10 September. Robin had been a possible alternative to Streeter in the election of 1934 but his reaction now was to urge the possibility of electing a young don Oliver Franks who had gone recently to Glasgow. In Oxford academic circles Robin Hodgkin was the name being mentioned. Robin sought the advice of his sons whether he should accept if he were asked to take on the task of provost. He feared it might prevent him ever finishing his history of the Anglo-Saxons, but he would not shirk anything that became a call of duty. Robin with the encouragement of his immediate family (including Thomas) informed his colleagues that if they wanted him as provost and did not think Franks would be better he could not refuse. Thomas and Dossie had the crowded weekend of 18 and 19 September together. Thomas began with breakfast at Margery Fry's on the Saturday morning and lunch with Dossie at the restaurant Le Petit Coin de France, in Carnaby Street.. They went in to the Kent countryside for a walk and a visit to what had been the home of the naturalist Charles Darwin. They stayed for bed and breakfast at The :Larches at Downe on their way to Sunday lunch with Katy and George Antonius who were in grander surroundings at West Wickham - in a Tudor mansion turned into a country hotel. Although it was a drizzling

day they walked around the gardens - George with Dossie and Thomas with Katy. They were joined for tea by other Palestine connections, the Old Wykehamist broadcaster Tony Rendall and his family. Thomas and Dossie returned to London for supper with Randall Swingler and Geraldine Peppin. Geraldine took Dossie off to talk and prepare the meal. Dossie and Thomas agreed on their preference for a Geldeston wedding sometime between 15 December and 20 December if the Crowfoot parents approved the timing (the couple were talking of the possibility of Ireland as a honeymoon destination). Dossie went on to Geldeston and Thomas to Cumberland, He was reading Alfred Adler in preparation for his first psychology lecture and remembered on return that he had promised to speak at Arlecdon to an outdoor protest meeting against cuts in unemployment benefit. He was allowed on as first speaker so that he could also be at Cleator Moor for his lecture (on 20 September and to an audience of ten). Thomas writing to his mother on 21 September of his delight how ready people were to accept the new relationship between himself and Dossie. He had asked Dossie to find him some literature on the situation in China (in conflict with Japan). Dossie lunched with Desmond Bernal and on 21 September sent Thomas a pamphlet published by the UDC that Bernal provided. Joan Crowfoot's wedding plans were in the balance since the Payne parents planned to travel abroad for the winter and there seemed a possibility of several months' delay. In Oxford Queen's had a college meeting on 22 September and agreed unofficially to support Robin Hodgkin as provost although the formal election would not be until early October. Dossie in Cambridge on her way back to Oxford began to tell other close scientist friends of her intention to marry: among the first to hear were Sage's collaborator Isidore Fankuchen and Antoinette ("Tony") Pirie. Dossie and Thomas were quite clear that their work would mean their living at a distance even after the marriage. Dossie related in a letter to Thomas that when Tony Patey and Bill Pirie were married they were living one in London and the other in Cambridge. One of Thomas's numerous cousins Ella Pease sent to Oxford a travel rug as an early wedding present. Thomas had a doubt whether they really wanted wedding that he put to Dossie in his letter of 24 September: "Personally I feel not - except from very close relations. It would make me uncomfortable to receive a lot of picnic-baskets and cutlery when one really needs so little. And anyhow we haven't got a home and don't know when we shall have. What do you think?" Dossie had supper with Thomas's mother in Oxford on 24 September to talk of the provisional marriage plans and heard about the past of the Hodgkin sons and the loss of the daughter. Robin was spending a few days in the Radcliffe Infirmary for a minor operation to drain a congested antrium. Dossie visited and had a long talk with him. She was certain that she would go on working, but explained that there could be a possibility of finding a research laboratory in a place such as Manchester or Leeds if Thomas's employment situation changed in the future. Thomas and Dossie had reservations about some of the formalities of betrothal and marriage, but took for granted that they would marry in church. The question raised in the Crowfoot household was whether Thomas had a preference over who should perform the ceremony. Dossie asked in a letter of 24 September if he had a particular friend or relative mind, such as Michael Gresford Jones, and she had an idea of asking the the

Reverend William Bateman who had been Rector of Geldeston through her Suffolk school and university years and had moved to Norwich in 1933. Dossie saw the travel rug wedding present and endorsed Thomas's view that gifts should be avoided. Thomas walked on the moors on 26 September with Derek Blaikie who after the initial appendicitis attack was spending his convalescence at a comfortable hotel beside Ennerdale Water - with a sister replacing his mother as family support. Thomas profited from Derek's encouragement to plunge into action in buying a car. He bought from a Mr Giggins, a Lipton's van driver and member of the Independent Labour Party, a twelve horse power Morris, vintage 1932, and was ready to drive it when he had renewed his licence. In Palestine that evening a British official, Lewis Andrews the acting District Commissioner for the newly created Galilee District, was shot and killed as he was leaving a service at the Anglican church in Nazareth. Three gunmen opened fire and a police bodyguard died within the hour. An assistant district commissioner, Christopher Pirie-Gordon (for whom Thomas had stood in during July 1935 in Haifa) escaped, after a shouted warning from Andrews according to the press reports of 27 September. Thomas knew Andrews and had already heard in recent weeks that he might be a target for assassination from the Arab side of the Palestine conflict. Joan Crowfoot and Denis Payne had agreed on a Geldeston wedding on 9 October before the Payne parents' winter journey and just before the start of Oxford term. Dossie helped on the preparations at the end of September, with advice on the form of the invitation, help to Denis with fitting out and a lunch to him and Joan before Joan took the train to London to arrange for a wedding dress to be made. Thomas was sustaining his three regular classes a week in various villages and small towns and on 30 September spoke about the Japanese attacks on China, with the help of material sent by Dossie and by Teddy. He was also preparing course syllabuses to send to the WEA. Dossie went shopping with Joan in London on 1 October when Joan had a fitting for her wedding dress - and put in a request for patterns of materials from which Dossie might choose for hers. Dossie went also to see a Harley Street physician, Dr W. Byam, a specialist in tropical medicine and friend of her father's who had examined her in the past for rheumatic pains - and there was a new factor of the exposure to radiation Dossie was facing in her work. She had a comprehensive medical check-up and was assured by the doctor that there was no reason why she should not marry. The Crowfoot and Hodgkin parents conferred at Crab Mill on 2 October over wedding plans. Thomas had a WEA tutors meeting and felt it best for the two sets of parents to meet without him. He wrote out a formula to combine letting friends know of the marriage and that they did not want wedding presents - and sent this to Dossie for her consideration. Dossie visited Crab Mill for the first time for lunch on 3 October. Thomas and Dossie were hoping for a small wedding with only about fifteen relatives from each side. Dorothy was thinking in terms of fifty or more each and Dossie gave in on the point. Dossie stood firm against an engagement announcement in "The Times", for which the Hodgkins were eager to pay. In the discussion on dates Thursday 16 December was generally favoured. Dossie thought Crab Mill a lovely place although she was rather overwhelmed by the high standard of her future mother-in-law's housekeeping, and doubtful if she herself could ever match the caramel pudding among the dishes at lunch. Dossie liked the idea of

forestalling the giving of wedding gifts and showed Thomas's draft to her mother who was staying with her in Somerville. The parents' encounter had gone well: Robin, who knew of John Crowfoot's standing as an archaeologist, was impressed to find Molly Crowfoot's distinctive knowledge of the art of weaving. Molly was writing about a stole made by a daughter-in-law of King Alfred and had much in common with Robin's special interest in early English history. Thomas was anxious about events in Palestine and angered that personal friends including Jamal Husseini (whom he had known in Palestine and had been seeing in London as recently as July) was among Palestinians the British authorities wanted to exiled to the Seychelles. He envisaged an attempt to partition Palestine by force - and the removal of Wauchope who would be too conciliatory for such measures. He prepared on 3 October a letter of protest pegged to newspaper accounts of the death of Lewis Andrews and sent it to "The New Statesman and Nation". Robin was elected Provost of Queen's on 5 October. Dossie delayed sending a letter to Thomas on 6 October since Dennis Riley had come down with scarlet fever and Dossie wanted to consult the Somerville bursar whether she should bake her letter to Thomas. Thomas - with driving licence renewed - began under the guidance of the ILP supporter Giggins to drive the car he had bought. His letter appeared in the "New Statesman" of 9 October under the heading "The Palestine Murders". He sought to explain why the Palestine Arabs had turned to terrorism as a political weapon "because no other effective political instrument was available". He argued that to most Palestine Arabs the Andrews assassination would be analogous to the killing of a prominent Gestapo official by an opponent of the Nazi regime in Germany. He recalled the punishments inflicted by the British on Arab villagers of the Galilee district during the previous eighteen months. He did not believe the terrorism would be cured by the transportation to the Seychelles of some of the most respected Arab leaders on the charge that they were "morally responsible" for the terrorist acts. Dossie, who was under six to eight days of quarantine because of Riley's scarlet fever, went to Geldeston for the marriage of Joan and Dennis conducted by Mr Bateman at St Michael's Church on 9 October. She travelled in a reserved carriage on a train with two aunts who had already had scarlet fever and to avoid spreading infection she walked about the garden during the reception at her parents' home.. Dossie and her sister Dilly were driven back to Oxford by a friend. Joan's wedding made Molly and John Crowfoot strong supporters of the "no presents" line pursued by Dossie and Thomas. Crowfoot felt that so many people would have scraped to buy presents for Joan that they could not be expected to produce gifts for Dossie a couple of months later. Crowfoot had come up with an alternative draft form of invitation to make the point. Thomas drove himself to Wigton to spend Saturday night with David Reed at the Friends' School and back in time for a commitment with the LIP and sympathisers - the launch of a Sunday afternoon Socialist debating class on economic history where Thomas would attend occasionally. He faced a week of his usual classes, another new course of six lectures to begin and half a dozen novels to read and review for Randall Swingler's "Left Review" before he took his next weekend break in Oxford. He lectured on the evening of 15 October and took a night train from Carlisle to Oxford. The day included lunch at Queen's with the Robin as Provost. Dossie and Thomas introduced each other to more of their Oxford friends and Teddy Hodgkin invited Prudence Pelham, who was charmed by

Dossie's inward quietness. The wedding announcement invitation was still circulating between the two families as revisions and alterations suggested by one person were passed around for approval. Thomas's mother sent patterns for a new suit for the wedding. Dossie with sent in a formal letter of resignation from her college appointment as she was required to do on marriage - but already had ample assurances that she would be asked to stay on. Thomas suggested that the next joint weekend with Dossie should include a visit to Cambridge since he had been asked to asked to speak about Palestine to the Cambridge University Socialist Society on the afternoon of 31 October. He accepted thinking that it would be an opportunity to meet some of Dossie's scientist friends - he had confessed in a letter to her in the early hours of 6 October: "I still have rather an inferiority feeling about that (as you do about my mother's housekeeping): still I would like to take the plunge." They could go to London first on 30 October - to see Dr Hislop, to look at wedding dress materials, and for a restaurant luncheon party to which they were scattering invitations: to Prudence, Teddy, Joan Payne and John Crowfoot was going to be in London for part of that day. The intervening days were somewhat fraught for both of them. Veronica John was booked to return to Palestine on the sailing of the "S.S. Strathnaver" on 23 October. Thomas, with Dossie's foreknowledge, had a further visit from Veronica and on 22 October drove her to Carlisle station for the night train to London. Dossie was having supper in Oxford with Thomas's mother. Dossie spent the next afternoon at a meeting in London of the science commission of the International Peace Campaign that she had been persuaded to attend by Sage and by the Oxford biologist Michael Abercrombie. **** She found the political discussion dull and wrote to Thomas during the debate: "I'm half sorry I felt it necessary for you to see Veronica again. I mix that up with rather wishing I could have met her myself though actually I expect that would have made things feel much worse to her." Dossie continued the letter next day with another ambivalent feeling: "I had as a matter of fact rather a silly recrudescence of jealous and distressed feeling over Sage last night because he couldn't see me either then or this morning owing to having got onto yet another committee and it was really rather an important one so it was extra annoying to find oneself still capable of being torn by such a thing. However we had lunch together and got through nearly all the work and even had some time to talk about you. So now I'm rather happy again." Sage invited Dossie and Thomas to stay with him and Eileen when they made their Cambridge visit, and Sage was keen to hear from Thomas about Palestine. Thomas's letter to the "New Statesman" provoked in the issue of 23 October a defence of the British position from a Zionist perspective: Israel Cohen argued that Hodgkin's view was vitiated by the fact that the Palestine Arabs were twice offered a Legislative Council and that the acts of terrorism expressed the feelings "of a small band of extremists, supplemented by foreign mercenaries, and partly financed by foreign money". Cohen qualified as "revolting" an apologia for the assassins of Andrews from a former colleague in the civil service of the Palestine Government. Thomas on 24 October lectured to the Socialist debating class on the colonial struggle and sat late into the night drafting a closely argued response to Cohen's letter and discussion of the political situation in Palestine and what he saw as the coercive methods

of British autocracy (in writing to Dossie next day he described his reply as "restrained and liberal - in the Locke-J.S. Mill-All Souls tradition"). The letter in the "New Statesman" of 30 October explored the restricted powers of a Legislative Council on the Crown Colony pattern. Thomas saw the Arab position as a repudiation of the Mandate and a denial of the right of the people of Palestine to determine their own form of government. The Palestine Government by the British "has remained an undiluted autocracy, depending for its existence, so far as the Arab population is concerned, upon the threat or use of force and not upon consent". He regarded this as a breeding ground for terrorism and maintained his comparison between the police-state in Germany and the police-state in Palestine. He concluded that "it must be allowed that the Palestine Arabs are simply making use of that ancient right of civil society - the right to resist oppression by revolution". Thomas was in London on 30 October at the start of another busy weekend with Dossie. They met at Oxford Circus at noon and looked for material for Dossie's wedding dress, finding a flowery brocade they both liked at Liberty's in Regent Street. The luncheon party at the Petit Coin de France brought them together with a Palestinian friend Musa Husseini studying in London, Teddy, Prudence Pelham, and John Crowfoot who was staying at the Athenaeum in Pall Mall. Dossie and Thomas stayed with Sage and Eileen in Cambridge where Thomas's Palestine talk given on the afternoon of 31 October to the undergraduate Socialist Society drew an audience of about a hundred. The brief stay in the Bernal household showed Dossie deep in her scientific talk with Sage and Bill and Tony Pirie. Thomas who had half expected to be jealous found himself enjoying listening to it. He was up at dawn on 1 November to take a train from Cambridge to London and on to Cumberland for his lecture that evening - prepared on the train journeys. Dossie spent a few more hours in Cambridge, seeing Joan and Denis Payne and walking with Sage to the laboratory for a few minutes with Fankuchen. Sage and Dossie discussed Dossie's work if Thomas remained in Cumberland. They thought Newcastle might be the best hope and though there was a job going at Edinburgh this was not close enough to make a change worth while. Dossie wrote on 2 November: "Sage developed a grand day dream of a floating college of protein structure - all of us that used to be in Cambridge now working apart but meeting in our new home once or twice a year." Dossie and Thomas were undecided about their honeymoon destination since they were advised that Ireland might be too cold in December and they were beginning to think of southern France for its warmer climate. Thomas on 2 November sent the wedding invitation announcement vetted by the parents to his friends Gill and Hague who had a fine press at 15 Easton Street, High Wycombe. Sigle Lynd wrote on 3 November congratulating Thomas on the prospect of marrying Dorothy Crowfoot (and to Dossie with a suggestion that she run a University Left Book Club Group). Dossie on 4 November showed the wedding dress material to Thomas's parents who were startled at unconventionality but accepted it. Thomas's mother gave her the pearl ring (that was too large for Dossie's ring finger so she wore it on the "wrong" finger). Dossie took the wedding dress material to Thomas's grandmother on 5 November. Mary Smith expecting a white dress suggested that white was a more useful colour. Thomas floated to Dossie the possibility of a honeymoon in South Wales where he could fulfil a promise to visit the relations of Margery Fry's housekeeper Mrs Smith and go down a pit with them

(for "Left Review" he was reading a James Hanley novel "Grey Children" about the South Wales distressed area). Dossie at the same moment was being drawn to the idea of a honeymoon at Arles and Port Cros in the Hyeres island of south eastern France (suggested by Derek Blaikie and his mother). Dorothy and Robin had a dinner party at Queen's College on 6 November for Teddy and his Manchester friends Celia and John Douglas Pringle, with Dossie and Anne Elliott and Felix Markham. Late in the evening Teddy walked Dossie back to Somerville and they talked about Thomas's friendship with Prudence Pelham. Teddy and Dossie talked further about Prudence on the morning of 7 November. Dossie wrote to Thomas next day that she had given up for good and all mistaken ideas she had formed about a relationship between Thomas and Prudence. Robin had a call in Queen's from a college freshman who brought in an Arab press clipping reporting that the Arabs had at least one friend in England in Thomas and giving an account of his Palestine career and the letters to the "New Statesman". Conversely Robin dining in Magdalen was introduced to a fellow guest Pirie-Gordon who said in a jocular manner that Thomas was supporting attempts to murder him. Dossie had a new suggestion from Molly Crowfoot of a priest to perform the wedding ceremony: Dr A.L. Joseph, a scientist close friend of the Crowfoot family who had retired into a monastery as a Cowley father. He was a former soil scientist at the Wellcome Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum where Dossie had been taken on a visit in 1924. Dossie was keenly interested in a demonstration of the panning of gold. Dossie tried panning blackish sand in the garden at their Khartoum house. She took samples to Dr Joseph's laboratory to test for manganese dioxide, and he helped her identify the ilmenite oxide of iron and titanium (titanium had not been covered in Dossie's school chemistry). "Uncle Joseph", as he was known in the family, presented Dossie with a surveyor's box designed for scientific expeditions to help identify minerals in the field. A consultation with Uncle Joseph in 1932 was also part of a chain of events that led Dossie to doing her research in Cambridge with Bernal. Now Joseph was again at hand in Oxford on 8 November and Dossie asked him if he could perform the marriage. Joseph replied that he must consult his Father Superior and that the expected date was close to Christmas. Dossie discussed in a telephone conversation with her mother the hymns to be included in the service. The Crowfoot suggestion was "Jerusalem" and a carol "In dulce jubilo". Dossie's colleague Alexander Todd sent her the first crystalline derivative of vitamin E for her to determine molecular weight. Dossie saw the irony of this since this was the fertility vitamin and in her letter to Thomas on 9 November she quoted "a ribald medical students' song about it that goes 'and blast the hopes of Marie Stopes, By taking it in your tea'". Ren Hague's wedding invitation proofs were circulated around the Crowfoot and Hodgkin households. Dossie went to London on 13 November to see a dressmaker Pauline Andrewes, chosen by Joan to make the wedding dress from the material Dossie and Thomas had chosen at Liberty's and to a design reflecting their ideas. Dossie made a farewell visit to her aunt and grandmother who would be wintering on the Riviera and miss the wedding. Since the calls made her too late to catch a mid-day train to Oxford she spent the afternoon at a CP meeting that she had previously declined to attend. She thought the topics dull but found many familiar faces including Randall and Sage. She stayed on for supper in a Chinese

restaurant for a celebration of the unofficial news that Sage had been awarded a professorship at Birkbeck College. Thomas's position on Palestine came under further attack in a second letter from Israel Cohen in the "New Statesman" of 13 November. Cohen at length reiterated support for the Legislative Council offer, condemnation of Arab terrorism and denial of a comparison between British Palestine and Nazi Germany. Thomas, considering whether and how to respond, received a personal letter from a writer he had not met: Reginald Reynolds said that he and Ethel Mannin (wife and fellow-author) had been following the correspondence and expressed strong agreement with the letters Thomas had written. Thomas began drafting a further letter for publication and was taking care that it should be in a form that would not require him to write again. Meanwhile he was preparing a local lecture on Palestine and the customs of Arab fellahin and Beduin for 18 November. Sir Arthur Wauchope, who was in London on leave from Palestine, wrote to Thomas on 18 November that he had heard that day of the "engagement" and sent his heartiest congratulations: "I am indeed glad, and trust it will lead to great happiness." Wauchope continued: "Life has not been very easy for you these last years. Nor for me: I return to Jerusalem tomorrow for 2 months work and then retire". He instanced poor health and sent a book as a token of regard for Thomas. Dossie and Thomas met at Carlisle on 20 November for their first weekend together in Cumberland. Thomas looked in on a weekend school and took Dossie to the Farrell family for tea. They walked by a lake, looked at patterns for Thomas's wedding suit and discussed Thomas's draft letter to the "New Statesman". They went to stay at a farmhouse near Ennerdale with a Mrs Sawer, then Thomas took Dossie to the ILP Sunday debating class in Whitehaven. Ren Hague sent revised proofs of the wedding invitation. Robin sent Thomas information on times and cost of travel to the south of France - less costly than Thomas had feared - and Thomas wrote to Dossie on 23 November that he was "havering again towards the idea of France - but Arles and Avignon rather than the extreme South". He confessed to a driving accident about six mile from Carlisle when he was returning to Whitehaven at night on roads slippery with ice after seeing Dorothy off at the end of her visit. The car skidded round a corner, ran into a hedge and turned onto one side; the door jammed and Thomas climbed unhurt out through the window. A passing motorist agreed to fetch a breakdown van from Carlisle: "Then a few minutes after a whole carload of Samaritans - about two men and five girls - all Scotch, very gay and possibly a bit drunk, anyhow very kind - came, and insisted on shoving the car up in its right side, which they very quickly did. The men looked for damage and found something wrong the steering so they shook the mudguard up and down very hard and put it right again, and told me to drive off - wouldn't listen when I explained about the breakdown van - so I had to drive off, weakly, and then when they had passed me drive back again." When the breakdown van did arrive all that was necessary was to replace the petrol that had emptied form the tank during the upset. Thomas lamented to Dossie his "state of mind of the pampered bourgeois" who sent for help rather than thinking first of shoving the car straight again. The final choice of clergyman to perform the marriage was the Reverend John Cyril Putterill who was Vicar of St Andrews in Plaistow in the far east end of London (he was a friend and connection by marriage of the Harold Buxton whom Thomas had met in 1932 as an Archdeacon and had since 1933 been Bishop of Gibraltar). Thomas was

invited to participate in an Oxford conference on Palestine held in Rhodes House by the local branch of International Student Service on 27 and 28 November. In the preceding weeks he corresponded about speakers with a young Queen's College historian Harold Beeley who was anxious to secure a fair Arab case against the Zionist speakers. Thomas could not come south for the conference since he had a weekend school in Cumberland with Randall Swingler as a guest lecturer. Thomas's stand on Palestine was given in a third - and final - letter to the "New Statesman" in the issue of 27 November. Thomas asserted that he was not pro-Arab but anti-Mandate since he believed the Mandates imposed upon Palestine, Syria and Iraq after the first world war deprived the peoples of the right to determine their own form of government. He knew many Jews who believed not in partition but in the emancipation of a united Palestine from British rule, and pointed to conciliatory views of Norman Bentwich and Viscount Samuel. Dossie went to Rhodes House for the opening of the Palestine Conference on 27 November and related to Thomas that Musa Husseini gave a reasonable and persuasive counter to the Zionist case (including views from Thomas, from Bentwich and from John Crowfoot). Dossie went on 28 November to Thomas's mother to deliver one hundred of the three hundred printed invitations for the wedding, to take place at St Michael's Church, Geldeston, on Thursday 16 December at 3.30 p.m. Any hope of a quiet wedding had been lost (although they escaped the top hats and bridesmaids that Thomas's mother thought the characteristic trappings of a wedding). Dossie and Thomas did convey the crucial point that "since they will not yet have a settled home they hope you will not trouble to send any gift". They also prepared one more crammed visit to London before the wedding. The Habimah theatre group from Palestine were playing a short season at the Savoy Theatre in London and Thomas in correspondence with A. Baratz decided to come to London for a performance on 9 December and to meet some of the company after the play. Thomas wanted to make medical and political appointments for the morning, alongside Dossie's dressmaking and scientific tasks, and for them to do wedding chores jointly then dine with Margery before the theatre for which he considering a scatter of invitations. He had in mind at various times: Dossie and himself, his parents, Prudence Pelham, Derek Blaikie, Diana Furness, Randall Swingler, Geraldine Peppin, John Richmond, Musa Husseini, Reginald Bridgeman and David Jones. Thomas did not pursue all these thoughts and there were other concerns in the lives of the people around him. Dossie with teaching finished on 3 December was able to spread her pre-wedding preparations over several visits to London and to hear her father lecture and took advantage of the train journeys to read and mark scholarship papers for the Somerville candidates. The Oxford term ended on 4 December. Robin and Dorothy had disposed of the remainder of their lease on the flat at 37 Belsyre Court and had to vacate on 8 December for new tenants arriving on 10 December. Dorothy was spending part of early December at Crab Mill and with Mary Smith at 14 Banbury Road to supervise a further move into the Provost's Lodging at Queen's that had been under redecoration during the term. Thomas and Dossie eventually scaled down the day they spent on 9 December. Thomas travelled to London, dashed to Oxford for a suit fitting and a brief meeting with his mother. Then with Dossie he went back to London where they saw Jack Putterill at

Plaistow and agreed on their chosen variations on the conventional marriage service (the bride would omit "obey" and the bridegroom would "endow" her with his worldly goods rather than "share"). They stopped at a jeweller's and bought a wedding ring. They agreed afresh on a honeymoon destination - Margery Fry's suggestion of La Croix (where she had once invited Dossie to spend a holiday). They had supper with Margery, Prudence Pelham and David Jones. David did not come to the Habimah performance of "The Dybbuk" (the play Thomas thought the best play in the Habimah repertoire) but Derek Blaikie joined them at the theatre. After the play they had half-an-hour drinking coffee and lemonade at the Strand Palace Hotel with Baratz and his wife and two other performers. Thomas returned to Cumberland on the night sleeper. Dossie stayed overnight at Margery's and enjoyed the indulgence of breakfast in bed. Dossie went back to Oxford and devoted half a day to spinning a centrifuge in the laboratory to measure the molecular weight of the vitamin E derivative she had been given. She was wanted to fulfil what she called "a trivial desire to measure that before getting married!" Thomas's last lecture of the year was on Monday 13 December and he travelled to join his family in Oxford on 14 December. The Dowson family in Geldeston had offered the Crowfoots use of their house for overflow guests who could not easily make the journey to or from the village on 16 December, the wedding day. Thomas and his parents were advance arrivals. Guests from the family circle included his grandmother Mary Smith (and another Mary Smith, Lionel Smith's wife who as Mary Wilson had been married to George Hodgkin), with several of the "aunts" - Gertrude Hartley, Margaret Jameson and Barbara Cairns. Helen Sutherland came from Northumberland and May Fox with Annie Humphreys from Ilmington. Mary Jameson, Anthony Cowan and Prudence Pelham were among Thomas's contemporaries. Teddy was Thomas's best man and they wore what one guest described as "un-wedding-y clothes", Thomas in a grey-blue-green lovat tweed and Teddy in a darker roughish blue tweed. The Crowfoot guests included some of Dossie's former school teachers. The village children sang as a choir. Dossie wore the flowery brocade of blue and green threaded with gold (as a guest described it, "like the background of some of those old mediaeval pictures of Paradise"; Thomas's mother thought she looked like a pre-Raphaelite figure). The ceremony began with "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning". The marriage service was a mixture of the old and revised versions, and included Psalm 122 with its prayer for the peace of Jerusalem. Jack Putterill spoke informally about the couple and instead of the "sounding brass" thirteenth chapter of the first book of Corinthians he read Shakespeare's sonnet 116 "Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments". The first verse of William Blake's "Jerusalem" was sung as a solo during the signing of the register and the congregation joined in as a chorus for the second verse. After a reception in the Geldeston village hall Dossie and Thomas saw many of the guests off by an early evening train. Robin and Dorothy continued the celebration on the train with a dinner party for the rest of their family circle - and for Mr Putterill searched out by Margery Fry from a third class compartment and placed next to Robin; some of the "aunts" were reassured that a clergyman chosen for his left sympathies was vouched for by a Buxton bishop and was related by marriage to the Earl of Gainsborough and the Earl of Roden. Dossie and Thomas stayed for supper with Molly and John Crowfoot plus Teddy and his companions, Prudence Pelham, Joan Hague and Ren Hague. The latter four had come in a car borrowed from Prudence's mother Lady Chichester; Teddy

drove to Wycombe for the Hagues and on to London for Prudence, with the telegraph poles en route seeming to loom as champagne bottles. Thomas and Dossie went to London and then to France for the start of their honeymoon in the Villa St Michel at La Croix, Valmer in the Var, where until Christmas they were the only guests. The villa was four miles from the nearest village, but close to the sea shore with a coastal path they could walk along for miles without seeing anyone else. They spent most of the days on long and lazy walks and at night returned to the warmth and comfort of a wood fire - and read aloud the Turgenev political novel "Smoke". They could not quite escape the mundane world. Thomas's parents were still eager to find a situation that gave Thomas secure employment and ideally one that would allow the couple to work in the same place or close locations and establish a marital home. Robin, during a pause in London on the journey from Norfolk to Warwickshire, wrote to the vice-chancellor of Liverpool University about a post that might have suited Thomas. Robin advised in a letter to Thomas on 19 December that Cartwright had sent from Rewley House a notice that Belfast University would in April 1938 be appointing to the post of lecturer and director of extra-murals studies. Robin saw the disadvantages: "I doubt whether Belfast would even be a good place for crystallography, and it is a devil of a way from Oxford. And its problems are nearly as insoluble as those of Palestine, and you would not be happy, I think, among Orangemen." Thomas's aunt, Mary Smith, sent word on 19 December to Thomas's parents of a new radio-crystallographer post in Edinburgh (one that Dossie had ruled out earlier in the year as too far from Cumberland) and the possibility of settlement posts and extension work in and around Edinburgh. Sage wrote to Dossie from Hampstead that he would have liked to have been at the marriage ceremony: "I do wish you and Thomas the greatest satisfaction and understanding. I don't feel and won't feel cut off but rather released to meet you evenly." Thomas on 22 December confirmed his willingness to go to Cambridge in January to speak about Palestine in response to an initiative by the Cambridge University Muslim Society. Dossie and Thomas left La Croix on 26 December for a night and a day at Avignon (to see the Palace of the Popes). They travelled overnight on 27 December by train to Paris and then to London where they went for a night's rest to Margery Fry and then on another night train journey to Cumberland on 29 December. Thomas was going to have to find new lodgings since the people he had lodged with in Whitehaven were leaving their house, but he and Dossie could have a few more days together before the start of Oxford term in the new year of 1938 and work took precedence. Chapter 12 Adult education Thomas and Dossie spent the first few days of 1938 at the farmhouse near Ennerdale where they had previously stayed in November 1937 (before their marriage, but ostensibly as man and wife); now as a genuine married couple. They found new lodgings for Thomas with a Mrs Philipson, a Scottish-born Cumbrian, at 53 Church Street, Whitehaven. Dossie helped Thomas settle there from 5 January before she left on 7 January for a weekend at Geldeston on her way for the start of term. The new lodging offered a more accessible bathroom and hot baths at will. Mrs Philipson had other lodgers: a building engineer, a master tailor and travellers going about to canvass newspaper subscriptions.

Dossie and .Thomas together unpacked and put books on shelves, lined drawers with paper and spread a Bokhara hearth-rug that Dossie had bought at Liberty's in the autumn as a gift for Thomas. They placed on the mantelpiece a pair of candlesticks (a gift from the ILP Sunday discussion group where Thomas had been lecturing). These touches gave the room "the feeling of being something of a home", Thomas explained in a letter of 10 January to his mother. The couple planned to try to meet at fortnightly intervals (and for longer spells when vacations allowed); they began to correspond more or less on alternate days. Thomas was busy with his classes and drafted a fresh article on Palestine for "Highway", the WEA journal. He prepared for his visit to Cambridge for the weekend of 22 and 23 January, where he was joined by Dossie. He spoke to the Moslem Society on 22 January and set out to show why he believed it the duty of Socialists in Britain to support the Arab national revolutionary movement in Palestine. He argued that a joint Arab-Jewish working class movement, aiming at the establishment of a Socialist society through national independence, would be an irresistible weapon against British imperialism. Thomas took part in discussion, had time to talk to some of the overseas students individually - and in addition to meeting Dossie's scientist friends snatched a meal with Teddy and Prudence who turned up in Cambridge. Thomas was gathering his ideas for a CP pamphlet on Palestine to which he had been asked to contribute. Dossie at a Labour lunch in Oxford on 27 January sat next to a Christchurch don, Frank Pakenham who told her that Victor Gollancz had asked him to find someone to write a book for the Left Book Club on the British Empire from a Marxist point of view. Pakenham asked if Thomas would consider such a task, alone or with a collaborator - for about 500. Pakenham was looking for an expression of interest within days. Sage was on a visit to Oxford for part of the weekend from 28 January, He called at Dossie's lab on the Friday evening and they went to supper with the South African born zoologist Solly Zuckerman. During the evening Solly had other guests to meet Bernal, including the philosopher Freddy Ayer, Elizabeth and Frank Pakenham. Elizabeth, who as Elizabeth Harman had been a friend of Thomas's cousin Lucy, remembered Thomas and B.J. and asked Dossie if she would bring Thomas to a meal with the Pakenhams. Sage came Dossie's lab again on 29 January but with several people for him to see Dossie and he decided to defer their own discussion until lunchtime. They went to Somerville to eat buns bought on the way and Dossie made tea. They discussed scientific notes on proteins to be submitted in various combinations by Bernal, Fankuchen, Dossie and her assistant Dennis Riley. Since the points were soon agreed Dossie realised that she had an opportunity to talk to Sage such as she since the summer of 1937 before her marriage. She determined that she would not talk about Sage's lawful wife Eileen or his alternative partner Margaret Gardiner, but about Thomas and herself, what she most liked about Thomas and what made her specially happy. She wrote next day to Thomas: " I felt I was telling things rather badly and still I was glad to be trying. I think Sage was glad too; he kissed me goodbye and I took him to catch his train at 3.15" Mary Jameson wrote to Thomas that she and Anthony Cowan were soon to be married at Bamburgh in March or April (and that Prudence Pelham was in hospital). Thomas replied on 3 February with congratulations and inviting Mary and Anthony to dinner that night at Margery Fry's: "Now that it's plain that you are not going to marry Edward I have no feelings but pleasure at your marrying Anthony."

The family were looking for a country cottage accessible to Oxford that might be rented as a temporary home for Dossie and Thomas. Thomas was in favour. He saw it from the outset as a place to entertain the people they were fond of - including Teddy, Prudence, David Jones and Dossie's friends: "It is so much more satisfactory meeting them in your own home than at these casual meals", he wrote to Dossie on 27 January. Thomas pondered over the Pakenham search for a Gollancz author. He felt he knew too little about the British Empire and Marxism to produce anything more than a pot-boiler, alone or with collaboration, and this would be unsatisfactory as a first attempt at a book. He wrote to Pakenham turning down the Gollancz suggestion for these reasons, and because he preferred in the context of British Imperialism to write first about Palestine and the Near East. Thomas's next weekend with Dossie was on 4 to 6 February, initially at Margery Fry's for discussions in London on the CP pamphlet (he was collaborating with I. Rennap, a specialist on Jewish questions who lived in Cable Street in the East End). They were then in Oxford to see Thomas's parents newly installed in the Provost's Lodging at Queen's. Thomas on return to Cumberland worked during February on his CP pamphlet and on a further article he had promised to "Labour Monthly" In the search for a summer cottage one possibility was a house at Shotover, Elder Stubs, with garden adjoining the garden of the Ridings End where Dossie's friends Betty Murray, Lucy Sutherland and Rosalind Beach-Thomas were living. Dossie went with Rosalind and Betty to see Elder Stubs on 5 March by trespassing through the garden and she described it to Thomas as "quite small": the ground floor had a large living room and dining room with windows both sides and a kitchen; the upper floor had four bedrooms. The garden had gone wild from neglect and there was a bit of paddock and a hut for a pony. The house had been the Oxford home of the art historian Kenneth Clark and his wife Jane who rented it when he was keeper of the department of fine arts at the Ashmolean Museum. He had moved in 1935 as director of the National Gallery in London and was awarded a knighthood in the new year honours of 1938 when the Clarks were living in Kent. Dossie took a further look at the Elder Stubs garden the following weekend. Rosalind told Jane Clark of the Hodgkins' interest. Lady Clark said that with the landlord's consent they would for the remainder of the Clark tenancy let the house rent free on condition that the Hodgkins spent at least thirty pounds on doing up the garden that had been let run wild and would leave the house in reasonable decorative repair. Jane Clark wrote to Dossie with the name and address of her lawyer, Guy Little in a Westminster firm, to arrange details. Thomas was in London for a meeting, stayed at Margery Fry's and, when he telephoned the Pelham home and heard from Lady Chichester that Prudence was still in hospital, went to Whitechapel to see her. As soon as Dossie's teaching was over in mid-March she joined Thomas in Cumberland and they went around to unemployed clubs a good deal in Thomas's car and for long walks around Whitehaven. They were planning to go across to Northumberland for Mary's wedding at Bamburgh and Thomas had anxious dreams about Teddy's response to the event. He wrote on 26 March: "I wonder if your really are minding her getting married a great deal, or whether my sub-conscious thoughts about it are only fantasy." Thomas and Dossie spent the last night of March staying at a WEA School for the unemployed held at Dollarbeg, about thirty miles north of Edinburgh, where Thomas

gave a lecture on the morning of 1 April. They went to Bamburgh for the wedding celebrations and to Rock Hall to see Helen Sutherland. They drove back over moors and through the mountains to Cumberland on 3 April, Thomas's birthday. They arrived in time to hear Jimmy Maxton, of the ILP, speak at a political meeting, and to have supper afterwards with Maxton and Fenner Brockway. Dossie left Cumberland on 6 April for Oxford. Thomas had to lecture that evening and followed south next day for a WEA conference, to visit Margery Fry and the Crowfoots and to be with Dossie for a few remaining days of the Oxford University vacation. They had agreed to take on Elder Stubs for the summer and they moved into Ridings End for a few days in mid-April to prepare the house next door. Dossie suspected she might be pregnant. Thomas confided this to Margery whom he visited in London on 20 April as he made his way back to the north by the night train from Euston. Margery suggested that Dossie should see the gynaecologist at the Radcliffe Infirmary or someone she considered the best of the women doctors Mrs Mary Cowper Radford, who lived in Marston Ferry Road. Mrs Radford with nearly thirty years of experience was visiting physician to the British Hospital for Mothers & Babies at Woolwich and an obstetrics specialist at the Radcliffe. Although the prospect of a child was unconfirmed Thomas discussed with Dossie and with Margery his own career plans both of them believed it would take several years to achieve anything substantial in educational work in Cumberland and that he might consider alternatives. Thomas on arrival in Cumberland on 21 April went immediately to Wilfrid Lunn and explained his desire to broaden his experience. Lunn agreed that Thomas should apply for a post as Resident Tutor for Tutorial Classes in the University of Manchester whose closing date was 30 April - and to support the application. Thomas wrote asking Cyril Bailey and John Fulton to give testimonials and to Sandie Lindsay, Alfred Ernest Teale and Walter Moberly asking if their names could be given as references (four Balliol connections and one friend of his Gresford Jones aunt and uncle). Bailey responded next day with a testimonial that noted: "He has a marked capacity for interesting others in the subjects for which he cares, a genuine desire to help workers in the task of educating themselves, and, what is perhaps most valuable, a sympathetic understanding of other people and their difficulties." Dossie on 22 April went to the Radcliffe maternity ward and found that the doctor's consulting hours were on Monday, then that her general practitioner was on holiday. She was seeing students all evening for the beginning of term and made an appointment to see Mrs Radford at 12.30 on 23 April. Mrs Radford told her there was not much doubt that Dossie had conceived, but as it was difficult to be quite sure in the first month she would see Dossie again in May. Dossie spent her Sunday - next day - with her friends Betty Murray, Alice Burnet and Rosalind Beach-Thomas preparing Elder Stubs for occupation. They unpacked things at the house, washed the shelves and installed the linen and the plates. She was lining up domestic help for cleaning and some weekend cooking: "I think everything is going to be lovely", Dossie wrote to Thomas that evening. Thomas responded that Elder Stubs must seem more of a home than the "the two rugs and a bookcase" they had made in his Whitehaven lodging in January. Lunn wrote a reference for Thomas on 26 April that included: "Mr Hodgkin's work has been to organize classes, to find and allot tutors, to stimulate the wish for adult education,

as well as to take classes himself. He has also been responsible for the arrangements for a series of one-day schools at the two Settlements in this Area - there have been twelve this winter. His work has been eminently successful and he has prepared the ground for extensive work in adult education." Charles Morris, who had dual responsibilities as a Balliol fellow and the vice-chairman of the Oxford University Tutorial Classes Committee, wrote on 28 April a strongly favourable recommendation of Thomas as "a thoroughly first-class man and a first-class tutor" added the protective observation: " His political sympathies are rather far to the left, but his training and his integrity of mind are such that there will never be anything that could be complained of either in his teaching or in his service of the working-class education movement." Dossie, Thomas, Teddy and Prudence converged on the hastily furnished and equipped Elder Stubs on 30 April - in the light of Jane Clark's request a gardener Finlay had been for the period from May to August. Thomas initially spent only two nights in the first home of the marriage. On return to Cumberland he was faced with an unexpected tentative job offer from Sir Ernest Simon, a former Lord Mayor of Manchester, who was looking for a collaborator in Manchester for about a year's work on a book about democracy and public opinion Simon proposed to write. Thomas's reaction was to doubt whether such work would make him a better teacher, but if he failed to secure the resident tutor post he might be able to spend more time with Dossie if he were based in Manchester with Simon. He was willing to go to Manchester to find out from Simon what the job would entail. Dossie was not attracted by the Simon proposal, but thought it would be a good plan to go and see him. Betty Murray comment that the chief advantage would be the influence of the Simons in Manchester local government (Thomas had known Shena Simon when he was teaching philosophy at Manchester University in 1934). Teddy was doubtful whether Simon would be easy to work with and thought the extra mural job more suited to Thomas's interest in adult education. Teddy in thanking Thomas for the Elder Stubs weekend disclosed tentatively and secretly that the visit had made it more likely than it had ever been that Prudence and he would marry. He wrote banteringly in the jargon of that year of realignment of political forces in Europe: "No final decision to convert the entente into an alliance was taken, but it is in the offing." Dossie on 8 May broke the news of her pregnancy to her father whom she went to meet at a civil liberties school near High Wycombe and then to Thomas's parents in Oxford. With no indication from Manchester of an early appointment Thomas made further applications for posts as Organising Tutor in the City of Bristol and Resident Tutor in the County of Gloucester. He summed up his year's employment since April 1937 as education officer for the Cumberland Friends' Unemployment Committee: "In all I have been responsible during the past winter for the organisation of eighteen lecture courses in twelve unemployed clubs. Of these thirteen have been W.E.A. 12-lecture Terminal Courses and the remainder 6 or 12-lecture Courses of a similar type to the W.E.A." He had additionally taught in the winter seven lecture-courses (five of twelve lectures and two of six lectures), mainly on international relations and social history, and given single popular lectures on different subjects, including some to women's groups. He applied at the end of May for a post in Surrey and had notification that he was called for interview in Manchester at 2 p.m. on 16 June - without success.

He was heartened on the eve of going to Manchester by being asked to tutor two students in philosophy at the WEA's Oxford Summer School from 2 to 16 July, with the possibility of some work in the third week from 18 to 23 July. This gave him the justification for being with Dossie at Elder Stubs during part of the university vacation as he had meant to be even before the offer came. Thomas began a two-month break from his duties in Cumberland and could live for a while at Elder Stubs, do his tutoring in Oxford as required and go to London to maintain his political contacts and interests. He and Dossie entertained at Elder Stubs and had guests to stay: Derek Blaikie on 6 July when he came to see Charles Morris about the possibility of doing extra-mural work in London; and next day a Danish biochemist who came to talk to Dossie about crystals. Helen Sutherland came to see them and the house and Thomas who had enjoyed her hospitality over the years was delighted to entertain her for once at Dossie's and his own table. The third week of work materialised and Thomas extended his time at Elder Stubs, but went up to London to see George Mansour, of the Jaffa Labour Party, exiled from Palestine and teaching in Iraq. Thomas invited him to the cottage, along with other colleagues, friends and acquaintances of his own and Dossie's. He wrote to his mother on 22 July that Dossie enjoyed the visitors and "is almost as rash about inviting people as I am". He felt able to assure his mother that Mrs Bye who did the cooking at Elder Stubs was almost on the level of May Fox who cooked for his parents: "She makes beautiful soups, summer puddings, etc. and we get all the credit". The spring applications brought Thomas no job offers and in August he went to sound out prospects with an official of Leeds WEA. Thomas, despite his Cumberland experience, had never taken WEA tutorial classes. He was told that Leeds would not appoint an applicant who had not taken tutorial classes over the heads of their own apprentice tutors, who have had some experience of tutorial class work. Thomas returned to his Cumberland work in mid-August refreshed by the summer months with Dossie and ready to look for somewhere more agreeable than his Whitehaven lodging as a place to live with Dossie and eventually with the child they expected at the end of the year. He confessed, in his letters to Dossie, that he was in revolt against his landlady's Mrs Philipson's food after having enjoyed the delicacies of Mrs Bye for so long. He had been recommended to try Allonby, on the seacoast beyond Maryport, since it was said to have a real sandy beach. Marjorie Lunn suggested a house where she had stayed in the summer, where "the food and people are nice and they are fond of babies" Thomas visited the house, North Lodge, on 22 August - by a long stretch of sand with sea at the doorstep and a view across the Solway that reminded Thomas a little of Haifa. He made an initial booking with the landlady Mrs Hunter for a trial week from 6 to 13 September. Sir Kenneth Clark's tenancy of Elder Stubs was due to expire at the end of August and his lease required him to repaint. The Spalding family in Oxford who owned the house thought this might interfere with Dossie and Thomas being at the house for a final week. They offered as an alternative the chauffeur's cottage. This made for uncertainty in Thomas's plans, but he went south to Geldeston and on 28 August to Elders Stubs for a last few days there with Dossie. Teddy had been on holiday with Prudence in France where they had discussed the question of marriage. Teddy reported to Thomas at the end of August that Prudence was against the idea of their marrying and that her illness was more serious than Teddy had realised. For the first weekend of September - that was also the last weekend at Elder Stubs - Dossie and Thomas invited John Richmond, now

employed at the Office of Works, with Diana Galbraith whom Richmond was wooing. A removals van came on 5 September to clear the furniture from Elder Stubs for storage and to return borrowed chairs to the Provost's Lodging at Queen's. Dossie and Thomas had kept their garden upkeep agreement - with eleven weeks of employment of Finlay as gardener and with the purchase of garden tools, seeds and plants they could show a total expenditure of 31 7s 2d during their use of Elder Stubs. Thomas found the North-West in September far did not cut him off from Oxford connections. Sandie Lindsay's holiday home since 1926 was a cottage, Low Ground, on Birker Moor. Thomas and Dossie spent a night there with the Lindsays in mid-September and Thomas noted to Teddy in a letter of 14 September: ."I like him increasingly. He is a good cook and made particularly good porridge - also very reasonable to talk to." They stopped at Grasmere on the way back to call on Dossie's college principal, Helen Darbishire, and found a group of "Lake Dons" having tea with her. Charles Morris, with his wife Mary, came to Maryport on 17 September and after the two couples lunched together Morris gave a talk on "Some Problems of Adult Education Today". The trial week at Allonby was extended to a fortnight then Thomas and Dossie went to Mrs Philipson's in Whitehaven for the rest of September. It was an uneasy time for most of Britain. Hitler in Germany was demanding more "German-speaking areas" of other countries and Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew on 15 September to see Hitler at Berchtesgarden and again on 22 September to see him at Godesburg. The British authorities hastily prepared against possible invasion and considered evacuating millions from London. Several of Dossie's scientist friends had intimate knowledge of the plans that included moving scientific apparatus to safety. Sage and Margaret Gardiner briefly sent their child Martin Bernal, born in 1934, out of London to be looked after by Lady Cecilia Roberts at Brampton - Dossie and Thomas were in Brampton at the end of September and could have visited him if they had known immediately. Chamberlain's third visit to Hitler at Munich on 28 September for a fourpower conference led to the Munich pact on 29 September ceding to Germany the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland, or in effect allowing Czechoslovakia to be dismembered the price for what Chamberlain called "peace in our time". Thomas shared a general view, writing to his mother: "It's a nasty business altogether, and not easy to understand, though I imagine that now war (for us) is rather unlikely for some time to come." Thomas went on lecturing and Dossie returned on 2 October to Oxford by way of Margery's in London and saw Sage in Hampstead on 3 October to discuss their science notes and Margaret Gardiner offered the loan of a baby's travelling cot. Thomas moved on 8 October to new lodgings with a Mrs Robinson at 19 The Promenade, at the northernmost end of Maryport, where he enjoyed being able to look out on the seas and mountains. He found Mrs Robinson's cooking to his taste since she baked good cakes and bread and provided meals including kippers, fish-cakes and fish pie. His lecture topics ranged from the pre-war balance of power in Europe to the philosophy of Plato - he could draw on old notes for the latter. Thomas was in Manchester for a meeting on 19 October with Sir Ernest Simon. Simon talked much of the democracies he had been seeing in Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. Thomas questioned whether Neville Chamberlain was a democrat rather than merely a skilful operator of a parliamentary system. Thomas politely raised doubts about their collaborating on Simon's book and said that Charles Morris had a very

suitable alternative in mind. Thomas said that he was in any case tied up till April. He had a friendly supper with Ernest and Shena Simon but left on the note that he did not feel himself the right person for the book (Walter and Gwen Moberly were among several friends who had warned Thomas of a temperamental and possibly intellectual incompatibility with Simon). Thomas was reading that week the recent Jonathan Cape publication of "John Cornford. A memoir", edited by Pat Sloan, with its biographical essays on the young Cambridge Communist poet killed at 21 in the Spanish civil war on 28 December 1936. Thomas was reminded of the few hours when he had met Cornford on the boat and the boat train when Thomas was returning from the Middle East and Cornford from the Aragon front in midSeptember 1936. Thomas sent the book on to Dossie, commenting: "What the book makes clear is his absolutely positive Communist faith, and the way in which he combined intellectual conviction that Communism was right with determination to act according to his conviction - in a way it makes me ashamed that he should have reached such a position of assurance well before he was 21, while I am still full of doubts at 28. However I suppose there are just different sorts of people, some mature early and have their principles fully worked out at a time when others haven't yet begun to think about them - also I suppose some are Lenins who do manage to translate fully their beliefs into action, and won't compromise, and others, like myself, are much more opportunist, and only manage to act on beliefs up to a point." Dossie in mid-November relayed a request from Guy Chilver for a short article from Thomas to give the Arab and Jewish cases on Palestine to follow a pro-Zionist piece that had been written for the OULP. bulletin. Dossie made a highly significant presentation to the Royal Society on 17 November in a session on protein molecules when she arrived to find herself without notice listed as an official speaker. She had hastily to prepare some notes while moving in and out of the afternoon session where she wanted to hear what others were saying about x-ray diffraction. Dossie made a good impression on her colleagues though she herself felt she had lost her way in her sentences and forgotten half of what she meant to say. She had an early supper with Sage and other colleagues and returned to Margery's where she was staying. She wrote to Thomas from Oxford on 18 November: "I had a very good talk with Margery. She made one suggestion for the child's name if a boy - that he should called Luke after Luke Howard, your great grandfather who was an F.R.S. and named the clouds, I rather like the name. Do you?" Luke Howard, born in 1772 and a further generation removed from Thomas as his great-great-grandfather, was a self-taught scientist particularly known for a paper "On Modification of the Clouds" that he read to the Askesian Society in 1802 and developed into a book. He became known as the father of British meteorology and was lauded in a poem by Goethe for his observation and classification of the clouds. Dossie went to Geldeston a week later to await the birth of her child. Thomas came down for the last weekend of November, and on his way back through London on 28 November saw Norman Bentwich as part of an effort for the Friends' Committee to rescue a German Jew from a concentration camp in Germany. Dossie sent the Royal Society a summary of her presentation, and worked on a paper on sterols to bring into focus several years of her research. Thomas's article on Palestine requested by Chilver appeared in "Oxford Forward". He joined Dossie at Geldeston in mid-December for their first wedding

anniversary, and found her cheerful and unfussed, spending most of the day finishing the protein paper that she had been working at all summer. Thomas wrote to Teddy on 17 December: "I think she's glad to have got it out of the way, and feels now that she can settle down to having her baby with an undisturbed mind." They were able to go for a walk on the morning of 18 December. Dossie's labour pains began early next day and on the afternoon of 20 December their child was born - a son just under 7 lbs in weight and given the name Luke Howard in line with Margery's suggestion in November. Thomas and Dossie were firm that the birth should not have a ritual announcement in "The Times". This caused a mild flutter in the family since Thomas's mother felt she had to write numerous letters to family and friends and reported to Thomas that his aunt Violet Holdsworth feared people would think the child illegitimate. Chapter 13 Home and country Thomas and Dossie parted on New Year's Day of 1939. Thomas sat in the Great Hall at Euston waiting for a late train to the north and wrote to Dossie of the prospect of being reunited with her and Luke in Cumberland within some three weeks. Dossie wrote to him from Geldeston that the baby's nurse had chided her for gently crying into the remains of her soup after Thomas's departure. The nurse declared that weeping would spoil the baby's milk. Thomas once he had reached Maryport made arrangements with his landlady Mrs Robinson for his family's arrival. He was promised the larger of the two bedrooms with a second bed and a gas-fire. Mrs Robinson told Thomas she was willing to stay and mind the child any time when the parents wanted to go out together. Robin wrote on 8 January encouraging Thomas to look for WEA lecture work for the next winter -"i.e. to be getting into touch with the Directors (or are they called Organisers) of Manchester, or Leeds or Oxford, or wherever it is that you and Dossie think there is most hope of your being able to combine your two professions". Thomas looked for a second-hand car, in part exchange for his old one, and on Wilfrid Lunn's advice chose an Austin 10 of 1934 with low mileage and with delivery to be taken on 14 January. After the vehicle's first outing to an evening social, when the car required coaxing and pushing to restart, Thomas described it favourably to Dossie in a letter of 15 January: "For silence and comfort it's a dream compared with the old one - and so respectable that you won't know yourself in it - the kind of car that might be owned by a Bishop who'd fallen on bad days." Dossie wrote on 17 January that she had developed a small breast abscess. Thomas's plan to go to Geldeston to fetch Dossie and Luke was put on hold after Dossie's condition persisted with complications. Thomas instead spent a weekend with them at Geldeston. Thomas's mother set off in winter snow from Oxford on 25 January on a sudden whim to go to Geldeston to see Dossie and Luke for an hour or two. She missed a train connection to Beccles and returned frustrated to Oxford. Thomas after discussion with Dossie wrote to his parents on 26 January endorsing the view that he would have done enough of the Cumberland job by the end of the present winter and must plan to have a home with Dossie for the next winter. Since Dossie would be glad of another full year at Somerville their home must be in Oxford, and he should try as far as possible for classes under the Oxford Extra-Mural authority, supplementing them perhaps with one or two classes from Manchester or elsewhere. He would write to

Charles Morris, Stuart Cartwright, and the Manchester Extra-Mural authority. He was also thinking seriously of writing about Palestine in the summer, or about Palestine and Syria and the future of the Arab Territories, and even of the possibility of a short visit there. Thomas spent the last weekend of January in Geldeston recently flooded. He reached the village by rowing across the marshes to be met by John Crowfoot standing waving on the brink of the floodwater. Thomas travelled back to London on 29 January, sharing the journey with his father-in-law and arguing on such topics as democracy, the Christian attitude to war and liberty in Ireland. Thomas called on his Jerusalem friend the architect Austen Harrison at his flat in Lincoln's Inn Fields - for supper and an hour and a half's talk about the Arab and Jewish delegations to an official conference in London on Palestine. Thomas thought that the choice of George Antonius as secretary-general indicated that the British government meant business. Thomas took a night train Carlisle then drove to Maryport in the breaking day. He worked during the day and went to Oughterside for a wireless listening group of parents and a discussion on examinations. He was looking forward to bringing Dossie to London the following weekend where he might meet some of the Arab delegates to the conference and Luke might be shown off to Sage and other of Dossie's London colleagues and friends. He was spending the Wednesday night of 1 February with the Ecclestone family. Thomas's second plan to collect Dossie and Luke was frustrated - this time by a driving accident for Thomas in which the car's windscreen was smashed and he suffered a severe cut in his neck. He made his way to hospital and described the event to Dossie in a pencilled letter of 2 February: "Thursday Whitehaven Hospital!!! My darling, what a bloody fool I am. How all occasions do inform against us? I've gone and had a motor accident. It might have been much worse - nobody else killed or injured, myself neither killed nor seriously injured - only a cut in my neck from the broken glass (like the advertisements for Triplex), which went a little deep in one part and so made it difficult for them to stitch it up. However with the help of chloroform they stitched it satisfactorily, and I am now lying in this ward full of chaps with broken legs from pit accidents and things, on my back most of the time, feeling pretty much as you felt after they operated on your second abscess, and having to use bed-pans and be lifted up to drink out of a beaker and suchlike. Well, I don't quite know what we are going to do. They prescribe 'quiet' for me, but think I can be up and around by this Saturday - only not travel - so that our former plan is dished. Alas, I am very sorry." Meanwhile Thomas in the evening telephoned to Dossie at Geldeston who in turn telephoned to Thomas's mother to discuss their visiting Thomas in hospital. Dossie was alarmed that the telephone call had been made by a hospital matron, then thankful to hear Thomas's own voice on the line. She was glad that despite the "sickening" reason of Thomas's distress she had a "strong" reason for coming straight to Cumberland, although constraints of her own and the young baby's poor health and packing meant that she could not travel until the following weekend. Thomas had also contacted Teddy about the accident. Teddy drew on advice from the wealthy Morton family - of Jocelyn Morton who had been under Robin Hodgkin's moral tutorship at Queen's - who lived near Carlisle at Dalston Hall (a country house restored and extended from a fifteenth-century fortified farmhouse). Teddy intervened on 4

February to arrange for Thomas's transfer from the ward in Whitehaven Hospital to Dr Hartley's nursing home in Carlisle (in a scramble whereby Thomas left behind watch, driving licence and letters from Dossie). By Sunday, 5 February, Thomas's wife, child and mother were travelling to Cumberland. Dorothy reported to Robin that Thomas was in a good nursing home and that she, Dossie and Luke were comfortably entertained by the Mortons (Robin was reassured by hearing from the Anglican Bishop of Carlisle good reports of Dr Hartley). Dossie visiting Thomas was advised that she should be admitted for treatment for her own health problems and that she must stop breast-feeding Luke. Thomas was moved on 10 February to write verses on Dossie's distress including the lines: Dejected she sits in her room And tries to occupy her mind with scientific perplexities. They have taken from her her seven-weeks son, And bound her breasts with plaster. Her milk, say the Mandarins of Carlisle, is contaminated, An ill diet for the babe. Poor girl, the five feeds were for her like the five main pillars of a house, Underpinning her day, giving it strength and assurance, A five-sided frame, holding the rest of the hours. Courageously she continued feeding through these last seven weeks, In spite of pain and discomfort, when weaker women would long ago have stopped. Now they have made her stop, the Mandarins, For the highest medical reasons, And, in order not to wake desire and stir the sleeping flow of milk, They have set the child in another room. What is she to do? What comfort is one to give her? The trustees of the settlement for the descendants of Thomas's grandfather, the banker historian of the same name, took the values of the stocks on 10 February 1939 and allocated a one twelfth share to Thomas of a sum a few pence under nine thousand pounds (at a time when a gentlewoman might live on seventy five pounds a year). Thomas wrote to Teddy on 12 February of his own speedy recovery in the nursing home and of his gratitude to Teddy for his "masterly arrangements". Thomas was already thinking of his return to work and asked Teddy to lend him books about the "revolutionary period" after the first world war in Egypt, Persia, Turkey for his next lecture whenever he might be able to give it. Thomas was discharged with instructions from Dr Hartley to have a fortnight's rest and he went on 14 February to Dalston Hall. He, Dossie and Luke were still recuperating and they went on 15 February for a week of convalescence at a village inn, the Crown at Wetherall on the Brampton road from Carlisle. Thomas's mother returned to Robin; Thomas and Dossie were joined by Peggy Philipson, a daughter of his former landlady from Whitehaven, to help with care of Luke and they began to receive daily visits from the district nurse who came to bind their injuries. After a week Thomas arranged to take Dossie and Luke south to his parents and they were met on a train and taken to Queen's

College. Thomas was returning via London and he grasped an opportunity to find out how the Palestine conference was going before he resumed work in Cumberland. He went by car with Arab friends - Musa Alami & his wife Sediya, and Musa Husseini on 26 February to visit George and Katy Antonius staying in the countryside near West Wycombe as guests of the British Government. On the journey his friends were doubtful that Zionists would accept Arab calls for an independent Palestine and minority status for Jews with full political rights but no special privileges - plus an end to Jewish immigration. Thomas managed a private talk with George Antonius who was more optimistic that the Arabs were in an extremely strong bargaining position and that the sovereignty of Palestine was likely to be recognised by the British Government in principle after a fixed period of some two to five years. He had a grand supper with the Antoniuses and Jamal Husseini and returned to London by car, noting in a letter to Dossie: "We had a blue-eyed, genial, respectful plain-clothes detective travelling in our car to London - all appreciated the joke, especially Jamal - that having spent the last year or two being arrested or avoiding arrest they should now be being 'protected' by HMG." In London Thomas staying in Margery Fry's house in her absence talked late at night to a despondent Norman Bentwich who felt that his own Jewish people and the Arabs were being intransigent. Bentwich thought the Jews should accept the principle of Palestinian independence and minority status, and that the Arabs should be talking to the Jews on the questions of immigration and a community status for Jews in Palestine rather than individual citizen rights. Thomas lunched on 27 February with Arabs and sympathisers (including Jamal Husseini and George Mansour) at the Dorchester Hotel and floated the "Bentwich" line, with which he felt some sympathy, but to little response. Thomas resumed his schedule of frequent lectures and visits to the Lunn and Ecclestone households. He fretted over the trend of events in Europe - the "devilish" news from Spain of the military overthrow on 6 March of Negrin's republican government. He read Bertrand Russell and Peter Kropotkin and lectured at Whitehaven on anarchism, and at Aspatria on the Nazi revolution in Germany. He was thinking about house hunting in Oxford, where Dossie for the first fortnight of March was a patient in the Acland, but he delayed as he fought off incipient influenza. He prepared too for job-hunting and in a memorandum of 18 March described his recent work: "In this job my work has been chiefly the organising of educational activities ---- W.E.A. Terminal and One-year classes, non-grant-earning lecture courses, single lectures, One-day Schools, discussion groups --- in connection with the twenty or so unemployed centres for which the Friends Committee is responsible in West Cumberland; secondarily the taking of W.E.A. classes (up to a fairly elementary standard) and non-grant-earning courses in such subjects as --International Affairs, The History of Political Ideas, The History of the British Working Class Movement --- and the giving of occasional lectures on subjects of topical interest to men's and women's groups." Thomas was perusing lists of houses from two estate agents in Oxford. Teddy visited Oxford and was comforted by Dossie over Prudence Pelham's imminent marriage to another suitor. Thomas on 21 March told Wilfrid Lunn definitely that he was resigning. Lunn said the post was being offered to Harold Wiltshire whom Thomas already knew and Thomas was pleased that he would be able keep in touch with the work in Cumberland. Dossie identified a house in Oxford that might serve as their new home. The house was at 315 Woodstock Road in north Oxford with a view towards country at Wytham. They had the

offer of the assignment of the end of a lease from a colleague of Dossie's. Freddy Brewer, and his wife Stella who had put a deposit on a new house. The house they were leaving had two good sized room on each floor, but the Brewers were unlikely to leave before the end of the Easter vacation. Dossie expected to bridge the gap between the end of Thomas's teaching in early April and the start of Oxford's summer term by going into lodgings in Wellington Square. Teddy heard from Prudence that her wedding was to be in Sussex some three days later and that he and Thomas and Dossie were all invited. Teddy replied that he did not think this was possible, and that he was prevented by a prior commitment to entertain a former colleague for the weekend. He relayed the invitation to Thomas with a characteristically wry literary reference to Daisy Ashford's "The Young Visiters" and the admirer of Ethel Monticute: "I'm not fond of weddings, and I shouldn't like to Salteena at Prudence's." Prudence and Derek Blaikie's Balliol friend Guy Branch were married on 25 March. Derek was in Cumberland at the end of March and described Branch to Thomas as a "Tory Anarchist" - a description Thomas thought apt for Prudence as well. Thomas tried to recruit Peggy Philipson to come and help with Luke in Oxford, but Peggy felt she could not leave her neighbour Jack Harvey to whom she was due to become engaged that very weekend since he would not countenance her going away. Thomas's classes were drawing to a close and he began farewells, although there was much discussion and planning involved in arranging a one-week school to be held in May if a suitably inexpensive location could be found and adequate attendance secured. After several false starts the Holiday Fellowship's Centre at Nent Hall, Alston in Cumberland, looked feasible and was booked from 6 May to 13 May. Thomas's testimonials of a year earlier (in the job hunt inspired by the likelihood of Dossie's pregnancy) were updated for a new round, by Wilfrid Lunn on 12 April and by Charles Morris on 15 April: the caveat remained of political sympathies to the left balanced by integrity of mind in Thomas's teaching. The first of the job targets was the post of Resident Staff Tutor for Extra-Mural Education in the University of Birmingham. Thomas with Harold Wiltshire on 17 April sent out the plan for the one-week educational school and a request for nominations through the unemployed clubs in West Cumberland, and on 19 April advice that for technical reasons candidates should be receiving unemployment assistance. They were hoping by 25 April to fill thirty places for groups to study topics in music, drama, psychology, economics and political ideas - for the last of which Thomas would be tutor. Dossie and Thomas abandoned their original intention to avoid a christening ceremony for Luke and considered an appropriate form of service. Liverpool University, at Charles Morris's instigation, sent Thomas information of a vacant lectureship in public administration for which he might wish to be a candidate. The work required about six hours a week of lecturing on political science subjects to undergraduates, and preparing evening students for a diploma in public administration. Thomas allowed his name to go forward. He joined Dossie and Luke at Crab Mill on 22 April and helped entertain George White on a fleeting visit to England from Dublin. George was a godfather at Luke's christening. Thomas returned to Cumberland to put final touches to the programme for the school. Dossie and Luke moved temporarily to the Wellington Private Hotel in Wellington Square, Oxford, and Thomas from his Maryport acquaintances recruited for Dossie a young woman Rene Hyde as a helper for the child. He was in Oxford again at the tail-

end of April to assist in setting up their new home at 315 Woodstock Road, with a Mrs Townsend as cook, a Mr Gee as an occasional gardener and the French Laundry to call for the heavy washing. Thomas drove north on 3 May - to Alston, Maryport and Whitehaven - and again to Alston on 6 May for the start of the school. In a preliminary encounter with the participants, he put the argument that education involved the specialisation of a thorough grasp of the essentials of a single subject, and the generalisation of seeing how the problems of the particular subject of greatest concern linked up with problems in other fields - to build some kind of "world view". Dossie in Oxford entertained Margery Fry, who was writing to support Thomas's job application to Birmingham. Dossie tried to cope with Mrs Townsend who turned out to be difficult and demanding as cook. Dossie was almost relieved when Mrs Townsend sent a note that her own small son had measles and she thought it best not come for at least three weeks because of Luke. Dossie turned to a Mrs Arnold from Cutteslowe as a temporary alternative. The main lecturers at Alston included Harold Wiltshire and Alan Ecclestone from Thomas's circle in Cumberland. He also brought in a mathematics teacher at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne, Michael Roberts. Roberts was a poet and literary reviewer and shared enthusiasms for poetry and mountaineering with Janet Adam from another circle of Hodgkin family and friends in Northumberland (they had married in 1935). Thomas made notes on the lectures and recorded an argument from Michael Roberts on 10 May that poetry was useless but even useful things could be used for useless purposes. Roberts described poetry as a kind of play with words that enabled the poet to communicate thoughts about the real world. Another Northumberland connection, Ann Sitwell recently married to Thomas's first cousin Cubby Hartley, helped in the economics tutoring when the scheduled tutor, Herbert Clymo, had to withdraw at short notice in April to take up new work at a settlement in Plymouth. When the school was over Thomas returned to his own job hunting. He attended an interview in Birmingham on 18 May without success - jobs were offered to two other candidates. He went on to stay overnight in Liverpool with his aunt Lily Gresford Jones and attended an interview at Liverpool University - again without success. Thomas was more attracted by the Liverpool post that offered opportunities for social research on Merseyside problems and he liked Professor Simey. Thomas, writing to Teddy on 22 May, reported that the interview panel "thought (quite correctly) that I was not well equipped to teach the Public Administration side of the work, and appointed a man who's been a local government office for twenty years (a nice man - his last chance of getting out of local government, he said)." He was trying, he added, to start some serious work on Arab matters. Meanwhile he made another approach to the University of Manchester for the post of Resident Tutor, renewing his application of a year earlier, with the additional experience he had gained and a strong set of three testimonials. Fulton wrote; "I have no hesitation in pressing Mr. Hodgkin's claims very strongly. Any academic body which secures his services in either the intramural or the extramural field will be very fortunate." Thomas on 1 June submitted the testimonials with the names of the same referees -Sandie Lindsay, Alfred Ernest Teale and Sir Walter Moberly - as in the previous round. He explained that one reason he had given up Cumberland was to be nearer his wife and

child; he would spend the summer on the preliminaries of a book on the political organisation of the Arab World. He applied a month later to Rewley House in Oxford for a post as organising tutor in the North Staffordshire district of the WEA. Ties of long standing bound the interests of Oxford and the Potteries in extramural and workers' education. Oxford regularly sent staff tutors to North Staffs and two vacancies were due to be filled. The North Staffs district secretary was George Edward Cecil Wigg who after an approach from Cartwright was appointed in 1937 and retired from the army to take on the task. The district chairman from 1938 was a grammar school teacher Cecil Scrimgeour. Wigg in May 1939 became an advisory member of the Oxford University Tutorial Classes Committee. Thomas applied on 1 July from 315 Woodstock Road where he intended to begin his book on Arab political organisation. Thomas and Dossie snatched a late spring holiday in Paris, marred for Dossie by continuing pains in her joints. Thomas pursued his interest in Arab politics and met a young Tunisian Taieb Slim who tried to explain the pain and anxiety common to colonised Arabs. Thomas's holiday ended before Taieb could succeed in bringing Thomas together with Algerian militants. Dossie in London called on her Harley Street physician Dr Byam who this time took more note of her complaints and referred her to a specialist Dr Charles Buckley, author of a recent textbook on "Arthritis, Rheumatism and Gout". So despite Thomas's return to Oxford he and Dossie were again separated in midJuly when she went to Dr Buckley's clinic at Buxton in Derbyshire for a fortnight's course of treatment - mud packs on her hands, Roman style baths and gold injections. Thomas drove on 16 July from Buxton to Oxford, taking his benzedrine on Dossie's advice, and returned to supper prepared by Mrs Arnold and a house-guest Hans, a German refugee who was awaiting assignment to a farm job. Thomas (as in 1937 when he had wooed Dossie) had been given tutorial tasks in the two one-week courses that made up the WEA Summer School in Oxford. After supper he went for a chat with one of his first week's student Mays and to a Rewley House tutors' meeting where he met a couple from the Potteries named Stringer. Mr Stringer had the hazardous trade of dipping cups, saucers and jugs in a lead solution to give them their glaze. His wife Mary was a daughter of Elijah Sambrook an early member of the Tunstall tutorial class. In the Rewley House gathering a shy woman student mistook the youthful-looking Thomas for a pushing student trying to scrape acquaintance too rapidly; she seemed a bit taken aback to find he was a tutor. Thomas lunched on 17 July with John Fulton (a few days short of Fulton's wedding to Jacqueline Wilkinson in Pickering on 22 July) to talk to about a vacancy in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a Director of the Tyneside Council of Social Service. Hans left on 18 July for a trial visit to a farm near Cheltenham that turned out to belong to Kenneth Bell, the Balliol history don whom Thomas knew - "a bit hearty and keen on the Empire but kind-hearted", as Thomas described him in a letter to Dossie. Thomas applied for the Tyneside appointment, thinking this might be rather foolish, but persuaded by Fulton's view that it might offer opportunity for social research without too much administration. - and ready to withdraw if an administrator was really required. Charles Morris provided an updated reference where the caveat about far left sympathies was dropped and the opinion added that Thomas had "both the intellectual ability and the mental discipline, as well as the philosophical background, to do really fine research

work into problems of social welfare in their humane aspect". Thomas thought that Tyneside would be too distant from Dossie in Oxford. Fulton's forthcoming marriage prompted Thomas to write to Dossie that the past two years had been "the happiest two years in my life", dating this phase from his re-encounter with Dossie in Oxford on 19 July 1937. Alternatives to Tyneside including the possibility held out of several more WEA classes around Oxford and the North Staffs appointments still to be made. In this spirit Derek Blaikie had been looking in Oxford for houses for Dossie and Thomas when their end of lease assignment was up. Late on 19 July Derek and Thomas looked at some of the possible houses. The most appealing was in Wellington Place, St Giles, close to Dossie's college and laboratory, with a good garden. Thomas thought it too large for them to take alone, and too expensive since it was to be let furnished for 4 a week though probably available at 3. Thomas in the second week of the Balliol summer school tutored a miner from South Yorkshire named Twells - on Descartes. Thomas was called for the Tyneside interview on the morning of Friday 28 July - on the afternoon of which Dossie was expected to return from the Buxton clinic since she was due to share in the viva examination of a doctoral student in Oxford next day. Dossie, forewarned by letter and telephone call from Thomas, wrote from Buxton on 26 July wishing Thomas a pleasant journey and including her doubt whether to wish him success or not in the interview. Thomas travelled north (with supper and its ingredients ordered for Mrs Arnold to prepare for Dossie's return on 28 July and two guests expecting to see her) although he was already fairly certain that the social service directorship was not a job he wanted. The North Staffordshire Sub-Committee of the Oxford University Tutorial Classes Committee met at Rewley House on the afternoon of 31 July to appoint two organising tutors for North Staffs. The key Oxford figures on the panel were Sandie Lindsay, Master of Balliol in the chair, and Charles Morris as secretary of the Extra-Mural Delegacy and Stuart. Cartwright as secretary of the Tutorial Classes Committee. Four Staffordshire guests, invited in a consultative capacity, were Stoke-on-Trent's director of education J.F. Carr, Staffordshire director of education F.A. Hughes, Cecil Scrimgeour and George Wigg of the North Staffs WEA district. In a short-list of eight they interviewed Thomas, from Oxford, and candidates from Loughborough, Liverpool, Dartington, Cambridge, Manchester, Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent. The panel decided to offer appointments to Thomas Hodgkin and to Miss Gladys Malbon, from Dartington in Devon. The tutors were to take up their duties on 1 September and were appointed in the first place for a probationary period ending on 31 August 1940. The post meant that Thomas would be lodging in the Potteries but was within reasonable reach of Oxford. Oxford could remain as the centre of family life. Thomas began making connections in North Staffs. His friend from early youth Randall Swingler had a brother Stephen Swingler who without being a staff tutor took WEA classes in the North Staffs district. Stephen, who lived in a country cottage at Gnosall some six miles from Stafford, was teaching at the Balliol summer school in early August and he and his wife Ann were spending the latter part of the month on holiday in North Wales. Stephen invited Thomas and Dossie to visit from 2 September. Alan Ecclestone , writing from the Vicarage at Frizington on 11 August to congratulate Thomas on the appointment, recommended his

friends Harold Mason, vicar of one of the Burslem churches, and the Jack Bucknall, vicar of Milton "worth knowing as another revolutionary and Trotskyist". Dossie and Thomas on 24 August went up to Edinburgh where Dossie was speaking for Sage at a genetics conference. Thomas sat in on her talk on proteins and virus structure, and visited his Jameson aunt Margaret and uncle Johnny (the Edinburgh relatives Mary and Lionel Smith were spending the summer at Islay with their town house shut and the maids on holiday). Thomas's parents were offering as an Oxford base for Dossie and Luke (with his nursemaid Rene) part of Thomas's own childhood home at 20 Bradmore Road converted into flats two years earlier. Thomas's mother, on a suggestion by Dossie, took Rene to see the accommodation on 24 August. In Britain as a whole with the prospect of major warfare some three million people were moving or contemplating moving from potentially vulnerable target areas to what might be safer locations. Thomas's parents made conditional plans. "We are in the state of suspense between morning paper and evening news", Thomas's mother wrote to him on 25 August from Crab Mill. Robin (on his birthday) went into Oxford with Teddy who was concluding a brief visit from Manchester. The family were expecting Queen's College to be requisitioned, at least in part. Dorothy, with the help of an Austrian refugee she was housing, worked at darkening the windows of Crab Mill with makeshift curtains and brown paper. She believed that her grandson Luke was safer in Ilmington than he could be almost anywhere in England, and had contingency plans for war or peace. Thomas and Dossie on their journey south spent a night with Helen Sutherland at Rock Hall - David Jones was again a house guest. They continued the journey - to Staffordshire for Thomas (for the official start of his new job on 1 September) and to Oxford for Dossie (to prepare the Woodstock Road house for the official blackout coming into effect on 1 September). Teddy on 30 August made a brief visit to Thomas. German troops moved into Poland in the early hours of 1 September. Thomas with Dossie's help had picked pleasant rooms with Mrs Poole as landlady at 2 The Avenue, Harpfield, Hartshill in Stoke-on-Trent. His first preparatory work task was collating information for a Citizens' Advice Bureau due to open on 4 September. He went to Oxford to collect clothes and books for the Staffordshire lodgings and spent the night of 2 September at Crab Mill with his parents and wife and child. They were together when a British ultimatum to Germany against Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland expired at 11 in the morning. A quarter of an hour later Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, almost reluctantly, broadcast a declaration of war on Germany. Thomas, who had already planned to go on working in the Potteries as long as he was allowed, moved into Mrs Poole's. He had a spacious allowance of a bedroom and two sitting rooms, although almost instantly apprehensive about the "beta" standard of his new landady's cooking. He could however go into the kitchen with the Poole family to listen to news on the wireless. He heard the announcement of the sinking on the first day of war of a passenger liner outward bound from Britain - the "s.s. Athenia" torpedoed by a U-boat with much loss of life - and wondered if any of the passengers were people from Dossie's genetics conference. He wrote to Dossie on 4 September: "I spent a good deal of last night reading Liddell Hart's 'Defence of Britain' - he agrees with you in thinking that this idea of a 'fight to a finish' & the 'will to victory' is disastrous - victory being in fact impossible or practically so under conditions of modern war, with the enormously strengthened power of the

defensive. So that our best plan would seem to be to fight a defensive war with strictly limited objectives." Thomas went out for a walk in the evening and caused a mild sensation by carrying a gas-mask as about the only person who did. He reported to Dossie: "Almost everyone I passed I could hear saying - 'Oo look, he's carrying his gasmask'." He spent the morning of 4 September going round visiting class secretaries to see what they thought about classes carrying on. In the mining villages the miners expected to go on mining as usual and wanted classed to continue. In towns with more unemployed or middle class people there was less certainty. In Audley he noted worries about evacuation after some hundred and fifty expectant mothers from Manchester were dumped there apparently without warning. He spent the evening visiting Elijah Sambrook and encountered what he described to Dossie as a "synthetic" tea - "tinned pineapple, tinned cream, and sliced bread from a cellophane envelope - I don't mean to mock at it, and it was all good to eat - but it does seem to be a mistaken attitude to food". He and Sambrook called on two more village class secretaries who expected to be going on working much as normal and saw nothing against having their normal class. Thomas lunched with the Swinglers (Ann and Stephen and their first child) at their cottage in Gnosall on 5 September. After lunch Stephen and Thomas talked about the war prospects, with Stephen sympathetic to the Non-aggression Pact between Germany and USSR of 23 August and Thomas remaining unconvinced. He went on to visit more working men's clubs to try to arrange talks. George Wigg was negotiating for a special petrol ration for WEA tutors under the forthcoming rationing scheme. Thomas was negotiating for a bicycle. Teddy on 7 September wrote that he, along with his newspaper colleague and friend John Douglas Pringle, had joined the army. They expected to be trained as privates with the Manchester regiment and then be commissioned. Thomas had bought his bicycle and was finding it not too difficult to ride in the blackout although disconcerted by the rumble of lorries coming up behind him. He was beginning to know WEA colleagues in the area: his fellow recruit Gladys Malbon, John Rhodes the district treasurer and active over the new CAB, Harold Marks, an undergraduate at University College, Oxford, where he was tutored by the Fabian economist G.D.H. Cole, and recruited through Oxford as a WEA tutor a couple of years before Thomas. Marks was married to a refugee from Berlin. Thomas formed an impression of Gladys Malbon as "chatty and cheery" and of Harold Marks as inclined to be gloomy. Thomas followed up the introduction from Alan Ecclestone to Harold Mason by going on 12 September to give a talk in the vestry of the Sneyd church on the familiar topic of Palestine. He tried to connect Palestine with the international war situation, arguing that the interests and aims of colonial peoples should be remembered during a war and the colonial peoples should not be regarded simply as a means for winning the war of the colonial power. He cycled from Sneyd to his lodgings through pitch-dark streets. He also painted parts of his car white in case of night driving in the blackout. Thomas had hoped to go to Manchester to lunch with Teddy on 14 September but was forestalled when Teddy sent a telegram that he had been called up and was leaving Manchester that morning to report in Dunbar next day for training. Thomas in his letter of response confided to Teddy his hope that Teddy should be given as safe as possible a job to do and that he would try for the same when the time came for him to be conscripted: "I

don't feel that this war is being fought for any principles at all yet, and that makes me sick at the prospect of so many being sent to be killed." Thomas could not be certain but the likelihood of his being called up was slim. In the prewar phase from May 1939 conscription for military training was applied to men of twenty and twenty one. The National Service (Armed Forces) Act passed on the outbreak of war permitted conscription of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one. The compulsory registrations in the initial phases were only in the twenty to twenty three cohort. Teddy at twenty-six was a volunteer; the turn for Thomas at twenty-nine was long way off in the process. The Palestine talk was one among a dozen individual - and mostly current affairs lectures Thomas was to give in his first year as a staff tutor. However his main responsibility was to conduct long-running sessional classes. The regular Tuesday night class at the Audley Social Service Club from 19 September looked at the rise and development of the British Empire. Tutors could also conduct terminal or informal short courses of three lectures, or half a dozen or more. Thomas had nine of these requiring over the year several dozen lectures - often on themes woven around the war and war aims, although Thomas felt confused over current war issues and preferred a more reflective historical approach to Britain's foreign policy. He was also to participate in one-day and weekend schools. The tutoring and lecturing took him over the Five Towns of the Potteries that appeared thinly disguised in Arnold Bennett novels and the mining areas - including clubs, meeting halls and homes in Brindley Ford, Burslem, Kidsgrove, Leycett, Longton, Middleport, Rookery and Shelton. Thomas's close family were still considering how they would dispose themselves in Ilmington and Oxford under wartime conditions. Thomas's mother intended to keep open Crab Mill and the Provost's Lodging at Queen's since the college would continue to have a core of undergraduates and she wanted to be in Oxford with Robin. A tenant was shortly vacating the ground floor flat 20A Bradmore Road. This with three sitting rooms and two bedrooms was larger than the flat Dossie and Thomas were already considering. Robin offered it to Dossie at a reduced rent in case she wanted to take it and share it with an Oxford friend. Thomas went to Crab Mill on 23 September and after discussion Dossie and he decided that they would prefer the top flat 20C Bradmore Road, where Dossie could be with Luke in Oxford provided that the city did not become a target for German bombing. In Oxford during the weekend they bumped into Thomas's friend Isaiah Berlin. Berlin was with an English Arab friend and pupil Cecil Hourani, from a Manchester textile shipping family. Hourani was preparing to make a first visit to Palestine in early November. Thomas had to return after the weekend for a CAB session and the start of his regular Monday night class at Stoke on the rise of European leaders. Thomas's mother drove Dossie from Ilmington to Oxford on 25 September and on 26 September Dossie managed the move from 315 Woodstock Road to 20C Bradmore Road with professional movers and the help of a close friend Joan Blomfield and of Mrs Arnold. Thomas's teaching schedule was taking shape and he found all his principal lectures concentrated in the first three working days of the week. From 27 September he added to the Audley and Stoke night classes an international affairs discussion group in Burslem on Wednesday afternoons and a Wednesday night class at Brindley Ford for miners.

Wigg was an enthusiastic and exacting taskmaster: he asked Thomas to go round miners' welfare groups to try to fix up lectures and was also asking if Dossie would come and give a lecture to women on dietetics. Dossie made a brief visit to North Staffordshire at the end of September. The prospects Thomas had for fairly frequent family visits to Oxford were reduced when on 1 October he gave a Sunday lecture in Shelton and agreed to continue with a course of fortnightly Sunday lectures at the Shelton Club - for iron and steel workers and some local businessmen. Dossie on return to Oxford prepared - with help from her researcher Dennis Riley and from Mrs Arnold - a nursery for Luke to join her in the Bradmore Road flat on 4 October. Dossie was disconcerted by Rene's unexpected announcement that herown mother wanted her back in Cumberland and that she felt she must leave in a fortnight's time - this would fall awkwardly for Dossie at the busy time at the beginning of university term. Thomas on 5 October wrote to Bridgeman of the League Against Imperialism (whom Thomas had first heard speaking on 28 February 1937 against colonies being returned to Germany) for advice on Indian and other colonial speakers who might come to Stoke and to suggest a broader study-group on Britain's war aims in relation to the colonial question. Thomas wrote also to B.J. - with whom he had been out of touch since before his marriage - about his dispersed family life. She had become a publisher's reader for Heinemann and in 1938 married Jack Gaster, a Communist Jewish lawyer and one of numerous children of the Haham - spiritual head - of the Sephardi community in Britain Moses Gaster. Thomas spent a weekend with Dossie and Luke in their new home in Oxford and visited an agency, advertised and called on his Smith grandmother to assist in the search for suitable help for Dossie. Thomas's mother helped vet the candidates for children's nurse and sent promising ones on to Dossie. Thomas's lecturing in North Staffordshire had now spilled into Thursday. He was asked by John Rhodes if he would - as a spare-time job - take on the secretaryship of the eight Citizens' Advice Bureaux established in the area. He agreed although in a letter to Dossie expressing doubt whether he could do the task properly "things being quite a rush as they are". B.J. in a reply written on 10 October to Thomas's letter commented on the occasions when she had been meaning to write to him -"your marriage, your son, my marriage - all of them made me tremendously happy and longing to write, but I never quite did". She wanted to meet Dossie and Luke and wanted Thomas to meet Jack who just turned thirtytwo was not in the conscription age group, but did war service as an air-raid warden at night and in the mornings and worked as a lawyer in the afternoons. They lived in a London flat at 94 Baker Street high above ground level with a bathroom window opening towards the Class Cinema next door. Her publishing office had moved to the country where she went every Tuesday and Friday. B.J. hoped they might meet: Jack's mother was living at Appleton near Oxford and B.J. wondered whether it might be possible to combine a visit to her with a meeting with the Hodgkin family - petrol rationing permitting. Thomas relayed the suggestion with approval in his regular letter to Dossie. Reginald Bridgeman replied to Thomas on 15 October that he had put Thomas's idea of a study group to some of their colonial friends and they welcomed it warmly. Wartime communications and censorship constraints were leading the Colonial Information Bureau in Gray's Inn Road to close. Bridgeman was doing more local work on wartime unemployment and wrote from a cottage in Pinner. For speakers on India he

recommended "the very active and able" secretary of the India League V.K. Krishna Menon through the office at 165 Strand, London. Bridgeman, alongside contact details for people interested in Ceylon and Malaya, wrote: "For West Africa I would suggest Desmond Buckle, c/o Aggrey House, 47 Doughty St, London W.C.1. For the West Indies and Negro questions generally Peter Blackman, 61 Glenmore Road, Belsize Park, London N.W.3 For East Africa I think that you would do well to apply to Johnstone Kenyatta." Bridgeman's recommendations were made when the colonial pressure groups in London were in more than their accustomed turmoil as they balanced the political opportunities the war might bring to their cause against loyal restraint in pressing their demands. Thomas knew little of this milieu (except for the Arab and Jewish lobbies). The address Aggrey House was in itself a sensitive barometer since it had been opened five years before in October 1934 as a hostel for African students and was operated with financial support from the Colonial Office. From the outset some African students, especially from West Africa, had argued that Colonial Office tutelage would rule out Aggrey House as a centre for revolutionary propaganda or even ordinary criticism of British Government measures. However in the late nineteen thirties the Aggrey House Committee included personalities with links to the conservative League of Coloured Peoples (founded 1931) and the more radical International African Service Bureau (created in 1937 from an Abyssinia lobby). Desmond Buckle was from Gold Coast and associated with Gold Coast student politics and the Negro Welfare Association. Peter Blackman Blackman from the West Indies was in October 1939 drafting a moderate statement on wartime restraint for the LCP. Kenyatta, who had come to Britain in 1929 and represented the Kikuyu Central Association, had early links with the League Against Imperialism and with the Communist Party of Great Britain - although in 1930 Bridgeman was viewed with reticence by the CP. Kenyatta by 1939 was involved in the IASB and the LCP. Dossie in Oxford had chosen for Luke a new children's nurse (named Joan) who was with her on 30 October, as was Thomas's mother, when the time came for Rene to leave. Rene remained calm until the last minute but was distraught at the moment of saying goodbye. Thomas lunched that day in Stoke with Cecil Hourani who came over from Manchester to discuss his travel to Palestine and Syria. They went out into the countryside and walked in Trentham Park. Thomas suggested that Hourani do research on the contemporary political ideas of the Arabs that could feed into the book Thomas was minded to write on Arab political organisation. They toyed with the idea of a collaboration: Cecil doing the spade-work and Thomas doing the writing. A brother of Cecil's was working in Chatham House and with Isaiah Berlin trying to work out a plan for Palestine. Thomas decided to find out more. He took on a Friday night class at Biddulph Moor from 10 November; Wigg had secured extra petrol allocations for the tutors; Thomas cycled to some destinations and motored to the more distant. During Thomas's home visit on the weekend of 18 and 19 November he and Dossie had Isaiah to supper with John Crowfoot who was visiting: Thomas wrote to Teddy: "We talked of Arab things and disagreed profoundly." He took books on India from his parents' bookshelves and sent for more from Teddy's collection in preparation for a one-day school on India.

Dossie came to Stoke at the invitation of North Staffs Scientific Society and lectured on 8 December while Thomas took his Biddulph Moor class. Dossie returned to Oxford on 9 December: Thomas ferried participants to and from a one-day school on India, lectured twice and collected material from Harold Marks for a Sunday class on federal union. He found time too to call on Phyllis Chadwick, the sister of his Stoke class voluntary secretary Gordon Chadwick, to arrange to take her next day to see her brother in a sanatorium after he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Thomas went to the Wedgwood factory on 12 December and chose a tea-pot, water and milk jug as a present for Dossie on their second wedding anniversary - 16 December although their work kept them apart. He went to a Sneyd church service on 17 December, for coffee after the service with a high school teacher Doris Pulsford, and on to the Shelton club to lecture - on India since he was well prepared. The club had decided to take a course in the new year and the members gave Thomas an unexpected Christmas gift of two packets of Godflake cigarettes. Thomas and Dossie were apart for Luke's first birthday on 20 December, but Thomas joined them in Oxford on 22 December for the Christmas break in classes. He was anxious to spend one day of the break in London to see Krishna Menon and other colonial activists. B.J. sent a Christmas card and a brief letter that she had failed in one bid to combine a visit to Jack's mother and to the Hodgkins - and that she was expecting a baby. Chapter 14 War and peace Thomas, Dossie and Luke spent the new year of 1940 quietly. Thomass parents were in Cumberland on a visit to Thomass godmother Helen Sutherland. Aunt Helen was settling into a new house Cockley Moor at Dockray near Ullswater with a view over miles of open country. Robin Hodgkin was reading a study by Michael Roberts of the philosopher T.E. Hulme (Michael Roberts and his family were fellow house guests). Dossie and Thomas took Luke to Geldeston to see the Crowfoot and Hood relatives. Thomas on 2 January pursued his political concerns through a day of encounters in London. He began about noon with Krishna Menon, who was willing to come to Stoke in February and thought it possible to establish a local group to support the aims of the India League. Menon and Thomas explored the possibility of forming a small committee of Arab, English and possibly Jewish representatives along with other activists on colonial issues to work on Arab questions on a broader basis than the Arab Centre. Thomas went on to Bertorellis in Soho for a pasta lunch with Reginald Bridgeman who was careworn by constituency difficulties with the Labour Party over his critical attitude to the war: Thomas thought Bridgeman was being rigid and suspected that Bridgeman thought Thomas inclined to hedge. After lunch Thomas made telephone calls to see how he might spend the evening: Margery Fry was out of London, John Richmond and Diana Furness no longer on the telephone. He found B.J. in and arranged to go round to the Gasters Baker Street flat for supper about 6. He walked on to the student hostel Aggrey House in Doughty Street to meet Peter Blackman and Desmond Buckle who were also willing to come as speakers to Stoke. They talked about African questions; Thomas noted in writing to Dossie: I am still too profoundly ignorant to be able to learn much. He tried to visit the London Library and found it closed for the holiday, and went on to B.J. They talked about her

forthcoming child expected in July. Jack Gaster arrived and Thomas showed photographs of Luke and offered a Moses basket as a belated wedding present. They talked of the war and workers education. Thomas was pleased to find that Jack had an ILP background and had been to Cumberland to do ILP meetings. Thomas was easily persuaded to stay the night since he had an unfinished call to make to the London Library. They parted with an understanding that both couples must try to meet soon. Thomas returned to his lodgings with Mrs Poole and the round of lectures interspersed with fleeting visits home to Oxford. By mid-February he gave up the lodgings (warm fires, but indifferent meals ill-adapted to his teaching schedules). He moved temporarily into a small hotel and had the occasional use of Gladys Malbons flat in which to prepare lectures. Krishna Menon drew an audience of about forty to a meeting at Stafford and half a dozen said they would join a local branch of the India League if one were formed. Thomas made spasmodic efforts during the week to find new lodgings. A friend and colleague Mary de Selincourt, married to Thomass Balliol mentor Charles Morris, suggested temporary use of her rooms and on 21 February introduced Thomas to her landlady (in a house with a telephone). The landlady was an admirer of Thomass maternal grandfather A.L. Smith, but indicated she could not cope with her husband whose memory was failing and with an unfamiliar lodger. A member of Thomass Stoke class a Pacifist-Socialist schoolteacher Leslie Charles suggested Thomas might lodge at his parents house in Stoke-on-Trent. Thomas visited the house on 22 February. B.J. wrote on 23 February that she and Jack would be going next day to visit Jacks mother in Appleton near Oxford and to inquire if there was a possibility of seeing the Hodgkins on the way. The date did not fit: Dossie - leaving Luke with Thomass parents joined Thomas on the evening of 24 February for a weekend in the Potteries, bringing a letter from Teddy Hodgkin to say that he was being posted to India (Teddy after initial military training had on 17 January been commissioned in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry). Dossie and Thomas walked next day in the woods near Trentham Park. Dossie then helped Thomas settle into new lodgings that both thought a considerable improvement on the previous ones now in the friendly and intelligent household of the Charles family. David Charles from Wales had in his time stayed in some ninety separate lodgings and Thomas saw that this experience gave him a particular understanding of a lodgers circumstances. Thomas wrote to his mother about the pleasant chatty landlady Mrs Charles. Among the four sons: Leslie Charles was Thomass student, Stanley Charles was a third year history undergraduate at Balliol and Clifford Charles was working away from home. There was a daughter Peggy and a young schoolgirl daughter Nancy. Thomas felt content at 245 Princes Road. He thought it auspicious that he and Dossie shared the room rather than going away for the night, as he had initially suggested. Dossie preferred that they stay in the new lodgings. They discussed the possibility of finding a farmhouse where they with Luke could have a holiday during the university vacation for Easter. Thomas invited Teddy to visit before he sailed for India and Teddy came on 4 March and stayed overnight. They walked in Trentham Park on the morning of 5 March and discussed the future to which Teddys India experience might lead. George Wigg (mindful how British armies had been transformed by the demands of the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War) had been battling for a year in favour of education in the armed forces. He believed this to be an essential concomitant to

conscription. He mobilised support among educationists and politicians. Under the 1939 statues adult education was nominally mandatory. However army education was virtually stalled on the outbreak of war in September 1939 through the dispersal of the personnel of the Army Educational Corps to other duties. Civilians including Wigg from the WEA, Sir Walter Moberly and Sandie Lindsay from the universities kept up pressure. Wigg on 6 March in discussion with Gladys Malbon and Thomas suggested that effective adult education in the army was in the offing (Wigg through Lindsay knew that members of the War cabinet had promised support). Thomas walked yet again near Trentham Park on 9 March: this time in the company of the Sneyd schoolteacher Doris Pulsford and at Thomass instigation. Thomas recounted the conversation in detail in a letter to Dossie next day: I started by trying to find out what it was she really needed - whether a lover or a friend - but she didn't like that way of dealing with things - thought it too rational and cold-blooded. And I found myself in the position rather of talking as though she had all the needs and I hadn't any - superior-like which isn't of course a true picture, but (since I have you and she hasn't a husband) has a sort of truth in it. Anyway she talked about herself a bit - as I'd asked her too - and things got plainer that way. She hasn't had a lover, though one very important friend, as Sage might be to you - a might-have-been. And she doesn't now want me for one - partly I think fear that she'd be doing it for the wrong motives (desire to be made a fuss of and that sort of thing) and would be sorry she had afterwards, partly having known me such a little time and not knowing you at all. Wigg continued to press his schemes for army education. Thomas was disconcerted to hear from the clerk to the Newcastle Rural District Council that the authority refused permission for the Audley Council Room to be the location for a one-day school. This was allegedly on grounds that the Audley WEA members were Communists and Pacifists who were not doing their share in Britain's war effort. Thomas found a farmhouse at Betley for a ten-day holiday with Dossie and Luke from the end of March, though spending Thomass birthday on 3 April on a visit to the Buxton clinic where Dr Buckley declared Dossie cured of her arthritis problems. Thomas took his family to Crab Mill on 8 April and returned next day to Stoke for his usual lectures and a night and a morning at a school for the unemployed held at Hope. Derbyshire. The Association of Tutors in Adult Education, whose honorary secretary Henry Hardman in Leeds was married to Thomas's paternal cousin Diana Bosanquet, had presented Thomas with a further chore. Hardman was asking Harold Marks to revive the associations activities in North Staffordshire and hearing from Diana that Thomas was working in the area asked Thomas to help in the task. The allegation of Communism and Pacifism in Audley was under investigation by the local education authority and Thomas sought to clarify the true position for Wigg. Thomass dialogue with Doris continued (as he meticulously reported back in almost daily letters to Dossie). Doris was concerned whether Dossie would mind about the incipient relationship. Thomas responded: I said that there from my knowledge of you and how we felt together about these things you wouldn't - though one could never absolutely see ahead. Also I mentioned your sleeping with Sage, and that that had genuinely not made me feel jealous or unhappy - only a little odd - liking moving into a slightly new kind of world.

A revival meeting of the Tutors Association called for 20 April tied Thomas to the Potteries for a weekend when he had intended to go to Oxford. He and Doris took camping equipment away to Offleybrook and spent the Friday and Saturday nights together there, with Thomas devoting much of Saturday to meetings with other tutors and to calls on WEA matters. The countryside excursion was cold and rainy, but avoided the question of concealment of their conduct from their respective landladies and a prospect that Thomas much disliked of hotels and the possibility of disguised names. They took another Sunday afternoon walk in Trentham Park on 21 April and went on to a political tea party mainly of the Sneyd Group and ILP members in the Potteries with visitors including Fenner Brockway (he and Thomas recalled their previous meeting at Cleator Moor in Cumberland with Jimmy Maxton just over two years earlier). Late in the evening Thomas at his lodgings was roused by Leslie Charles who brought Brockway round to talk further before he left on a midnight train. Thomas unravelled the complaint about the character of the Audley WEA class. One of the members Tom McEllin had in a discussion argued that during the first world war several of the directors of the German arms manufacturers Krupps were British and included Bishops of the Church of England. Since this remark was being brought to the notice of the local education authority Wigg was anxious about any risk to the local grants that were crucial to WEA work (in 1940 the local authorities were contributing to class and to administration costs). Thomas spent the last days of April and first days of May in Oxford at the Bradmore Road flat. B.J. wrote on 30 April with May Day greetings and to say that since Jacks mother had died the chances of her being in Oxford had grown smaller. She followed up with an invitation for 7 May for Dossie and Thomas to have supper at the Baker Street flat and to stay the night if it suited them. The two couples discussed the course of the war: Jack Gaster saw prospects for an early peace; Thomas thought the war would be intensified. Almost immediately the war did seem to be coming much closer as British troops went into Belgium to meet the German invasion and in Britain a coalition government was formed on 10 May under Winston Churchill. Thomas was with Dossie in Oxford for her birthday on 12 May but before the day was out had to dash back to his work in North Staffordshire. He found the parting even harder than usual. Antony Eden in the Churchill war cabinet announced on 14 May a new force of Local Defence Volunteers for British men between the ages of fifteen and sixty who were not on military service. Thomas, fretting at the usual fortnights absence from Dossie, pondered on the possibility of much longer separations if the war went on and he were called up. Wigg, Scrimgeour and Rhodes had a discussion on 16 May with the tutors about the impact of military callup. University lecturers, including tutors, from the age of twenty-five were in a reserved occupation. The threshold was being revised upwards to thirty: Stephen Swingler and Harold Marks would be affected, but Thomas had already turned thirty. This pleased Wigg who was thinking about the next sessions teaching programme. Thomas, attending the Tutors Association annual conference in Manchester on the long weekend from 17 May to 20 May, enjoyed meeting other tutors but doubted how closely the business sessions matched the reality of working under war-time conditions. Thomas called at the Stoke Labour Exchange on 10 June where a clerk confirmed that Thomas was by age and occupation in a reserved category but must still according to his age

group register on 22 June for military service. Italy declared war on Britain and France; Wigg urged on the WEA staff tutors a drive for more meetings and schools during June and July. Thomas took on another new commitment: to stand by to drive an ambulance on Sunday nights, with first aid and gas training thrown in, and to begin on 16 June. Stretchers were provided on which the volunteers could lie and sleep if no calls came. A helmet and a superior kind of gas mask came with the task. He enrolled for Local Defence Volunteer duties. Thomas duly registered for military service on the afternoon of 22 June. Dossie had new help for Luke from the beginning of July with the arrival of an Austrian nursemaid Olga Weiss. Wigg found yet another task for his staff after four battalions of French soldiers were stationed at Trentham Park to which they had been diverted (from fighting in Norway) on the decision of France to seek an armistice with Germany. WEA lecturers took turns to staff a French Soldiers Bureau to provide news and information, although Gladys Malbon would not or could not speak French to the soldiers who called there. Hitler on 16 July signed a directive for an invasion of Britain to be prepared. B.J. and Jack Gaster had a daughter Lucy born on 17 July. The Battle of Britain was waged in the air through the summer and early autumn months. Prudence Pelhams husband Guy Branch was killed in action in the Battle of Britain on 11 August. Wigg in September assigned Thomas lectures on food and suggested that these might open the way for new short courses. Wigg was pressing for more lectures to the army and he was called up at the end of November to be commissioned into the Army Educational Corps (Gladys Malbon with Mary Stringer became joint acting secretaries in his absence). B.J. on 18 December sent Thomas a Christmas card showing her five month daughter and a letter outlining an idea of setting up a shared household in the country with her school friend Diana Hopkinson and her own sister Sigle, since all had - or were about to have - babies. In the new year of 1941 Thomas sustained the civil defence tasks that Wigg had urged on him (with Gladys alert to new teaching opportunities for herself and for colleagues). Thomas spent much of the night of 15 to 16 January trying to put out an incendiary next door to his Stoke lodgings, but did more damage than the bomb. He took sand up into the loft to quench the fire, put a foot through the ceiling and brought down a shower of plaster onto the landing below: "The ceiling seemed to be made just of cardboard not of wood like our solid bourgeois ceiling, he wrote to Dossie on 17 January. He went next day to Stafford to arrange to give Arabic teaching to 18 soldiers, and gave an impromptu Arabic lesson to a few at the army camp. A fortnight later Thomas found his class competing with a talk on army pay and enthusiasm of the participants waning. By early February Thomas found only two soldiers attending, with a third late arrival, as other class members were away on leave or on fire-fighting courses. Thomas reluctantly invoked the help of an army captain who made the class compulsory. Dossie was pregnant and as part of the celebration of Thomas's mother's birthday on 1 March broke this news to her. Thomas was generally cramming his work into three days of the week so that he could make frequent visits to Oxford, although this reduced his time for lecture preparation. On a peak day such as Tuesday 6 May he worked some fourteen hour without a break: last minute preparation in the morning for a factory talk, a scheduled army lecture at Nantwich and debate at Audley. The mid-day factory news-talk to women workers was on Iraq, the Arabic class "sleepy and stupid to start with", the

army discussion was on Britain's foreign policy over the previous decade, and the Audley debate on the contrasting economic systems of the USSR and Germany. Thomas drove himself in his car from place to place. The Audley tutorial class in which five women and eight men were registered was over the year looking at empires in world politics as part of a three-year programme on the British Empire. Wartime overtime working often depleted attendance for all classes. Thomas had some doubts of the value of talks of ten to fifteen minutes in factories during the lunch hour since there was in most cases little opportunity for following up with further work, but the audience could be up to a couple of hundred workers. The expectation of a second child set Thomas and Dossie house-hunting in the Potteries. By late August they agreed on a change of lodging from the Charles family to a Mrs Layne at 10 Bramfield Drive, Newcastle with Dossie ensuring provision of a new bookshelf and working table. Thomas moved other furniture on 5 September, took leave of Mrs Charles on 8 September and settled books and papers into his new home. A colleague Stephen Coltham, with a background in the Canterbury Tutorial Classes, was also a new lodger in the house (Dossie and Wigg thinking they would make good company for each other). Thomas in writing to Dossie remarked the range of vegetables and fruit with their first dinner " plenty of Vit. C". An additional helper Edith Mutters, an East London evacuee, joined Dossie's nursemaid Olga. Dossies and Thomass daughter was born on 23 September in the Oxford Radcliffe Infirmary. Initially she was thought of as Lucinda this prompted by Luke after the heroine of Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Two Bad Mice". Thomas toyed with giving her additionally an Arabic name Ayesha. After a few days with his family he returned to work (Stephen Coltham told Thomas he connected Ayesha with Rider Haggard) and both parents were preferring the name Elisabeth (evoking Dossie's friend Betty Murray). Thomas wrote to the recently widowed Prudence Branch saying the child would be named Prudence and asking her to be Godmother. Prudence on 4 October wrote asking to be excused from Godmotherhood, but as a childless widow expressed delight that this child should carry her name. The daughter was duly named Prudence Elizabeth, but dandled as Lizzie Prue. Thomas replaced his second hand car, paying 100 and selling the old one -"in the end I only got 15 + 3 for the licence". For a weekend school on 25 October he ferried to and from a railway station the speaker for the first session, the Hungarian economist Thomas Balogh recently appointed economics tutor at Balliol. Thomas, in a letter next day to Dossie, commented that Balogh's " subtle Mongolian-Central European appearance plus political nature are attractive qualities". Thomas took up again with Doris Pulsford, confessing to Dossie in a letter from Newcastle on 29 October: "It's rather on my mind to tell you that I went home with Doris last night after the Sneyd class and made love to her I felt it all right myself but wanted you to know and to know whether you feel it all right too." He sought to excuse himself: "And in these absences from you I find I get pretty browned off and needing company and affection. Well you know all that. And part of me must feel it wrong or I wouldn't feel the need to justify it." He returned to the argument in a letter of 24 November: "To be honest I think these bad dreams were the result of this suppressed guilt feeling that comes from making love to Doris half of me (the more aggressive and erotic half) thinking it's all right and the other half (which is fundamentally Quaker, etc) feeling it's all wrong and

conflicts with my love for you and my desire to make a complete and integrated life with you." Thomas was able to join Dossie for Luke's third birthday on 20 December by agreeing to take two discussion groups with army officers at a week-end school at Balliol. This was arranged through L.K. Hindmarsh, a joint honorary secretary to Oxford's Tutorial Classes Committee. B.J. on 20 December sent Thomas a Christmas letter saying that she and her sister with their families were now living in Kiln Copse Cottage at Marcham near Abingdon "within bus distance of Oxford" Jack came from London at weekends and her brother-in-law Peter Wheeler was stationed fairly near. B.J. invited Thomas to visit with his family, and they took the bus to Marcham during Thomas's brief break for the new year of 1942. He had to return to North Staffordshire early in the new year for the start of a sociology class in Stoke and an extra series of courses in Auxiliary Fire Service Centres Gladys arranged for sixteen centres to be covered by various tutors. Wigg, although on military service, had his family living in the Potteries. He drew on Thomas's family friendship with the Archbishop of York William Temple to go with Thomas on 18 March to meet Temple at Bishopthorpe and to lobby over the civilian side of education in the armed forces. They found Temple (a former president of the WEA) sympathetic to their concerns and plans and willing to take soundings and to pursue the matter with Sir James Grigg, responsible for the War Office in Winston Churchill's War Cabinet appointments of 19 February (Temple was moving to London at the end of April on his becoming Archbishop of Canterbury). Thomas took on additional voluntary tasks through the Association of Tutors in Adult Education, as editor of the association's newsletter and as one of its representatives on the Joint Publications Committee of the national WEA. This involved him in preparatory work for pamphlets on current problems to be used by discussion-group leaders and members. The publications meetings held at WEA headquarters in London brought Thomas into close contact with Harold Shearman the WEA education officer, and to a lesser degree with the WEA general secretary Ernest Green. Thomas was writing a pamphlet of his own on colonial empire for a WEA series of study outlines to support adult study circles. The reading and drafting had to be fitted in to a schedule that could go nearly round the clock with civilian, military, factory and hospital classes and talks, civil defence duties and one-day and weekend schools. He gave two army sessions on 2 June, to an antiaircraft school at Stafford and to an Ordnance Corps group at Ingestre, drove back to Newcastle giving lifts to hitchhikers reached home at midnight, wrote and posted letters, made working telephone calls from outside the house and returned to tackle a late version of the pamphlet. He was then facing a schedule of more army talks, a hospital talk, routine lectures and five news talks at British Aluminium one at noon, two at 5.30 p.m. and a two at midnight so as to address all three shifts on one day (and was still prey to the sleep disorders that had been diagnosed in 1936 and 1937 as narcolepsy). He continued the pamphlet during his summer break, going on 17 August to the London Library to check references and revising the work in Newcastle in late August. He cancelled a proposed visit to his parents on the weekend of 22 August so as to complete the typing of additions he used a typewriter borrowed from Gladys Malbon "with a twisted ribbon that takes a lot of adjusting" and had the final text ready for despatch on 24 August. He was in Burton- on-Trent on 27 August and called on Miss E.A. Brown the

WEA branch secretary for nearly three decades, who had been a friend of Thomas's Smith grandfather and was warmly hospitable to Thomas. Thomas returned to Burton on 12 September to lecture on India at a one-day school. Miss Brown was working to establish a WEA class in the workingmen's club. Thomas commissioned and edited material for the Tutors' Association newsletter that he sent on to the honorary secretary F.J. McCulloch at Leeds University who arranged for the mimeograph edition to be distributed to members in early October. Thomas also had proofreading for his study outline looming over him: the corrected proofs went to the printer on 3 October and on 16 October "The Colonial Empire: A students' guide" was in print as a forty-page pamphlet of the WEA, price fourpence. The book list covered advocates and critics of empire and noted the advent of colonial nationalism: "The national movements which have shattered the traditional political framework of the colonial and semi-colonial countries of Asia during the inter-War period, and have already begun to develop in the African colonies, are in reality simply one aspect of the whole process of social and political awakening of the common people throughout the World, which has been in progress since the American and French Revolutions at the end of the 18th Century." On this analysis colonial rule could be seen by the colonised as an obstacle to social progress. Thomas on 19 October gave two lectures for a Wigg school at Derby with a morning talk on India and an afternoon session on colonial empire. The participants were men and women of all ranks who were intended to teach in the army's winter education programme. In between the two talks Wigg and Thomas with two course members lunched together. Wigg was taking an interest in the Common Wealth movement of a Liberal M.P. Sir Richard Acland. Thomas after his second lecture and the discussion went to the library of the Derby Technical College for an hour or so's preparation for an evening lecture at Burton. He reached his lodgings late at night to find a copy of a letter from Teddy sent on by their mother. Teddy (whose stint in India in 1940 had lasted only a couple of months before his regiment was recalled to Britain) had gone in September to Cairo for a Middle East assignment and travelled by way of Lake Chad in Africa. Thomas on 21 October received a letter of his own from Teddy, and thought the Lake Chad description sounded grand. He wrote to Dossie that Lake Chad sounded "the kind of place which maybe we should visit some day". McCulloch on 24 October was talking to a Yorkshire MP Arthur Creech Jones, born in Bristol and sitting for Shipley, who was a member of the Colonial Office Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies and the first chairman of the Fabian Colonial Bureau formed by Rita Hinden. McCulloch seized the opportunity to ask Creech Jones to write a review of Thomas's study outline to appear in the Tutors' Association newsletter. Thomas made a return visit to the Maryport Settlement in Cumberland on 1 November to lecture (again on the theme of colonial empire) and on the train from Carlisle to Crewe next day wrote to Teddy saying how he envied the aeroplane ride over Central Africa and "particularly your visit to Lake Chad (Do you remember the stamps Djibouti surcharged 'Ubangi-Chari-Chad' with a tiger running out of the jungle, wasn't it?) though not sounding very healthy, yet it's the kind of spot one doesn't regret having visited." Thomas, continuing his reply on 4 November, reflected on his own fluctuating moods when he questioned whether it was worth staying in the WEA. He thought he

might anyway be called up for military service and doubted if it was a good plan to go through the war as a non-combatant throughout. Creech Jones on 5 November sent McCulloch a review of "The Colonial Empire" welcoming the study: "The discussion is realistic of the problems which the liabilities of empire create for us ... you will be aware of the alert and well-instructed mind behind the Outline, seeking no easy explanations and purple evasions and not lost in a welter of emotional gush about empire." Thomas was surprised on 9 November to receive - from a Colonel in the War Office whom he had known in the North Staffordshire AEC - a letter asking Thomas to serve on a committee to prepare an Arabic phrase-book for the Forces. After a few days of reflection he decided to accept, although this involved him in journeys to London for meetings of the committee in addition to WEA meetings on publications. Shearman on 18 November sent Thomas a request for his opinion on the suitability as a study outline of a paper on the Atlantic Charter. John Hampden Jackson, who used the material for his classes as an organising tutor in Norfolk working under the University of Cambridge Board of Extra-Mural Studies, wrote the commentary. Derek Blaikie, in the army as a lieutenant, wrote on 20 November about field service in India and his work with South East Asia Command: General Claude Auchinleck's private secretary had been a master at Winchester in Thomas's schooldays and he and Derek had talked of Thomas. Thomas on 30 November returned the Hampden Jackson typescript to Shearman with a covering note that it could be turned into a study outline, although it lacked realism and carried "back-hand shots" at the Soviet Union and its policy. Thomas attended the first meeting of the Arabic committee, held at the War Office on the morning of 17 December for two and a half hours with the colonel as chairman and four other committee members: three Egyptians (two from the BBC and one from the School of Oriental Studies) and a British official retired from service in Iraq. Further meetings were scheduled on a weekly round and would break into Thomas's sparse Christmas break with the family in Oxford. He decided to cut a meeting of the Tutors' Association executive in Birmingham on 23 December (pleading illness in the family as a vague excuse). Thomas's restlessness continued. He wrote to Teddy on 25 December from the flat in Bradmore Road that he was thinking seriously of trying for another job and tempted to look for something in North Africa (he had discussed this with Dossie but not with his parents). B.J. and Thomas exchanged Christmas gifts for their children: B.J. and Sigle, now living in Charlbury, embarked on their first public political event a fund-raising social on 30 December in what they found to be a "very unpolitical place" (Jack Gaster in the army since April was in hospital with a broken arm). Thomas on that day and at Gladys Malbon's instigation was at a National Fire Service school to give a morning talk and an afternoon lecture (on Britain and the USSR), ferrying a speaker from Stoke to Newcastle for another meeting, going on to a Betley Hospital talk and then substituting for Gladys with a talk at Heslington Working Men's Club near Crewe, followed by a latenight talk with the Newcastle visiting speaker. He was up again to catch an early train from Stoke to London for a meeting of the WEA publications committee on new year's eve. Provisional approval was given to a revised Hampden Jackson typescript, with Thomas suggesting that the economic sections should be shown to an economist working on international questions. Thomas had sent his notes direct to Hampden Jackson and asked him to contribute a review for the Tutors' Association newsletter of a new study

outline by Harold Marks on the USA. The review appeared in the January 1943 issue, following the Creech Jones review of Thomas's pamphlet, but more adversely: "Mr Marks has not written an outline but a guide. He gives no information; he merely asks questions (over 150 of them in 28 pages). His aim is not to save trouble but to give trouble." Thomas's work with the Arabic Committee continued in the new year of 1943, although he could find little time for his contributions to the phrasebook. He missed a meeting in London on 20 February in favour of a meeting of miners in Newcastle - Thomas was acting as tutor to a study-group of six experienced WEA students (four underground miners and two surface workers) who in January 1943 began to investigate the mining industry in North Staffordshire. A weekend session was held at the Heathside Hostel at Alsager on 27 and 28 February. An economist, Miss Peter Ady from the Institute of Statistics in Oxford, attended part of the meeting on 28 February. Thomas collected her from Burslem in between her other engagements to speak in the Potteries on Burma and the lessons of 1942. Thomas thought her an engaging personality, able to contribute as an economist to the discussion without much knowledge of mining (where he felt a beginner too). Wigg in April was being asked to stand as a prospective parliamentary candidate for Common Wealth. He and Thomas had an hour and a half discussion in Newcastle on 18 April when Thomas argued that this would be a mistake and that Wigg should remain with the Labour Party and movement. Thomas wrote to Teddy during the Easter weekend of late April that he had readjusted to his own load and backed off his thinking about North Africa: " I am so vague about possible alternatives that I'm inclined to think it's as well to stay put. But new developments so far as the War is concerned may alter one's attitude". By early July Doris Pulsford had applied for and been offered a job at Beccles for the end of the year and Thomas was forming a sentimental friendship with a member of his Stoke Class Audrey Calveley, a twenty-five year old who did nursery school work, studied and was active in the local Nursery School Association. He heard officially from the Tutorial Classes Committee that his appointment as an organizing tutor in the North Staffordshire WEA District was renewed for three years from 1 October 1943. Thomas was in Oxford again in the last week of July as one of the tutors for the WEA summer schools (tutor groups on international affairs and post-war reconstruction) and for work with AEC. He had yet another editorial group preparing pamphlets on current problems for Civil Defence discussion groups. Dossie with recurrent health problems went to the Buxton clinic where she was joined by her mother Mollie Crowfoot (Luke and Elizabeth were with Thomas's parents at Crab Mill). Dossie's maternal grandmother, who with her daughter had escaped the London bombing to live in the ground floor flat 20A Bradmore Road, died on 2 August. Thomas, in the second week of the summer school, rearranged his tutoring schedule and went to meet Dossie in Lincoln for the funeral. Dossie and Thomas had one week of genuine holiday at the end of August by going with his friend of Manchester University Settlement days Frida Stewart and her scientist husband to the Mill at Ringstead near Hunstanton borrowed through Frida's connections from the Cornford family (the Mill came with an elderly caretaker to light fires and a young woman to do cooking). The miners' industrial study group reported on 18 September, with recommendations for improvements in the prevention and treatment of

industrial disease, particularly pulmonary disease. Thomas's family moved in midOctober into the ground floor flat 20A Bradmore Road in Oxford. Thomas on 30 October and on his way to a night shift of fire-watching called on Doris Pulsford and talked about the prospects for her new job at Beccles. He promised her introductions and contemplated WEA connections including Dossie's father who took a keen interest and John Hampden Jackson. Thomas next day was with Wigg since Wigg wanted to thrash out new problems in army education. Thomas was also working (and late) on his Arabic phrasebook contribution, editing the Tutors' Association newsletter and reviewing a batch of books on India for the WEA journal "The Highway". These tasks were alongside regional and national meetings, frequent train journeys plus a lecture and talks schedule that in November brought some two thousand miles of driving. He missed his Burton class on 22 November when on the way to the class he ran into the back wheel of a cyclist who went across the front of the car from a right-hand side road. Thomas took the cyclist to Walsall Hospital where he was admitted and treated for concussion and head injuries. Thomas called the police and helped a police officer identify the place and circumstances of the accident. Thomas on 16 December went to bid farewell to Doris Pulsford before her departure to a new school post at Beccles. Thomas's relationship with Audrey Calveley waxed as the relationship with Doris waned. During the Christmas break of 1943 Thomas at Dossie's suggestion invited Audrey Calveley to come to Oxford for the first weekend of 1944. Audrey accepted and after the visit wrote from her parents Sussex home in Hove on 6 January: "I came back here bubbling with enjoyment perhaps tactlessly." Thomas read a newspaper report of Winston Churchill's speech to Parliament on 22 February about the parachute mission by the Oxford don F.W.D. "Bill" Deakin to Marshall Tito in Yugoslavia during 1943, and he was moved again to regret that he was not playing a more active part in the war. He contrasted this news, in writing to Dossie on 23 February, with the unbusinesslike manner of his own working, an untidy room at his lodgings, delays in their income tax returns and in other tasks. He was saddened on 1 March to see that Derek Blaikie was killed in action, and remembered him as his closest friend of the 1930s, though he thought Derek had become more Christian as Thomas became less so. Dossie was being considered for a readership at Oxford, and possibly for a Cambridge appointment, so Thomas was standing by for the outcome, writing on 5 March to her: "If you do get the Oxford or the Cambridge job I have a good mind to give up the unequal struggle and take a job in one or other of those towns whether as a don or at Morris' remains to be seen." They lunched together on 7 March at Bertorelli's in London and discussed their prospects, with Thomas encouraging Dossie's hopes for the Oxford readership. He was also considering the possibilities of working in Birmingham (with an easier journey to Oxford) since a post was coming up for the Director of Extra-Mural Studies at Birmingham University. Thomas collected details on the Birmingham job and sought Wigg's advice at the end of March as Dossie on 31 March for the Oxford readership had an interview she found depressing. Thomas late on 3 April received a birthday telegram from Dossie with the news that she had not been given the Oxford readership. He responded sympathetically next day and wrote that he would go harder for the Birmingham post, without great expectation of success. Thomas submitted a formal application on 21 April, with three referees: the Master of Balliol, Wigg by now a lieutenant-colonel in the Army Education Corps, and

Staffordshire's county director of education F. Hughes. Thomas outlined four and a half years of tutorial and other classes in urban and rural centres in North Staffordshire mainly in philosophy, political theory and institutions, international relations and problems of economic and social reconstruction. He drew attention to "pioneer and organising work, assisting in the establishment of new classes and in the development of educational activities in Workingmen's clubs, Co-operative Guilds, Trade Union branches, Youth organisations, etc." and newer forms of adult education in the forces and in civil defence and youth organisations that the war had stimulated. On that day the Burton WEA secretary Miss Brown died after a period of sickness during which class attendance was declining. She had frequently given hospitality before and after Thomas's classes and accommodation when late arrival of petrol allowances forced Thomas to travel to Burton by train. Shearman the WEA education officer at the central office asked Thomas in May for another study outline - on the theme of "Freedom from Want". Thomas considered this might enable him to secure working time at home in Oxford. Thomas since his arrival in the Potteries had attended the North Staffordshire Joint Advisory Committee for Adult Education that regularly brought together county officials and representatives from Oxford, including Cartwright and latterly Hindmarsh. After the meeting on 18 May Thomas with Gladys Malbon had tea as usual with Cartwright and Hindmarsh. Thomas added to his annual summer school stint an army course in Oxford in August that Hindmarsh was arranging for Wigg an opportunity for an extra week at home. Thomas, in London on 25 May and on 2 June for meetings with Shearman, suggested that the proposed study outline should be taken on by Stephen Coltham rather than by Thomas and found Shearman receptive. Thomas spent the first half of July in Oxford, and then received a typewritten slip that he was not chosen for the Birmingham appointment. He was again in Oxford for the latter part of July and much of August for the summer schools and army course. Audrey Calveley came to Oxford in early August for her own attendance at a summer school and followed this with a couple of days' visit to Dossie and Thomas. Thomas's North Staffordshire assignment was being modified. The Burton WEA branch wanted to extend activities and was considering establishing an adult education centre. The North Staffordshire district had agreed that Thomas would give more emphasis on Burton, and would be resident in Burton (this would test whether appointment of a fulltime tutor for Burton was justifiable). Thomas retained his other classes in the district so while preparing to move to Burton had also to maintain a foothold in Newcastle and could be in Burton only part of the week. He went to Burton on 11 September to meet the WEA branch and to make inquiries about lodgings, but was preoccupied over Dossie who was suffering a suspected miscarriage confirmed in mid-September. Dossie was briefly in hospital then went to Crab Mill to recuperate. Thomas was working with the WEA's new secretary in Burton Joan Linton. He returned to Burton on 21 September and identified lodgings in the same street as the Linton family. Thomas was a little at a loss in planning the actual move. Gladys Malbon on 6 October was arranging for a carrier to transfer Thomas's possessions in the following week. Thomas had first to meet Wigg on 8 October in Dudley where Thomas booked himself into a hotel to allow for a long and late talk with Wigg. Wigg had a complex agenda: political work in Dudley where he hoped to fight for the Labour Party as parliamentary

candidate, adult education in the area, and a recent tour of Africa where he made a reconnaissance of education schemes for British and African troops. Wigg, who had come from Oxford where he had seen Dossie, wanted Thomas to apply for a forthcoming vacancy as secretary of the University of Oxford Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies. The application list was being opened about a year before the new secretary would take up the duties. Wigg urged Thomas to contact friends among the Balliol Fellows - Charles Morris who had held the post in the pre-war years and would have a say in the selection and another committee member John Fulton who might provide a testimonial. Thomas was already sleepy when Wigg turned to his concerns over West Africa (where Wigg was keen to promote English as a vehicular language among African troops). Thomas on the afternoon of 11 October unpacked books and papers in his lodgings at 337 Shobnall Street, Burton. His furniture (for an upstairs bedroom and downstairs sitting room) was carried on an open coal truck, covered in tarpaulins since the day was rainy. The new landlady was a Mrs Bayliffe; she and her husband had a daughter Anthea who was head girl at a local secondary school. He found several WEA members among the neighbours and in writing to Dossie on 18 October remarked on "a kind of Burton Bloomsbury". Thomas read in the newspaper on 26 October of the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury and then had a letter from the Archbishshop's widow Frances Temple consulting Thomas on how William Temple's biography should be presented: Thomas sent back notes on his own perceptions of Temple. Dossie in Oxford was quietly lobbying for the haematologist Janet Vaughan as a candidate for Principal of Somerville when Helen Darbishire relinquished the post in the following year. By early December it was clear that her favoured candidate (a married woman scientists) would win. Thomas, seeing that this would encourage Dossie to stay on in Oxford, was also encouraged to take steps for Luke to be admitted to the Dragon School in Oxford and to pay more serious heed to the Oxford appointment that Wigg was urging on him. The job in prospect was a pensionable post with a salary in the range from a thousand to twelve hundred pounds and recognised by the university as of professorial rank (Thomas's annual salary in North Staffordshire was four hundred pounds augmented by a war allowance of forty pounds and some additional fees for special tasks). The status of the secretaryship made it possible for the holder to be elected to a professorial fellowship at one of the Oxford colleges. Preference would go to Oxford graduates, and the preferred candidates would be between thirty and forty years of age. The delegacy was looking for a candidate with experience of adult education for civilians and soldiers, and as the official notice of November 1944 indicated "it is specially important that he should have those personal qualities of sympathy and imagination which will enable him to get on easily with people of all classes and creeds". Wigg on 22 December provided a reference testifying that Thomas closely met the requirements to the extent that "Hodgkin has as many qualities for the job as are likely to be found in one human being". Wigg, from his knowledge of many of the men in adult education in the services, rated Thomas higher than others in the field: These experiences lead me to the sincere belief that Mr. Hodgkin comes nearest to possessing all the qualities which I think will be required by the Secretary to the Delegacy in the post-war years."

Thomas in the new year of 1945 continued preparations for the Delegacy application due for submission by the end of January with two recent testimonials. He contacted Charles Morris, teaching in Birmingham, and for his second testimonial went to Stoke's director of education J.F. Carr. Thomas and Dossie both had doubts whether the Oxford application would succeed and Thomas floated to Dossie the idea of seeking a transfer to the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire district in order to end the separation of their working lives. Carr on 16 January provided a strong recommendation that Thomas was well suited to implement the demands of the 1944 Education Act and concluded that appointment of Hodgkin would be in the interests of North Staffordshire and of Oxford University. Robin Hodgkin heard from Hindmarsh in late January that several very-well qualified candidates had applied. Thomas pressed on with writing a summary of his own views on the development of extra-mural education and completed his application on 30 January and posted it to Oxford on the eve of the closing date. He was involved that day with a meeting of the North Staffordshire Joint Advisory Committee for Adult Education discussing the proposed transformation of the eighteenthcentury Barlaston Hall, the property of the Wedgwood family, into a college for adults where residential courses could be held. The centre was to be known as the Wedgwood Memorial College after the late Lord Wedgwood who had at one time lived there. The meeting agreed that the Oxford University Tutorial Classes Commiteee would appoint a warden when the college began its full-time use, and that the Oxford resident tutors in North Stafforshire would give tutorial assistance. Thomas on 13 February received a letter from Hindmarsh inviting him for interview in Oxford on 24 April (Thomas joked to Dossie that the eve of the United Nations Conference in San Francisco and of his father's birthday might be a good omen). Dossie had heard on the Oxford grapevine that Thomas had a strong rival with an administrative background. Gladys Malbon heard from their colleague Mary Morris that her husband Charles Morris had his own favoured candidate who was an experienced administrator Thomas was inclined to identify these as the same. He had his tidy suit patched and cleaned in March. Thomas's mother was lying in bed for eight weeks recovering from a broken leg suffered in an accident at the end of January. Thomas's father met Mary Stocks who said she had put forward Thomas's name as a suitable candidate for the philosophy professorship at Manchester, where he had been "Johnny" Stocks's temporary replacement in 1934. Robin in a letter of 22 March passed the suggestion to Thomas. The Dean of Christ Church the Very Reverend John Lowe visited the Potteries on 23 March for a youth conference. Lowe was a member of one of the delegacy committees (and sat with Dossie on another university board) and Gladys Malbon arranged for Thomas to be thrown into his company to enhance Thomas's respectability in Oxford. To meet the contrivance Thomas wore his newly repaired suit, a shirt of Teddy's, a tie borrowed through a woman colleague Barbara Smith and braces borrowed at the last minute from Stephen Coltham. Gladys took soundings from Lowe and gathered that the main alternative to Thomas was an army educationist from the centre in Harlech. Lowe was taking his own soundings. Gladys reported that Carr said openly that the Stoke local education authority wanted Thomas in the job. After Janet Vaughan had in February been elected officially to the Somerville headship for the next academic year Dossie spoke to

her in late March and found her willing to allow Dossie priority for research over teaching duties. Thomas telephoned Wigg, who was again in North Staffordshire in mid-April, to check on prospects for the secretaryship. Wigg took a poor view of the army candidate and proposed to try to see Lindsay in Oxford. Wigg was full of ideas about the colonial empire and its bearing on the Oxford job, but thought Thomas's views sentimental. They agreed to meet on 18 April. Thomas had a WEA branch meeting in Burton on the evening of 23 April and intended to travel on to Oxford afterwards. Wigg took command. He spoke to Thomas about Africa and the Oxford interview and Wigg's view that these were closely linked to the notion of developing Oxford extra-mural centres in the African colonies. On the practical side Wigg insisted that Thomas should cut the Burton meeting and travel to Oxford on 23 April for a good night's sleep to be settled and refreshed before the interview next day, should have his hair cut and a new shirt with a detachable collar! Thomas demurred on missing the Burton branch meeting, then accepted and secured the concurrence of Joan Linton. Thomas attended the interview in Oxford and returned to North Staffordshire thinking he had been placed second to Hampden Jackson (who was some three years older than he). Thomas cabled to Audrey Calveley that he had missed the opportunity, but she heard from other friends that Hampden Jackson might not take the offer. Thomas talked over the situation with Audrey on the Saturday evening 28 April, and after an afternoon session at a Barlaston Hall day school discussed the future with Wigg alone and with Wigg and Gladys on the Sunday evening 29 April. Thomas's hopes rose again and by the end of the first week of May he was advised that he would have the appointment along with a professorial fellowship at Balliol. The war in Europe was ending with formal German surrender on 5 May and the British people celebrating Victory in Europe day on 8 May. Thomas wanted to be in Oxford to celebrate with Dossie and the children and especially to celebrate the prospect of living together as a family. His class in Burton had agreed to meet and Thomas could not let down the seven members who stuck to the agreement and turned up. Thomas was out of money and after the class celebrated victory with a pint courtesy of "a nice Tynesider in a very low pub - & we talked about Residential Colleges". Thomas stilled previous doubts about living in Oxford with the prospect of a job "so much bigger and more difficult than anything I've ever attempted", as he confided in a letter to Dossie. Britain's wartime coalition government ended on 23 May and Winston Churchill headed a caretaker Conservative administration in preparation for a general election to be held on 5 July. Thomas became quickly embroiled in North Staffordshire where several colleagues and friends were contesting seats for the Labour Party. In the first weekend of June he and Gladys Malbon met Wigg to go through his election address for Dudley. Thomas took a canvassing team there on 4 June. Audrey went that day to ask Thomas's friendly local doctor Barnett Stross for advice on contraception. Thomas went on 16 June to speak in Stephen Swingler's campaign for Stafford and by the closing days of the month was largely organising the canvass in Swingler's constituency. The election results were delayed for three weeks to allow time to collect and count service votes including overseas voters. The outcome brought the first clear majority ever for the Labour Party, with some two-thirds of its candidates entering Parliament for the first time. Within this

Labour majority (by a margin of 146 seats) Thomas found himself with what he felt to be a good number of friends and acquaintances in the new Parliament: they included George Wigg in Dudley, Stephen Swingler in Stafford, Barnett Stross in Hanley, Harold Davies in Leek, Albert Davies in Burslem. Thomas attended a delegacy appointment sub-committee in Oxford on 26 July with Lindsay, Hindmarsh and Cartwright to draw up a shortlist for vacancies, including the job that Thomas would be vacating. They considered 137 applications for nine posts. Interviews for 16 candidates for Thomas's old job were held in Stoke on 31 July and Robert Cant was offered the post. The delegacy was a two-headed structure composed of two committees of equal status acting with the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors. Thomas was replacing Hindmarsh in the twin-tasks of secretary to the delegacy and organising secretary of the University Extension Lectures Committee. Cartwright (whose experience dated back to the WEA founder Albert Mansbridge and who had taken the initiative for R.H. Tawney's Longton class of 1908) had in February announced his intention to retire in June. He was being succeeded as organising secretary of the Tutorial Classes Committee by his assistant secretary H.P. Smith. Henry Percival Smith, the son of a tailor's cutter from Bristol, had been a student of Lindsay's during the early years of the first world war, enlisted in 1916 and been secretary to the London district WEA in the early 1920s. He had returned to Oxford as assistant secretary to the Tutorial Classes Committee in 1926. The war in Japan ended on 15 August. Dossie and Thomas in August took the children on holiday at Allonby in Cumberland and to visit "Aunt" Helen at Cockley Moor. The advent of peace brought Teddy back to Palestine to a new job on the staff of the Near East Arab Broadcasting Station in Jaffa. Thomas attended an appointments subcommittee in Oxford on 21 September to designate an assistant to H.P. Smith. The post went to another former member of a Longton class Francis Vincent Pickstock, who had been a delegacy scholar at Queen's College from 1935. Audrey Calveley on 1 September moved to a new nursery school job at Brynmawr in Breconshire. By the end of September Thomas was at home in Oxford to take up his new responsibilities on 1 October. Dossie was pregnant. Chapter 15 Lost causes Thomas's return to Oxford entailed substantial readjustments. He was effectively for the first time since his marriage eight years earlier living with his wife plus now a young family. His new appointment gave him a high profile in the debates on post-war adult education. He was expected and invited to visit centres in several regions, to lecture at national level and to attend WEA and other educational policy discussions in London. He went on seeing Audrey Calveley when her interest in nursery education brought her to meetings in London in that field. Doris Pulsford, living in Beccles, found that her maiden WEA lecture was to the Geldeston group on the subject of science and society. She wrote on 18 December 1945 to Dossie asking for help on a class reading list in addition to Desmond Bernal's "The social function of science" that she proposed to use "pretty freely". Thomas inherited Hindmarsh's preparation for post-war activity including a course on "Great Buildings" where one of the lecturers was a Dominican scholar from Balliol

Gervase Mathew with a breadth of learning from theology to archaeology that Thomas found impressive. Thomas in the first days of January 1946 was considering how WEA organisation could be strengthened; especially after a provision in the 1944 Education Act required local education authorities to provide an adequate adult education service. The Communist Party had resolved to encourage Marxist education and the publication of Marxist studies of British history. Thomas contributed to the CP debate by agreeing to draft for the Communist Party Education Sub-Committee a paper on Marxist education and the working-class movement. Thomas was in touch with the head of the CP's education programme Douglas Garman, who came from Wednesbury in Staffordshire and was a graduate of Caius College, Cambridge. Garman, in response to a suggestion made by Thomas, wrote to Thomas on 15 January 1946 naming three possible candidates for WEA work: a Cardiff University graduate McAllister with wartime experience including forces' education, a refugee economist Dr Joseph Winternitz with a German and Czech background and a philosophy graduate from Cambridge Kitty Klugmann who was married to a Marxist philosopher Maurice Cornforth and looking for a house in London. Thomas was seeking and receiving other suggestions from educationists in several universities and within a broad range of political perspectives. Thomas's draft paper went to the sub-committee for discussion in February and was predicated on a duality of working-class and adult education tending to develop on a mass basis. Garman thought the document suffered from confusion between adult education and specifically working-class bodies. Thomas revised his paper and a second version to be circulated in April opened explicitly: "There is clearly an urgent need at the present time for the extension of working-class education." Thomas in his delegacy role was in early March laying the ground for university extension courses in West Africa, the innovation for which George Wigg had pushed Thomas towards the Oxford post. The project would require joint and simultaneous support from the dons in Oxford, the mandarins at the Colonial Office in London and the officials serving in the colonies. The matter was due for discussion at a delegacy meeting in Oxford on 9 March in the light of George Wigg's advocacy of a liberal form of adult education that did not lead to a paid job but rather to unpaid service to the country. Thomas sent a copy of the proposal to Creech Jones at the Colonial Office. Creech Jones (who had given a favourable review to Thomas's study guide on "The Colonial Empire") had been vice-chairman of the Elliot Commission on Higher Education for West Africa in 1943 to 1944 and was current chairman of the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies. In the Labour Government of August 1945 he became a junior minister as Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Colonial Office. Creech Jones on 8 March found Thomas's memorandum when he returned to the Colonial Office from opening and closing a House of Commons debate on Malaya. He hastily sent a handwritten note to urge caution on the Oxford meeting due to be held next day and to ask that no decision be taken on a proposal needing considerable care and consideration "before action of the right kind can be taken". The delegacy gave agreement in principle for the West Africa courses without approving the detail. Thomas sent the proposal to a New College don Christopher Cox who had been a friend and confidant since Thomas's undergraduate days. Cox since 1940 was education adviser to the Colonial Office and he took up the plan by asking Thomas if he might circulate the West Africa proposals to the Mass Education Sub-Committee and its

parent ACEC. Cox's deputy Frank Ward, who had been among the earliest teachers at the Achimota School in Gold Coast as senior history master from 1924, wrote to Thomas on Cox's behalf on 3 April to say that the main committee would be likely to consider the proposals on 27 April. Thomas on 17 April wrote inviting Cox to give a lecture in Oxford for 27 July on mass education in Africa. Ward replied that Cox had been away and that he or the educationist Dr Margaret Read might speak. Thomas riposted by securing both Ward and Read as speakers. Dossie and Thomas had a third child their second son born on 16 May. The delegacy's domestic work continued. Thomas on 21 May lectured at Maidstone to the Kent Advisory Committee on Adult Education about the purpose of such education. He foresaw the possibility of as much as a ten-fold increase in the number of people taking part in some form of adult education. He warned that a paternalistic approach would be liable to be enfeebling. He questioned the formulations of adult education for citizenship and democracy and preferred the notional purpose of equipping ordinary people to exercise power. Ward by the end of May was able to inform Thomas that the Colonial Office's Mass Education Sub-Committee had given a warm welcome in principle to the proposal to send an experimental team of tutors to West Africa. The members had some comment and question on points of detail, such as a possible danger that in tropical conditions the tutors might live too remote from their audience. The delegacy was considering applications for the post of Warden of the Wedgwood Memorial College at Barlaston. Several of the candidates on a shortlist of six had a background in North Staffordshire, including Thomas's close colleagues Stephen Coltham and Cecil Scrimgeour. The appointment panel held interviews at Balliol on 13 June with the Master (a Labour peer since October 1945 as Lord Lindsay of Birker) in the chair accompanied by Thomas Hodgkin and H.P. Smith and four participants by invitation: the Director of Education for Burton-on-Trent A.H. Blake, the Director of Education for Stoke-on-Trent J.F. Carr and Gladys Malbon with Tom Ford representing the North Staffs WEA. They were unanimous in offering the post to the thirty-one-yearold James Oswald Noel Vickers, educated at Stowe School and Queen's College, Cambridge. John Vickers as a prisoner of war in Germany had organised classes and discussion groups in the prison camps. Within the delegacy Thomas's colleague Edward Birchall, who had been appointed to the delegacy in 1925 and with Hindmarsh sustained much of the task of forces' education during the second world war, remained as bursar on the administration side. With the expansion of university extension work the delegacy created a new appointment of director of studies responsible for planning how university resources could best be used for adult education. The first incumbent was Francis Scarfe whom Thomas introduced on 12 July to a tutors' weekend meeting as a poet and literary critic with wide experience in army education and university teaching. Ward came to Oxford on 27 July as planned to lecture on mass education in Africa in the University Extension Lectures Committee vacation course programme. The work pressures in Oxford kept Thomas from going with Dossie to Geldeston for the christening on 4 August of their second son (he was given the forenames John Robert Tobias, the first two after his maternal and paternal grandfathers and the third shortened as Toby was how he became known in the family). Thomas instead of attending the

christening and the party at the Crowfoot home was coping in Oxford with a visit from a demoralised Francis Scarfe who wanted to resign because of doubts over taking on the job with its administrative load and his own difficulties in organisation of his work. Thomas opened a bottle of French wine and persuaded Scarfe to stay on at the delegacy. In the following week Thomas found that the secretarial support staff also seemed intent on leaving. For the tutorial class session from 1946 to 1947 Thomas offered a class on "The Idea of Freedom", an introduction to the study of philosophy on ground familiar to him of Rousseau, Locke, Paine, Mill, Kant and Engels. He combined this with delegacy staffing issues, further negotiation over the West Africa venture and the occasional special lecture. He was at the study centre Wilton Park on 5 November speaking on adult education and the working class movement, and stressing the primarily social drive in adult education. He reiterated his idea of equipping oneself to exercise social rights and responsibilities. He was a guest next day at a conference in London of the National Federation of Women's Institutes. He spoke again on the purpose of adult education in the light of expected expansion and his own belief that the primary purpose was to train people to think and to rely on their own independent judgment: the practical purpose of enabling people to think was in order that they might act. Thomas capped these lectures with a meeting on 8 November with Ward at the Colonial Office. Ward reported that the Gold Coast colonial administrators had given a favourable response to the Oxford scheme, would welcome an exploratory visit from the delegacy and would pay their share of the total cost of the scheme if implemented. Ward had not heard from the Nigeria colonial administrators and would send a reminder. Thomas was given the go-ahead to discuss the scheme with those who would be interested or who could give advice, including other academics and West Africans in Britain. Ward recommended a Gold Coast student in Oxford Kofi Busia. Another Colonial Office official wrote on 2 December that the Nigerian colonial government had cabled welcoming the proposal and a projected visit by Thomas to Nigeria. The official blessing was going to a provisional scheme of what the Colonial Office preferred to call study courses. The experiment was to stimulate the local development of an adult education movement in West Africa by introducing among small groups of Africans the aims, methods and standards of adult education as they had emerged through the association between the universities and the voluntary student bodies in Britain. The essence of the scheme was the secondment by the Oxford delegacy of two of its experienced staff tutors to West Africa - one to Nigeria and one to the Gold Coast with each tutor to conduct probably - three study-courses of twelve weekly meetings each in different centres in the colony to which he was attached. Salaries would be paid by the delegacy and the colonial governments would pay for food and subsistence. Thomas began to cast his net for further contacts in Africa. He wrote on 30 December seeking a meeting with the historian of British Empire and Commonwealth Sir Reginald Coupland. Coupland, with a Winchester and New College education, was at All Souls and since 1920 holder of the Beit professorship of colonial history. Thomas wrote also to Leonard Barnes, whose writings he cited in "The Colonial Empire", to follow up a Barnes suggestion of gathering some West Africans to meet Thomas. He wrote on 31 December to Margaret Read at the Institute of Education in London for advice on organisations and individuals in Nigeria and the Gold Coast and about meeting some of her West African

students. He saw on that day the director of Oxford University's Institute of Colonial Studies Margery Perham. She had some doubts how far adult students at the post-primary stage in West Africa would be able to grasp the kind of problems the lecturers would be dealing with. She directed Thomas to an anthropologist teaching at the London School of Economics Dr Audrey Richards who had been concerned with running courses for colonial teachers. He wrote also to Captain Noel Fish in the Command Pay Office in Lagos who was a connection of George Wigg. Thomas pursued these West Africa leads in the new year of 1947. He wrote on 2 January to Busia at University College inviting him round. Busia, who had been an assistant district commissioner in the Gold Coast, was reading for a doctorate on the position of the chief in the Ashanti political system. He represented a conservative perspective on West Africa. Thomas's approach to Barnes drew a response on 5 January from a Nigerian lawyer Godfrey Amachree who was active in West African student politics in London and was keen with friends to meet Thomas. Amachree had been liaison officer for the West African Students' Union and was now secretary. He also sat on a joint committee of WASU and of the West African National Secretariat that was formed in December 1945 in the wake of the Pan-African Congress held in Manchester in October of that year. These students seemed intent on freedom in the form of independence and selfdetermination. Thomas was also casting around to see how the proposal to second two experienced staff tutors to West Africa could be met when tutors were already committed for the current session of classes in Britain. He had two colleagues in mind and in his discussion with H.P. Smith as organising secretary of the Tutorial Classes Committee. John Anderson Mack was a Balliol contemporary of Thomas and as early as the 1930 session was teaching a Tunstall tutorial class on the history of scientific thought (from primitive magic to Newtonian science). J.A. McLean was not a personal acquaintance but he had served in Spain in the International Brigade and had experience of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs and of tutoring in East Sussex and Kent. Thomas in his own and Smith's name wrote on 7 January to McLean in St Leonards on-Sea in East Sussex to alert him to the possibility of a temporary stint in West Africa. Thomas spent 14 and 15 January at a succession of meetings with Amachree and other West African students collected by Barnes, with Margaret Read and with a Colonial Office official. John Mack wrote from Glasgow turning down Thomas's "flattering invitation" to spend a term in Africa on the grounds that he had taken on writing that would fill up the whole summer. Thomas wrote to the Oxford economist Peter Ady, whom he knew from her lectures in the Potteries in 1943, to draw on her knowledge of the Gold Coast where she had done research. She telephoned the anthropologist Meyer Fortes and sent on the names of a dozen Africans Thomas should try to meet. The Colonial Office arranged for Thomas to see the Gold Coast director of education Tom Barton on home leave. Ward, to whom Thomas sent the draft programme of his Gold Coast journey, made his suggestions. Thomas - after eleven months of piloting the scheme through official channels- flew on 6 February from snow and ice in a Britain suffering an exceptionally hard winter for his venture into Africa. He took a trundling flight that hopped to Bordeaux and Lisbon and through the night to Africa via Casablanca and Port Etienne where one of the twin engines was repaired. During the wait Thomas heard Saharans speaking an Arabic

dialect, introduced himself and found they were able to understand one another. Passengers made an overnight stop at a rest house in Bathurst, then a breakfast stop at Freetown and went on to Takoradi and Accra, where Thomas by the evening of 8 February was installed at Achimota with a large room in which to work. Thomas's groundwork paid off and within the fortnight he had allowed himself for the fist stage of his mission he made a round of visits including Accra, Cape Coast, Sekondi, Tarkwa and Kumasi. He had talks on the delegacy's scheme with more than sixty people over a broad range from colonial governor and paramount chief to lawyers, trade unionists, journalists, teachers and their pupils. Thomas was struck in the first few days by the extreme beauty of the African men and woman and wrote to Teddy on 12 February of "very regular clear-cut sort of faces". Among his African interlocutors were Joe Annan, a former trade union organiser now in the colonial labour department, and J.C. de Graft Johnson, who had a doctorate from Edinburgh University (Annan attended the Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945 for the African Railways Employees Union and Johnson for the African Students' Union of Edinburgh). He met the comparatively veteran scholar and nationalist Dr J.B. Danquah. Thomas encountered some scepticism about adult education among expatriate officials and among the Africans he met - but he found sufficient understanding that adult education was more than a luxury to feel able to press on. He wrote up his notes on interviews as he went and over the weekend of 22 and 23 February he wrote a report including the goal of the delegacy scheme: "The term 'adult education' is here used to describe education in 'liberal studies' (with special reference to History and Social Studies) through the medium of classes or study-courses for literate men and women who are normally in employment during the day - the students taking an active part in the work of the class both through their contribution to discussion and through reading and written work." He delivered the report to key people on the Sunday evening of 23 February and spent the next day and a half tying up the conclusion that study courses could go ahead and that an Oxford tutor could be brought out to Gold Coast in April. Two of Thomas's allies in overcoming a scenario of indefinite postponement were friends of Peter Ady with Oxford backgrounds. Peter Canham in the colonial secretariat had been at Pembroke College and became a colonial service cadet in the Gold Coast in 1930. Modjaben Dowuona had been awarded the first Achimota Council scholarship for further education in Britain and was at St Peter's Hall where he graduated in 1934 and then returned to Achimota as a teacher. Another Gold Coast teacher whom Thomas met was Miguel Augusto Ribeiro, born in Cape Coast and educated at the Mfantsipim School where he also taught before becoming a junior master at Achimota in 1931. Ribeiro attended the Institute of Education at London University from 1938 to 1939 and on return to Achimota became senior history master (with Ward going to Mauritius as director of education). Thomas on 25 February was due to leave Accra for Lagos, but the incoming flight from Lisbon was delayed by weather conditions in Europe and he was told he must wait at least another two days. He was anxious to complete his West Africa mission and he cabled to the delegacy in Oxford: "Gold Coast arrangements reasonably firm, in circumstances probably best McLean comes here, please consult H.P. and inform

McLean." Thomas was expecting a mid-April departure date for Tony McLean. and that Francis Scarfe would deal with the arrangements in Thomas's absence. Alongside the official task Thomas was provoked into a new sensibility on this visit to the Gold Coast that he had once described as " a country with no past and no history" when he turned down the offer of a colonial appointment on his graduation in 1932. Miguel Ribeiro at Achimota was teaching a history syllabus that was not confined to typical themes of European conquest but looked back to a pre-colonial past of the breakup of Sudanese Empires and the beginnings of the 'Guinea' Kingdoms. The textbooks used in the school were fairly recent writings that tried to take into account the oral traditions of the Gold Coast peoples, dating back several centuries, and to draw on new findings in anthropology to supplement history. Some of this embryonic work had been done by Ward during his Gold Coast years and Ribeiro was among his African colleagues who had given assistance. When Thomas asked where he could learn more about the kingdoms he was recommended to read E.W. Bovill's "Caravans of the Old Sahara" published in 1933. Bovill's introduction to the history of the Western Sudan and of trans-Saharan trade was prefaced with a late fourteenth century map of a Kingdom of Mali. Bovill had been inspired to his study by reading Flora Shaw's 1905 work "A Tropical Dependency" written in the context of her interest in northern Nigeria. Thomas found his way to Bovill, but first was whiling away some of the time waiting for his delayed flight by reading Tolstoy's early trilogy on "Childhood", "Boyhood" and "Youth". Thomas reached Lagos by the beginning of March for another intensive round of visits and talks, and again used his personal introductions to avoid too close an identification with colonial officialdom and to meet independently minded Africans who impressed him more than the officials. Such contact was neither automatic nor easy in the Lagos of 1947 where an informal social colour-bar obtained in some circles. Thomas found a favourable reaction to the delegacy scheme when he put it to Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Ibo newspaper editor and proprietor regarded as a leading Nigerian nationalist and just embarking on a partisan political career through elected office. Thomas met the first secretary-general of the Nigerian Trade Union Congress M.A. Tokunboh and went for a drink with him at a bar in Lagos on the evening of 5 March. They witnessed a demonstration against the Bristol Hotel by a crowd emerging from a protest meeting over the hotel manager's apparent colour discrimination against a guest refused accommodation as an African (Ivor Cummings who was born in West Hartlepool to a Sierra Leonean father and British mother was on a visit as a Colonial Office liaison officer to colonial students and workers). The crowd threw stones at the hotel and was eventually dispersed by police with batons. Thomas watched from a window and then walked down the street with an African on each side. Tokunboh introduced Thomas to a journalist and lawyer H.O.D. Davies, who had recently been studying law in Britain (Davies attended the Pan-African Congress in 1945 for the Nigerian Youth Movement). Thomas was impressed again by the pertinent questions Davies raised. Thomas had formal and informal encounters with a radically-inclined assistant secretary of the Nigerian National Union of Teachers named Fidelis Ayo Ogunsheye. In a discussion on 6 March at the Lagos World Affairs group Ogunsheye in support of Thomas's credibility pointed to the study outline on "The Colonial Empire". Since this

was in the presence of the secretariat mass education officer (A.J. Carpenter who was looking after Thomas's schedule) Thomas had momentary doubts about the endorsement. Meanwhile Thomas's prompt action on the Gold Coast study courses was causing a flutter in Oxford where Lindsay at Balliol seemed unprepared for events to move so quickly. Scarfe advised that Thomas had acted within the limits of his jurisdiction by sending for McLean. The delegates met in Oxford on 8 March and confirmed Thomas's detailed strategy just a year from their agreement in principle. Dossie in Oxford was collecting plaudits in the following days as news percolated through the scientific community that she was to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a distinction rare for women and one that in her case had been pending since the end of 1945. Thomas on return to Oxford followed up his Africa visits and maintained the new connections he was making. He sent out his Gold Coast report and by 15 April completed a report on the Nigeria mission. The editor of "West Africa", a journalist of West Indian origin George Hunte wrote on 17 April asking about the delegacy scheme and about McLean's expected departure for the Gold Coast on 21 April. Thomas sent a reply on 23 April that he would send Hunte his Gold Coast and Nigeria reports after they had been approved by a delegacy meeting in June and that McLean had already left to conduct study courses at Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast. Cox was away from the Colonial Office in East Africa and wrote on 14 May that on return he had been fascinated to read Thomas's two West Africa reports and thought it excellent that the "Gold Coast show" had begun. He wanted to hear Thomas's background impressions of the two countries and invited "Dear Tommy" to dine in hall at New College on the following Saturday or Sunday. Thomas had to decline since he had promised to help John Vickers with a weekend school at the Wedgwood Memorial College in North Staffordshire. Thomas spoke there on the well-trodden ground of adult education and the working-class movement, and Vickers in his letter of thanks described the session as "an essay in creative Marxism and in correct diplomacy(!)". The delegacy brought Thomas a heavy schedule of tasks that entailed bringing much work home where he also entertained many of his work visitors. He had continuing involvement in North Staffordshire and travelled on 9 June with senior Oxford colleagues (the president of Corpus Christie College and vice-chancellor Sir Richard Livingstone and Balliol's Sandie Lindsay and John Fulton) to a meeting of vice-chancellors from Oxford, Birmingham and Manchester to promote the creation of a new kind of university at Keele. Thomas received a Colonial Office imprimatur on 7 July with another "Dear Tommy" letter from Cox at the Colonial Office inviting him to sit in on discussions in the Mass Education Sub-Committee. Thomas was also pursuing the sending of a tutor to Nigeria to do a similar task to McLean's in Gold Coast. He thought Leonard Barnes with long experience of WEA lecturing and with international knowledge would be the best person the delegacy could find. The study courses were likely to run during the British winter lecture session when it was unlikely that any full-time tutor could leave. Barnes agreed in principle provided that the beginning of the courses could be postponed until Christmas since he wanted time to finish a piece of research on which he was already engaged. Barnes was then asked coincidentally if he would be considered for the post of secretary to Oxford's Delegacy for Social Training established in 1946 to continue the work of Barnett House. Barnes was designated for the appointment and since he was working

himself into a new job could not take three months in Nigeria. Thomas had reluctantly to put the Nigeria plan back until April of the next year when another tutor would be free after the winter session. The delegacy meanwhile needed to fill Oxford staff vacancies. The selection process prevented Thomas from taking a break with Dossie and the children when they went in August to Geldeston. One candidate on the shortlists for interviews on 22 August was a Somerville graduate Jenifer Fischer Williams. She had through Teddy met the Hodgkin parents in February 1934 when Thomas was lecturing in Manchester. She subsequently had many friends and acquaintances in common with Thomas and she knew Dossie through Somerville. Jenifer as a high-flying civil servant had lived in London with the lawyer and philosopher Herbert Hart in Hampstead digs that were also used by others including Christopher Cox (Hart had been one of his students). Jenifer and Herbert Hart were married in 1941: Herbert returned to Oxford as a New College philosophy don in 1945 and when the transition proved successful Jenifer, with two children, began job hunting in Oxford. She was in late August a successful candidate for the delegacy and Thomas invited her home for an evening to discuss the work. Teddy sprang a surprise on his parents Dorothy and Robin Hodgkin by writing that he was coming home early in September. Before he left Jerusalem he would be marrying Nancy Myers, who was formerly married to the poet Laurence Durrell by whom she had a seven-year-old daughter. Teddy would be bringing the "fair, thin and beautiful" Nancy and her daughter. The Smith clan members were gathering in Bamburgh for a September holiday. the Hodgkins (parents and children with Dossie and Thomas) at a hotel; his uncle Hubert Smith and family at St Aidans, more cousins including Mary Cowan and children at the neighbouring Rock Cottage. In late September Dossie sailed in the Queen Elizabeth for three months in the United States on a Rockefeller travelling fellowship. Thomas with a clutch of supporters was looking after the children. He had additional staff at the delegacy in Jenifer Hart, Joan Carmichael arriving as a new personal assistant for Thomas and John Francis helping on organisation. The women had civil service backgrounds and they brought a greater awareness of systematic administration. Mrs Carmichael was brought in through the Somervillian Lucy Sutherland, who had served during the war at the Board of Trade and after release in 1945 was appointed principal of Lady Margaret Hall. Thomas in early October had meetings in London for the Ministry of Education, the Colonial Office and the WEA Central Council. The Colonial Office (where Creech Jones was now Secretary of State) wanted more work in West Africa. With Barnes no longer available for Nigeria Thomas proposed to the Colonial Office the possible secondment in April of Henry Collins, who had read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Queen's College Oxford. Collins was an experienced full-time Oxford tutor in North Staffordshire and had spent time in Nigeria in the army during the war. He brought background knowledge of the country and could teach applied economics and politics. Thomas on 12 October resumed teaching a regular Sunday morning class at Hanley in North Staffordshire. A score of people attended the first session including some former students and a young man from the Gold Coast whom Thomas had previously met in Accra and who was now at technical college studying pottery. Thomas found it refreshing to be reminded that life was more than committees and memoranda. When he went for

his second class he called in for supper with John Vickers to discuss the work at Barlaston. Thomas in London on 21 October for a meeting of the Universities Council for Adult Education had lunch at London University with Margaret Read, recently returned from a visit to Nyasaland, and with Tony McLean whom he was meeting in person for the first time, after they had corresponded over the Gold Coast. Africa was on Thomas's agenda, but did not preponderate since he had a pressing concern over university funding for its adult education as a whole. He was sounding out university officials how he should approach the new vice-chancellor, the lawyer Principal of Brasenose College W.T.S. Stallybrass to ensure adequate resources. Thomas had an approach from Gordon College in Khartoum to explore the prospects for extra-mural study in Sudan that would involve a visit in March 1948 and was hesitant whether he would want to go. He was lobbied in Oxford on 11 November by the vice-principal of Makerere University in Kampala Thomas Reginald Batten who as a social scientist was interested in the prospects of extra-mural work in Uganda. Thomas said tentatively that it might be possible to consider sending a tutor or two. Thomas was cheered when on 21 November Jenifer Hart was confirmed in Scarfe's old post of director of studies. He dined that evening with Smith's assistant Frank Pickstock who was taking a particular interest in trade union education and with a Nigerian labour organiser Afolabi Adio-Moses whom Thomas had previously met in Lagos and who was now at Ruskin College on a TUC scholarship. Thomas then felt "extremely gloomy" when he went on 26 November with Lucy Sutherland and John Lowe to lobby "Sonners" Stallybrass. He lamented in a letter next day to Dossie that Stallybrass "clearly doesn't believe in spending on our kind of stuff as compared with Engineering and Oriental Languages". The university council on 8 December voted a grant of 21,000 which was 2,400 less than the delegacy had requested. Although this was manageable Thomas feared that the council would hold the grant at this marginal level over the next five years, unless special funds could be secured from the University Grants Commission. Since high policy was involved he contemplated raising the matter with George Wigg. Thomas in early 1948 was preparing to visit Sudan in response to an invitation from the principal of Gordon College to advise whether the college should provide extra-mural study at its own expense. The principal Lewis Wilcher was a Rhodes Scholar from Australia who had been a junior contemporary of Thomas at Balliol in their undergraduate years. Thomas's journey was scheduled for March and April. Pickstock for the Tutorial Classes Committee was organising a course on trade union problems to be held at Queen's College in early April when Thomas would be in Africa. Thomas was keeping an eye on the continuation of the West Africa experiment after McLean's initial Gold Coast success in 1947. The delegacy in conjunction with the colonial secretariat in Accra agreed on arrangements for the first resident tutor in the Gold Coast. The tutor would be paid a salary supplemented with an overseas allowance, an outfit allowance and travelling allowance for nights spent away from his headquarters. The appointment went to David Kimble, who was coming up to his twenty-seventh birthday and who had become a delegacy tutor in 1945 after education at Eastbourne Grammar School and Reading University and two years wartime naval service. He was recruited to the new task just as Thomas set off for Sudan. Thomas on arrival in Sudan in mid-March was stepping into a network of family links through the Hodgkins and the Crowfoots. When he visited Gordon College he found a

bust of Dossie's father John Crowfoot and he met leading Sudanese who had personal memories of John and Molly Crowfoot. Thomas had an initial talk with the Gordon College vice-principal Ibrahim Ahmed who had been an inspector of schools under Crowfoot as director of education, Thomas went on to spend a few days at the Sudan Institute of Education at Bakht-erRuda. His host on the staff was his first cousin Robin Hodgkin (Robin was a son of Thomas's paternal uncle George Hodgkin and Mary Wilson and had been brought up by Thomas's maternal uncle Lionel Smith who had married Mary when she was widowed young with three children). Robin opened the way to many young and intelligent Sudanese among his former pupils. Thomas went back to Khartoum and visited Omdurman where on 24 March he met a a pioneer of education for girls in Sudan Sheikh Babiker Bedri on a visit to his sone Yusif Bedri who was running the Ahfad School for women. Sheilkh Babiker in his ninetieth year was between fund-raising tours for the school, and told Thomas stories of Dossies parents in the Sudan, especially of what he described as the heroism and daring of her mother Thomas went on to Wad Medani, where he saw more of the education system and found that the British judge in the Blue Nile high court was an old Harrovian exact Balliol contemporary William Lindsay. Thomas visited the railway centre at Atbara and met trade unionists, although some activists were unwilling to meet him after the arrest of a Workers' Affairs Association leader Suleiman Musa whom Thomas had been hoping to see. Thomas spent a few days with Wilcher in Khartoum, where he coincided with another guest the chairman of the recently formed Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies Sir James Irvine, who was principal of the University of St Andrews. Thomas made another brief visit to his cousin Robin and returned to Oxford for a tutors' conference in mid-April. He had missed stormy moments at the trade union course held from 3 April to 10 April. The course for tutors and trade unionists was organised in conjunction with the Workers' Educational Trade Union Committee, but was seen in some WEA circles as an Oxford intrusion on WEA responsibility. Participants included young economic historians Hugh Clegg, Ron Bellamy, and Alan Flanders. Thomas in Sudan had found Sudanese receptive in broad terms to the idea of extension classes, but many of the academics were apprehensive of additional pressures on the staff of Gordon College in transit to university college status. He wrote a report in favour of tutorial classes in Khartoum, Omdurman, Wad Medani and Atbara, with an expatriate and a Sudanese lecturer to initiate the scheme. Students successful in the Sudan classes might carry on to degree courses. With Kimble taking up the extension courses in Gold Coast, McLean and Henry Collins went as tutors for a four-month stage in Nigeria from May to August 1948. Thomas was in Germany from 23 to 31 May to lecture at Hamburg within the framework of British plans to reform German universities and on the topic of the university and working-class education. He reiterated the goal of training the German people in this instance to think independently and constructively about their own political and social problems. He cited the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset in arguing that the university's role went beyond specialist research and extended to the transmission of culture (Ortega's

"Mission of the University " was published in Howard Lee Nostrand's English translation in London in 1946 and was keenly read in Balliol and other education circles). The clash of styles at the trade union course in Oxford - between trade unionists and the academics who believed in following an argument wherever it led - reverberated when Ernest Green on 5 June brought a complaint to the Trinity term meeting of the Tutorial Classes Committee on which he sat as a co-opted member. Green said that allegations were being made against delegacy employees that some of those holding teaching appointments were engaged in Communist propaganda in their teaching. Green called for a private investigation to be made and he offered to collect material illustrative of the allegations. The Tutorial Classes Committee agreed to conduct a private investigation through a special sub-committee chaired by the vice-chancellor Stallybrass with three other college heads (Sandie Lindsay, Lucy Sutherland and Henry Clay) and G.D.H. Cole as members. Green supplied written allegations from twelve persons whom Green declared to be occupants of responsible positions in adult education or the trade union movement and whose names Green offered to show in confidence to Lindsay. The sub-committee found the written allegations imprecise and they eliminated allegations that assumed that no member of the Communist Party or someone with similar views could hold a teaching appointment under the delegacy, or allegations that assumed that the Communist point of view could not be put forward or discussed at conferences organised by the delegacy to discuss contemporary problems. The subcommittee did not believe that the delegacy should impose restrictions on the freedom of academic discussion. The investigation was concerned with delegacy tutors and staff and with trade union education. Personalities and events in Oxford were fairly unscathed, but the Wedgwood Memorial College's warden John Vickers was blamed for a disproportionate reliance on tutors and even lecturers of one political standpoint Green's alleged Communist propagandists. The argument on traditional lines for liberal openness was conducted against a background of growing confrontation between Britain's wartime allies in the United States and the Soviet Union in what American politicians and political commentators had begun calling a Cold War. The experiments in West Africa were not the subject of inquiry but despite the collective view in the private investigation individual dons had their own anxieties. Some shared them with Christopher Cox who took soundings in Oxford in mid-summer on rumours of Communist leanings in the delegacy environment. Cox saw Thomas, Lucy Sutherland and Stallybrass. Stallybrass in July made a point of seeking out Cox and put to Cox his concerns that charges of undue Communist presence could affect Oxford's extension work in the colonies and with the army. Cox understood that the army authorities were excluding Thomas personally from work among the forces. The Colonial Office ministers and senior officials were taking a view before the Oxford committee completed its findings, but they believed it would do more harm than good to recall McLean and Collins from Nigeria in the middle of what was a visit to the colony of only four months. Thomas carried on his main tasks much as usual with a stream of visitors to the small flat in Oxford: Wigg for three days in early August engaged Thomas in late night talks; Dowuona from Accra also stayed for a night or two. Thomas dined with Wilcher: the

Sudan extra-mural project was making no headway. Thomas on 6 October sent Cox a further report on adult education in the Sudan. With the advent of the Michaelmas term in Oxford Lucy Sutherland succeeded Lindsay as chairman of the Tutorial Classes Committee. Creech Jones sent Cox a private handwritten note on 10 October asking what should be done about Oxford tutors and West Africa: "Anyway, I do not like the idea of condoning in West Africa three out of four tutors who are communists. We cant easily go witch hunting but the scheme could be suspended to enable us to think again." Cox replied on 14 October with a long memorandum sketching how Oxford could be made to fade out of the picture. Kimble, who had gone to Gold Coast on a two-year assignment to put the work on a permanent basis, was a Liberal. The University College at Ibadan would have its own extra-mural studies department, although there were shortterm difficulties over deciding on the suitability of the Gold Coast African Robert Gardiner for the leading applicant for the post of director. In respect of action for Nigeria Cox reported from his discussions in Oxford that Collins was "confidentially admitted to be a member of the Communist Party" and McLean "is admitted to have been so in the past". Cox advised: "I really think we can hardly acquiesce in a further appointment or appointments from Oxford at this stage unless we can depend on the University authorities not this time to select Tutors in respect of whom they and we are running such political risks." He had confidence that Stallybrass and Lucy Sutherland could be relied upon for this standpoint. Cox proposed using his weekend in Oxford to press home the message, to see how the charges against the delegacy stood and "make it clear we should find great difficulty in agreeing to any fresh appointment to Nigeria being made if these are Communists, in the present circumstances". Cox was somewhat reassured by his further soundings in Oxford: the senior members of the delegacy would not send further tutors to Nigeria except after consultation with the Colonial Office and at the wish of the Nigerian authorities and any tutors sent out to bridge the gap until Ibadan was effectively functioning would not expose the Colonial Office to "political embarrassment" (meaning would not have Communist affiliations). Cox, in an office minute to the Assistant Under-Secretary of State Andrew Cohen dated 25 October 1948, noted Thomas Hodgkin's view that bridging tutors would be needed. Thomas believed that a WEA tutor organiser would not be equal to the task: Cox found this view shared by Wigg and by his own "more detached counsellors" including Philip Morris and Leonard Barnes, although Creech Jones did want to see the WEA involved in creating the demand side of adult education in West Africa. Meanwhile Green had taken his attack on Communism and Oxford to Creech Jones. Creech Jones in a note to Cox on 27 October disclosed that Green was arguing that Oxford should cry a halt for an evaluation of the programme. Thomas, who had not been alerted to Cox's political anxieties, discussed the Nigeria programme informally with Stallybrass, Lowe and Lucy Sutherland and wrote to Cox on 29 October reassuring him that they agreed that the delegacy if asked for any more tutorial assistance should cooperate further in Nigeria, as it had done in Gold Coast. Stallybrass died suddenly and unexpectedly on 28 October. Lowe, who had originally come from Calgary in Canada to Christ Church as a 1922 Rhodes Scholar, became vice-chancellor unusually below the age of fifty and without some of the usual preparatory Oxford university appointments.

Cox, who had previously been writing his letters to "Dear Tommy", replied cautiously on 11 November to "Dear Hodgkin" saying he was "glad to know of the upshot to the informal talk you had with the late V-C and others just before his death". Lowe's new office made him chairman of the sub-committee investigating the allegations against the delegacy whose work ground on into the Hilary term of 1949. Against the background of ambivalent and sometimes ambiguous views in the Colonial Office, the Oxford involvement in West Africa was expanded. With Kimble building connections in Gold Coast, a People's Educational Association was launched at Aburi in February 1949 with the constitutional aim of providing "opportunities for serious study for all those who wish to understand the problems of their own society and to discuss those problems frankly and independently". The results of the investigation of Green's statement concerning tutors was reported back to the Tutorial Classes Committee in March. The members found no evidence that any tutor had turned classes into instruments of party propaganda, although on some occasions "a few tutors may have displayed a warmth which was not discreet". They were concerned about trade union courses held at the Wedgwood Memorial College at Barlaston where "a very large proportion of the tutors and lecturers have been persons known to be in sympathy with the Communist Party" and they noted "an error in judgment had been committed for which the Warden must bear a considerable degree of responsibility". They also noted that of sixteen full-time delegacy appoints made in 1946, 1947 and 1948 "only two have been even criticized in the material placed before the Committee" and they had "found in the course of their investigation nothing which might shake their conference in the integrity and devotion to duty of the Delegacy staff at Rewley House". Kimble travelled in Sierra Leone from 15 to 20 April to scout prospects for adult education in that colony and in May he helped appoint in the Gold Coast four African adult education organisers who went initially on a study visit to Britain. McLean in May went again to teach in Nigeria along with two newcomers to the Nigeria programme: Stephen Coltham, who had shared lodgings with Thomas in the Potteries, and Marjorie Nicholson. Kimble, who was based in Accra, was establishing a team of resident tutors at regional level, including an African Dr Joe de Graft Johnson, one of Thomas's tutortrainees Lalage Bown and Dennis Austin. Thomas was coping with the echo of the Green attack whose main victim was turning out to be Vickers appointed by Lindsay in June 1946. A proposal by the Oxford delegates not to renew the Vickers appointment was on the agenda for the North Staffordshire Committee for Adult Education meeting in Stoke on 8 June. Lindsay spoke to the issue. Lucy Sutherland was prevented by urgent college business in Oxford from attending and sent her views in a statement to be read by Thomas on her behalf. The Tutorial Classes Committee believed that Vickers "had not shown those qualities of balance, tact and capacity to work in co-operation with other bodies and individuals which they believe to be essential in the Warden of a residential College, and that in consequence a renewal of his appointment would no be in the best interests of the College or of the work of the Delegacy as a whole". A routine meeting of the delegacy in Oxford on 11 June had an unexpected visitor. Thomas described this in a letter to Dossie on her United States tour: "An odd chap appeared who one thought for a moment was one of the cleaners strayed in by mistake or

a plain-clothes detective of course it turned out to be Creech Jones who paid a very handsome 2-minute tribute to our work in W. Africa." Thomas tried after the meeting to broach a Sierra Leone project to Creech Jones, who paid no heed. The colonial governors in Kenya and Northern Rhodesia were showing their disagreement with the general policy pursued through the ACEC whose concept of citizenship was more palatable in West Africa than it seemed in East and Central Africa. Thomas now formally gave up membership of the Communist Party, where he had long been inactive. This was to clear the way for his work as a teacher and his growing interest in Africa. Thomas wanted also to talk to Cox but found by mid-August that their respective holiday plans would keep them in different parts of the country for about a month. He wrote on 18 August to "Dear Christopher" asking for an hour in late September to discuss three matters: Sierra Leone practically, Nyasaland tentatively and his personal plans for the future on which he wanted Cox's advice. Kimble on leave in Britain was married on 20 August to the first of Thomas's tutor trainees Helen Rankin, appointed in 1946 initially in Lincoln and later working in Rewley House (meeting David Kimble at a tutors' conference in Oxford) and as an editor at the Bureau of Current Affairs in London. Helen and David from their marriage went on almost immediately to Accra where the mood of Gold Coast politics was changing. The Convention People's Party was formed in June with Kwame Nkrumah breaking away from the more conservative Gold Coast African leadership who had paid for his passage back in December 1947 to serve the United Gold Coast Convention. A new Gold Coast governor Sir Charles Arden-Clarke was appointed from 11 August. Cox agreed to a meeting at the Colonial Office on 21 September and for another official to attend the formal part of the discussion on Kimble's report on the April visit to Sierra Leone. Cox told Thomas that he had talked over Kimbles proposals with the Governor of Sierra Leone, who did not think that it would be desirable for Sierra Leone to have any direct assistance from the University College of the Gold Coast in the extra-mural field. Any work in adult education should be under the auspices of the reconstituted Fourah Bay College, where there was a new principal; the existing close connection between Fourah Bay and Durham University pointed to Durham rather than Oxford. Thomas ruefully accepted the line of argument. Oxford's direct part in the West Africa programmes was ending since responsibility for extra-mural work in the Gold Coast and in Nigeria was transferred to the two University Colleges, where full-time directors of extra-mural studies were in post (to Kimble in Accra and to the Cambridge and Oxford educated Robert Gardiner in Ibadan). Thomas when alone with Cox asked for a frank personal opinion on the possibility of the delegacy opening up exploratory work in any other colonial regions. Thomas had in mind Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika as colonial territories that might be considered. Cox argued that there were existing universities or university colleges who would want to undertake extra-mural work from the outset rather than have the agenda set by a virtually independent tutor responsible only to a remote body in England. He pointed to the factor in East and Central Africa of a resident European public opinion which strengthened the case for any such programme being under the control of a local institute. The personal plan Thomas disclosed was to give up his work with the delegacy before very long in order to write something about Africa after further African travel.

Thomas caught Cox's point that "education for self-government" did not mean the same in a colony with a purely African society as it did in a colony with a white settler population, and possibly an Indian population as well. Cox was responding personally as asked, and said he would have to consult Andrew Cohen on official policy implications. Thomas did not fully catch that Cox was intending to say that the delegacy's pioneering job in the colonies was now over. Thomas thought the objections could be overcome through cooperation with local institutions. By the beginning of November the Colonial Office mandarins had taken a firm view on their policy towards the Oxford delegacy. Creech Jones, after a discussion with Walter Adams, Cohen, Cox and M. Trafford Smith, gave instructions that University Colleges were to be encouraged to draw upon other universities rather than Oxford; and the tendency to build up an Oxford monopoly of colonial interest in the extra-mural field should now be resisted. Cox was nudging the lay advisers towards the British Council as a source of underpinning to the educational institutions in the colonies. Thomas was still thinking of going to Sierra Leone at the end of the year as part of a third journey to Africa he contemplated in response to an invitation from Kimble for assistance with residential schools in Gold Coast. George Wigg directed the attention of the recently appointed editor of "West Africa" magazine David Williams to Thomas's interest in Africa. Williams and Thomas met in Oxford in early November and Thomas agreed to write ten articles on the national movement in the Gold Coast if he travelled there as planned for the new year. Thomas wanted Wigg to encourage Creech Jones to pursue the Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland proposals. Thomas consulted informally on these with Margaret Read at the Institute of Education in London and with Leonard Barnes at Barnet House in Oxford. Whether innocently or ingenuously he drafted a set of proposals for extra-mural courses in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia on almost exactly the delegacy's West Africa model and over a two-year framework. Thomas found Read and Barnes sympathetic and helpful and both independently offered to discuss the matter further with Cox. Wigg was willing to talk to Creech Jones on future developments in Africa and Thomas circulated his written proposal in mid-November (he noted the settler problem in the "existence of a European non-official community"). When the Colonial Office's adult education sub-committee met in London on 22 November Read and Barnes asked that the position on adult education in East and Central Africa be discussed at the next meeting due in the second week of January 1950 (for Read at least this was in response to Thomas's talk with her). It was agreed at Cox's suggestion that the discussion include the type of informal adult education that the British Council would be willing to promote. At the end of the meeting Barnes told Cox about Thomas's proposals for an Oxford delegacy role and that these might cause embarrassment to the Colonial Office (Barnes in Oxford knew about the Communism scare). Read after Barnes left told Cox that she had the same proposals from Thomas. Cox told her of the "political complications" affecting the delegacy and she was apologetic about her suggestion for the policy debate. Cox, after telephoning Cohen with an alert and to confirm that they took the same view, sent a detailed account and a minute with an advisory condemnation of the Thomas plan: "I am quite sure that this will need extremely careful handling and that a complication which may be fatal would be introduced if the Oxford Delegacy, with its present Secretary, were allowed, let alone encouraged, to be the agency responsible for the

pioneering stage." Hodgkin and the delegacy should if necessary "be pulled up with a round jerk"; the Colonial Office lay advisers and Lucy Sutherland and John Lowe should be told once and for all, and Creech Jones should if necessary see Wigg. Before the subcommittee met in the new year the Colonial Office should be clear what suggestions it would welcome for East and for Central Africa and what suggestions it was determined to discourage. Thomas through Barnes and after taking Frank Cawson of the British Council to lunch in late November caught a clear signal this time that the delegacy proposal would not be acceptable. He wrote to Read on 6 December that he was trying to see if there was any way of putting it on a more workable basis. He wrote to Cox on 7 December abandoning the Sierra Leone prospects and reminding Cox that Kimble had invited Thomas to the Gold Coast after Christmas for three or four weeks to help with a residential course for part-time tutors and another for people prepared to undertake work in adult education. Kimble was having his own difficulties with colonial administration officials in Accra, especially the director of education Tom Barton who was believed by the Kimbles to be suspicious of their interest in Nkrumah and his friends. Thomas's own air fare to West Africa was paid out of official funds, but after some official hesitancy and on the basis of a perceived need for training for new African staff and part-time lecturers in the Gold Coast. Thomas's second West Africa journey was geared to the educationists and much less than his first journey to colonial officialdom. He was met on arrival in Lagos on 29 December by the general secretary of the Nigerian Union of Teachers Eyo Esua and accommodated at the Bristol Hotel. He took a train next day to Ibadan to visit the University College and to meet several academics including Robert Gardiner and his family. Gardiner took him to Abeokuta to meet the principal of the grammar school Israel Ransome-Kuti and his political activist wife Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Gardiner on new year's day of 1950 drove Thomas back to Lagos. Thomas on a personal basis had arranged to dine with his colleague of Palestine days Hugh Foot, who was now Chief Secretary and acting Governor in the Nigeria administration. Thomas felt that Foot approved of the work the Oxford delegacy had been doing in Nigeria. Thomas flew on 3 January 1950 from Lagos to Accra and joined the Kimbles on the final stage of a volunteer project to improve the water supply to the village of Komenda. Thomas mucked in by carrying pans full of the clay that was dug out and then by moving stones to build a ramp. This project between students and villagers was a preliminary to the training course for tutors in adult education at Komenda College from 7 to 21 January led by Thomas and by Kimble. Barton, submitting a confidential assessment on Kimble in a minute dated 5 January, commented on a "tendency to have expeditions into sub-academic levels in the sphere of community development". Barton assessed Kimble as young and immature, with oldfashioned English anti-imperialist instincts and a Messianic attitude that with his habitual overwork "might reach hysterical extremism". Barton noted that Helen Kimble was "a charming, personable young lady" but had been characterised by the head of the University College as "an out and out Jacobin" (presumably indicating extreme and revolutionist views). Thomas taught on the adult education course and started a study group on the Gold Coast national movement (in Accra a general strike was being called by trade unionists from midnight on 6 January and the CPP called for Positive Action from midnight on 8

January to support demands for Gold Coast self-determination). Thomas in a lorry-load of Africans and Europeans from the course went on 11 January to the centre of the strike movement Sekondi to see the effects. He met supporters and opponents of radical action and he returned there on 15 January, by which time colonial officials were speculating whether Komenda was a centre of subversive influence. Dossie wrote to Thomas that Stephen Swingler had written begging Thomas's help in the campaign for the general election called for Britain in February.. A social marked the end of the Komenda course and Thomas acted the role of Creech Jones arriving to give a lecture on the role of the district commissioner in adult education that he was never allowed to give. Thomas began his return on 21 January to Accra hoping to meet Nkrumah, only to hear on the way of Nkrumah's arrest in the Labadi neighbourhood of Accra (in the subsequent trial of CPP leaders Nkrumah was sentenced to a total of three years of imprisonment). Thomas was due to leave Gold Coast on 1 February but he acceded to a plan of Kimble's to extend by a few days. Thomas with Dennis Austin held a one-day school in Kumasi on 28 January on "The meaning of democracy". Thomas was to speak on "Problems of modern government", although the colonial administration's public relation officers raised an objection to announcing this subject on radio. When the school was held, for about fifty local participants, three British officials turned up to listen in. Thomas went on to Tamale in the Northern Territory where on 30 January he lectured to the People's Educational Association on the meaning of democracy. He pointed to the forthcoming British general election where the Conservative Party would be claiming to defend the democratic rights of citizens against increasing interference by the state, and the Labour Party would claim that in the modern world democracy involved more and more planning of the economic life of the people. He tried to link this to the practical questions of proposals for constitutional change in the Gold Coast and the role of regional government. He highlighted a distinction between a constitution that looked democratic on paper and a really democratic society that worked in practice. Thomas lectured again on 4 February at Aburi when he spoke about wage demands and collective bargaining to a trade union school promoted by postal workers from Accra. Thomas left Accra on 6 February with such a tight squeeze for a class in Stafford scheduled for 7 February that he wrote to Pickstock at the delegacy asking him to send a car to the airport to meet Thomas and drive him up to Stafford. Barton, with support from Arden-Clarke, was waging a continued campaign against Kimble including a letter of 6 February classified personal and secret to the Colonial Office in London saying they wanted Kimble to go since his attitudes were likely to counter an anti-communist propaganda machine to be set-up in Gold Coast. Their administrative line was that extra-mural work must in future be addressed to an intellectual elite and that community development must take over the "sub-academic" reaches of the school leavers. Cox on 17 February wrote a minute to Cohen rejecting this approach since it was not in line with the Creech Jones personal experience of extramural work. The minute acknowledged the impracticality of parting with Kimble or finding a desirable successor. The general election of 23 February cut the Labour Party's parliamentary majority to five, and cost Creech Jones his Shipley seat. He was succeeded as Secretary of State for the Colonies by the trade unionist James Griffiths. Thomas was finding a new platform and

context for his increasing interest in Africa through the Union of Democratic Control under the chairmanship of the "New Statesman and Nation" editor Kingsley Martin. The formation of the UDC began on 5 August 1914 in the wake of the outbreak of the first world war and it was led by political activists opposed to the war in Europe. The general secretary whom Thomas met in March 1950 was Basil Davidson who was of the age of the UDC. He was born in Bristol as Basil Risbridger on 9 November 1914 and later took the name Davidson from a stepfather. Basil Davidson, leaving school at sixteen, was a journalist in the 1930s and had a distinguished military record in the second world war including service as liaison officer to Marshal Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. He returned to journalism after the war and began writing books of fiction and non-fiction and in 1949 took on secretaryship of the UDC. He wrote advocacy pamphlets such as a critique of political repression in Greece. The UDC with a long-standing interest in Asia was turning its attention to the problems of African advance towards freedom and equality of opportunity. Basil lent Thomas a manuscript report by Monica Whateley on a visit to South Africa and sought Thomas's advice on people who could help plan a conference in October on the theme of "The Crisis in Africa". Thomas recommended Ogunsheye at the LSE and other friends and colleagues. Cox did not want the death of an Oxford vice-chancellor and the change of a colonial secretary to deflect the Colonial Office from a strategy of controlled and minimal adult study groups in the settler colonies of East and Central Africa without the potential complications of a Hodgkin or Oxford delegacy factor. The Adult Education SubCommittee was looking at the issue and was expected to make definite recommendations on 21 April. Cox on 4 April sent another long minute to Cohen and other senior officials urging that Cohen attend the 21 April meeting and hold the line. Cox felt sure that the East and Central African Governments "would never tolerate either Mr. Hodgkin himself or some of his young Delegacy tutors running classes on current political, social and economic issues without responsibility to anyone except a Delegacy thousands of miles away". He felt that the University College in the Gold Coast had been saddled with "politically explosive extra-mural work for which another agency had created the demand". Cox noted that Margaret Read and Leonard Barnes were convinced that some adult education should be started in East and Central Africa. They had been held back from pressing the case through "knowledge that Mr. Hodgkin's political affiliations would mean that the chances of such an undertaking running on the rocks would be immeasurably increased if it were launched under the Delegacy's auspices". Cox invoked the moral authority of Creech Jones who "in one of his last talks with me, opened up this question and stated his own view that the opportunity should now be made available for East and Central Africans who have had some schooling to undertake systematic study, though very likely at this stage at a lower level than Makerere or a University institution should foster". Creech Jones, in the Cox minute, was inclined to favour the British Council over the WEA as a possible agency. British Council officials in the field thought that European leadership in study groups was essential. The Cox formula argued that this leadership "would be voluntary and of course amateur, with no training in adult education work and certainly not in that of the WEA-Extra-mural Delegacy kind". The British Council representative in East Africa was not looking for the

range of studies undertaken in West Africa but at the outset at such concrete issues as soil erosion. Just as Cox, unbeknown to Thomas, was sending his minute to exclude Thomas from the process in Africa, Basil on the same date of 4 April wrote to Thomas from the UDC that he had fixed a meeting at the House of Commons on 27 April for "the preliminary gettogether which is to discuss our Conference on the Crisis in Africa". Basil was prepared to change the date if it did not suit Thomas since he felt that Thomas's presence at the meeting was indispensable. He asked Thomas to secure the participation of Ogunsheye and to encourage Barnes to come. Thomas was away from the delegacy on leave until 13 April but his secretary wrote on 5 April to Basil accepting the Commons date (Thomas began his intended family holiday in Devon by breaking four of his ribs in a fall from a pony and being out of action for ten days). By 15 April Thomas was mobilising the interest of Ogunsheye, Tony McLean, Michael Carritt and Leonard Barnes. In the ensuing weeks Thomas and Basil were in touch on an almost daily basis by letter, telephone or meeting as they prepared a conference programme and recruited participants. Thomas's connections were strong in the academic field and among Africans currently in Britain. Thomas in the summer wrote and delivered the series on the national movement in the Gold Coast that David Williams had requested for "West Africa" magazine. Ten articles were published as "Background to Gold Coast nationalism" in the period from 9 July to 2 September 1950. They were seen as both scholarly and topical and in combination with the conference reflected Thomas's deeper involvement in Africa. The conference was to be held at the convent-like Elfinsward in Haywards Heath, Sussex, during a long weekend of 20 to 23 October with the working sessions on 21 and 22 October (with dates misprinted by one day in much of the original documentation). Formal invitations went out from mid-July with a preliminary note: "There is a general recognition of a growing crisis in relations between colonial peoples and governments throughout Africa. Signs of this are evident in many territories. Such signs include the movement of Africa [sic] peoples for self-government and the attitude of colonial governments; the conflict between Africans and European settlers; the racialist and imperialist policies of the present Government of the Union and their wider implications for Africa; the economic programmes and strategic plans of the Western Powers in relation to Africa; and the unsolved problems of poverty, disease and under-nourishment which are to be found in these territories." The conference would seek a Socialist policy to meet the crisis. The delegacy in Oxford ran an Anglo-Colonial Summer School as it had done in the previous year, based on the Ruskin College Rookery in Headington. Thomas, in a welcoming speech on 15 July, said that one of the most interesting developments of recent years was the growth of adult education in colonial countries of the West Indies and West Africa. He pointed to the element of popular initiative and the idea that colonial peoples would be at a disadvantage so long as they had not enough persons with the knowledge and the power of independent judgment that enabled them to make intelligent decisions about all the various problems confronting them. The Elfinsward conference was much in Thomas's mind. He wrote on 14 August to Margery Fry to see if she would speak for a few minutes about prison conditions in the British African colonies. He (and Basil) were hoping that the conference would lead to a

permanent committee of the UDC to work on African problems and to publish materials. He confessed: "The worse the state of the world gets the less content I am to sit in an office in Oxford, and the more I want to get moving to try to contribute in rather more direct and definite ways." He noted that the family's flat in Oxford had seemed full of Africans, students and international scientists for some time over strenuous weeks. The Hodgkin family then went for a holiday from 24 August to 12 September at PerrosGuirec on the north coast of Brittany. During this break Thomas went to Paris on 10 September for a day and a night to try to secure Francophone African participation at Elfinsward. In the event some seventy five participants included about a third from Africans in Britain and the others drawn from a broad left front of academics, activists, journalists, politicians and scientists from Britain. Basil Davidson chaired the economic session, with Henry Collins and Peter Ady as main speakers. Fidelis Ayo Ogunsheye was lead speaker in the political session. Thomas wrote a keynote paper on international relations: "If by imperialism we understand a state of affairs in which one nation is subject to the political control of another nation, is economically dependent, and enjoys unequal rights and opportunities then it is surely clear that imperialism does continue to exist throughout Africa." Leonard Barnes responded and supported Thomas's paper: "I cannot persuade myself that basic relationships have changed. The old relationships are still the same governing relationships. Imperialism still exists, and the problem of its removal is still before us." He believed it impossible to consider the issues without reference to the Cold War: the previous five years had brought about a political degeneration in the Western world. especially in its attitude to the USSR. Africans in the Elfinsward discussions included Adenekan Ademola from Nigeria, A.M. Akinloye from Nigeria, A. Amponsah from Gold Coast, Okoi Arikpo from Nigeria, Hastings Kamuzu Banda from Nyasaland, Ignatius Musazi from Uganda, Charles Njonjo from Kenya, E. Obahiagbon from Nigeria, and Bankole Timothy from Sierra Leone. The British personalities included: J.D. Bernal, Fenner Brockway, MP, Ritchie Calder, Wilfred Le Gros Clark, Kingsley Martin, Reginald Sorensen, MP, and David Williams. The Cold War was making itself felt in the higher reaches of adult education. Thomas engaged in the issue by writing an essay on "Objectivity, ideologies and the present political situation" that he completed by mid-December of 1950 and published in volume 42 of "The Highway" in the issue with a cover date of January 1951. Thomas opposed what he saw in Britain as a regrettable drift towards intellectual conformity. He understood that one could dislike Communism and "Russian Imperialism", but he resisted the tendency to argue that Marxists were incapable of objectivity in their teaching. He questioned whether Marxists were in a worse position to teach objectively than Fabians, Liberals, Conservatives, Christians, Jews, Moslems, Animists, etc. He urged the WEA to contribute "to the effort to preserve freedom of conscience in a world in which this idea is becomingly increasingly unfashionable". Thomas's call for an open mind was quickly challenged in the next issue of "The Highway" in print by mid-January with a February 1951 cover date. contributors argued that Communists rather than Marxists were the problem and could not be indulged. Thomas planned a fourth journey to Africa. Williams had asked for ten articles on Nigerian nationalism along the lines of the articles on Gold Coast written during the summer of 1950. Thomas on 1 February wrote to "Dear Christopher " Cox (who had been

awarded a KCMG in the 1950 honours) that he was hoping to go to Nigeria for a few weeks again towards the end of February to prepare the articles. The journey would not be to do with extra-mural work but Thomas foresaw chances of seeing Gardiner and the work of the University College of Ibadan where Gardiner was looking for full-time tutors. Thomas tentatively proposed meeting Cox before his journey and possibly in Oxford. The Hodgkin family were giving up their Oxford flat (inadequate housing in the view of Thomas's mother "five rooms for six people", as she wrote for her sisters on 6 February) to rent a large house on Boars Hill. Powder Hill had been the home of the All Souls Warden Adams who had been a friend of Thomas's Smith grandfather and he bequeathed his home to the college. It was a house in the country, near Oxford, with a large wildish garden and surrounded by fields and woodlands, but problematic for service and transport for half a dozen adults and children whose working and school lives were largely centred in the city of Oxford. The move was underpinned by a contribution towards redecoration costs of a share through Thomas's mother of a large cash gift from the wealthy Frederic Hamilton second husband to Thomas's maternal aunt Mary (Molly) Smith who had previously been married to Fred Barrington-Ward. Cox's secretary wrote on 7 February that Sir Christopher was on leave after a visit to the Far East and would be shown Thomas's letter on 15 February when he was due back at the Colonial Office. Thomas in late February plunged into his fourth African journey, without seeing Cox again but believing that he had Cox's sympathetic understanding of his journalistic purpose in visiting Nigeria, Cameroon and Gold Coast. Thomas with only contingent official duties stayed in Lagos with Fidelis Ogunsheye "in a Yoruba house out at Yaba" and renewed acquaintance with other Nigerians including radicals and nationalists such as Nnamdi Azikiwe. In West African style Thomas sat late into the night of 24 February talking in the Lagos night clubs. Cox - in Oxford for that weekend and intending to give Thomas the opportunity of the talk that Thomas had sought - heard that Thomas had already left for West Africa. When Thomas in Lagos did spend time with colonial officials they were met by chance such as his Wykehamist contemporary Ernest Sabben-Clare who had played Otto the mayor in a one-act comic play that Thomas had written as an Oxford undergraduate: they lunched on 25 February. Thomas after more than two hours of "useful talk" that day with Azikiwe commented in a letter to Dossie: "A nice man, though a bit of a megalomaniac, I think." Thomas was travelling on to Ibadan and Enugu, then into Cameroon. Cox again in Oxford at the beginning of March heard from Jack Butterworth the Junior Proctor that the Oxford delegates were given the impression that Cox had been anxious for the journey Thomas was making to West Africa. Cox feared the delegates might have inferred that the visit was being undertaken with the encouragement of the Colonial Office. Cox on 9 March just as Thomas was arriving in Gold Coast wrote to Lucy Sutherland: "The present visit of Hodgkin's had not, I imagine, been projected when I last saw him some time last summer and all that I know about it is contained in a letter from him which arrived just after I got back to this country". Cox wanted "to make it quite clear that I have neither encouraged nor discouraged Hodgkin about his present visit". Thomas welcomed the exciting atmosphere he found in Gold Coast where Nkrumah had been elected from prison to the Legislative Assembly in the early days of February 1951 and the CPP won a clear victory. Nkrumah was released from prison and some eleven

days later became leader of government business. Kimble laid on a weekend course or conference on legislative procedure for about fifty deputies and ministers, many of whom were already his former students. Thomas suspected it might be the first occasion in human history when a university had run an extra-mural course for the cabinet and members of parliament. Thomas went on 27 March to meet Nkrumah (a little more than a year after Nkrumah's arrest by the colonial authorities had blocked an earlier meeting) and found him approachable and friendly. He wrote to Dossie that Nkrumah was extremely nice and intelligent, altogether admirable with very sound ideas. Lucy Sutherland who had been on an Easter visit to Italy wrote on 28 March to Cox that the confusion over the delegacy view on Thomas's journey and the Colonial Office position arose from the fact that Thomas had already left when the delegates held their meeting and his subordinates were not very well informed on the situation. She thought she had herself suggested that the Delegates might feel happier about it if they knew that Cox at the Colonial Office had no objection and had gathered before Thomas went away that Cox had felt approval of the idea. She promised to see that those concerned knew what the situation was. Thomas returned to Oxford at the end of March in time for his forty-first birthday on 3 April and for moving house on 4 April to Powder Hill in the Oxford countryside. Thomas found the Chilterns in the distance reminiscent of Trans-Jordan. Thomas was trying to avoid seeming to be an "absentee secretary" to the delegacy but was also drawn by personal inclinations. He published in the April cover date issue of "The Highway" a reply to the various comments made on his thesis that Marxist tutors should be judged by the same criteria as tutors embracing other political philosophies. He distinguished this from the views of others on the role of Communist tutors and challenged an implication that it was impossible to arrive at conclusions of a Marxist kind on any serious question without a process of intellectual cheating. He was unabashed in defending objectivity: "The word, as I have learned to use it, means the capacity to distinguish between facts and myths, and to value the effort to arrive at conclusions which are grounded upon facts." Thomas and Basil met in London on 16 April to discuss the UDC's burgeoning Africa programme under an Africa Sub-Committee chaired by Harold Davies, MP, whom Thomas knew well from their North Staffordshire days. The programme included a pamphlet series on the theme of Africa and the future. Thomas was willing to write on the political situation in West Africa, and he suggested that the UDC bring a CPP leader from Gold Coast to Britain for two or three weeks during the summer for a speaking tour and to meet people in the British labour movement. A UDC summer school on Africa and largely for Africans was to be held in Oxford in July. Basil was going to write a report on the white settler territories and was about to leave for South African at the invitation of women in the South African Garment Workers' Union, a trade union opposed to segregation. Thomas, writing on 19 April to Teddy, said he was proposing to retire from the Oxford delegacy appointment as soon as he decently could and hoped this would be within the next twelve months. He was hesitant only in case he had been in the past over-hasty in resigning from the pre-war Palestine appointment, but he saw no point in marking time in Oxford: "Eventually though I would rather go to Khartoum than Nigeria. I think preferring the desert to the jungle."

He had not yet written up his material on Nigerian nationalism but by mid-May had submitted to UDC a draft pamphlet on "Freedom for the Gold Coast?" that went initially to be read by Ritchie Calder of the UDC executive before circulation to the committee as a whole. Thomas hailed Nkrumah who as Minister for Government Business was for all practical purposes the Gold Coast Prime Minister. Thomas also predicted a domino effect in the rest of Africa: "A popularly elected African Government in the Gold Coast is, by its mere existence, a challenge to those in the Union and in the White Settler territories of East and Central Africa whose main purpose it is to preserve White domination in Africa." The general secretary of the South African Garment Workers' Union, E.S. (Solly) Sachs, visited London late in May en route for Geneva. The UDC arranged for him to speak at a House of Commons meeting on 30 May. Basil returned from his field trip in late June and wrote on 21 June to Thomas saying that he had taken on a great deal of writing that could be done only at weekends, and seeking a meeting with Thomas to talk over the implications of the trip to South Africa. While Dossie was abroad on a scientific tour Thomas and the children spent 24 June at Crab Mill where Robin was ill and stayed in bed for the early part of the day (Luke in early June had been first in that year's election of scholars to Eton). Thomas chatted to his mother of a vague notion that he and Dossie might move to the Sudan. Three days later Thomas in Oxford heard that his father had a coronary thrombosis and was suffering from cardiac asthma. Thomas went again to Crab Mill but returned to Oxford on 28 June for a tutors' conference. Teddy arrived at Crab Mill in the afternoon and was there when Robin died in the evening. Thomas attended the funeral in Ilmington on 2 July (Luke and Elizabeth went to the Festival of Britain in London Toby stayed in Oxford under the eye of Dennis Austen who was visiting with his wife Margaret and their son Stephen). By the time of the Encaenia commemoration of Oxfords founders on 6 July and the Robin Hodgkin memorial service at Queen's on 7 July Thomas was discreetly alerting delegates of his proposal to retire from the delegacy and a special meeting was planned for 6 October to discuss the matter formally. The UDC held a summer school at Ruskin College's Rookery in Headington from 14 to 21 July on "Africa and the Labour Movement", with 24 students including four from Nigeria, two from the West Indies and one each from India and Canada fewer Africans than the twenty the organisers had originally envisaged. Leonard Barnes and Thomas spoke on the character of the African national movements, Basil Davidson on the proposed Central African Federation and Adenekan Ademola on the colour bar. Thomas arranged for Davidson to dine at Barnes's home bringing them together for the first time. Thomas's professorial fellowship at Balliol was held by virtue of his delegacy appointment. Lord Lindsay in July ended a quarter of a century as Master of Balliol and soon moved to prepare to open the new experimental Keele University. Thomas broached with his successor - the constitutional historian Sir David Lindsay Keir - the possibilities of a research fellowship linked to his plans for independent travel in Africa. Thomas's series of ten articles on "Background to Nigerian nationalism" began to appear in "West Africa" from 4 August. The UDC in August published as a sixpenny pamphlet Thomas's polemic on "Freedom for the Gold Coast", in which he urged British support for "an enthusiastic self-confident and democratic movement for national independence and for liberation from the colonial past."

The Hodgkin family separated for holidays in early September with Thomas's mother taking the younger children to Bamburgh and Dossie and Thomas taking Luke to Italy for a pre-Eton spree in Venice and Como. Thomas in late September sent out to the academic community and at the request of the vice-chancellor a formal note on the conditions of appointment for a new delegacy secretary. The responses to Thomas included several courteous expressions of regret at his impending departure from members of the Universities Council including warm messages from some with whom he had gently crossed ideological swords. Sidney Raybould wrote from Leeds on 8 October: "Particularly am I fearful lest your successor might not have your real concern for workers' education, which is a cause which I'm afraid doesn't deeply stir all our colleagues ..." Birchall, the delegacy bursar whose sense of administrative order had been offended by Thomas's tendency to be lackadaisical, wrote privately on 21 November to Frank Jessup, who had been a candidate when Thomas was appointed, and urged him to compete again: "Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see you take over from Hodgkin and I believe if you did there would at least be some chance of a clearing up of the awful mess which is now all around us. We should never have got there at all if the Delegacy had had more sense in 1945." Jessup did apply next day, giving as referees two of Thomas's mentor Charles Morris, now vice-chancellor at Leeds, and Sir Philip Morris, now vicechancellor at Bristol. Thomas continued to nurture the interest Basil Davidson was showing in Africa and a plan of Basil's to begin a trek of his own through West Africa from the following February. Thomas on 26 November sent him an annotated booklist of reading on West Africa that he could cover in the interim: a score of titles from F.M. Bourret ("the best general book on the Gold Coast") to Nnamdi Azikiwe's collection of his newspaper articles in "Renascent Africa". Delegates met on 22 December to consider applications for the secretaryship by Hampden Jackson (Thomas's rival in the 1945 round), Jessup and Harold Wiltshire. It was agreed, by a majority of six to two to recommend the appointment of F.W. Jessup. This was the choice that Thomas wanted and he sent Jessup a personal letter of congratulation to which Jessup replied on 28 December: "I hope you will always remain pleased about the result of your machinations, and that you will not regret opening the door to this violent reactionary!" Thomas's resignation was due to take effect on 30 April and he came to the new year of 1952 with another four months to fulfil of his Oxford duties. Robin's widow Dorothy had contemplated selling Crab Mill as an economy measure, but was persuaded by Thomas and Teddy to keep it, She compromised by agreeing to move into Hermon View cottage with Annie and Cyril Humphries and by letting the large house furnished for an experimental nine months. She moved at the end of January (first to relatives at Bareppa and then to the cottage) to make way for the arrival of the tenant Sir Ralph Richardson who was acting at Stratford and his wife (Dorothy hoped their being away from the village would allow her to tend the much-loved garden). Thomas on 4 February sent Davidson a detailed list of some fifty friends and contacts in West Africa who might assist Basil on a journey through Gold Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon that was to begin on 13 February. The names ranged from the "incredibly vigorous and independent minded" David Kimble to the reputedly enlightened Emir of

Katsina "about as enlightened as a German Prince of the 18th Century". Most were Africans in education, labour relations and politics whom Thomas had come to know on his delegacy missions and who had befriended him (Thomas in the subsequent days supported the list with half a dozen letters of recommendation to his close connections). Thomas's forthcoming retirement from the delegacy was announced officially: a report in "The Times" of 6 February said that he intended "to spend more time on private work". Keir wrote a personal note on 7 February promising to take soundings on the possibilities of Balliol supporting Thomas's next career, and a formal response to accept Thomas's resignation on 30 April of his professorial fellowship. Keir returned in a letter of 21 February with a delicately couched rejection of Thomas's suggestion and the outcome of Keir's soundings on Thomas's acceptability for a research fellowship: "After thinking over the impressions I have formed about all this, I have, I am afraid, come to the conclusion that it would be best not to pursue the matter. While the idea certainly aroused not only interest but considerable sympathy, it does not seem to command that general support for which both you and I would look if it were to be formally submitted to the College." Balliol was abandoning him to his own devices. Thomas at this time found out about the fuss Cox had made in March 1951 over the misunderstanding in the delegacy that Cox had given Colonial Office approval to Thomas's journey to Nigeria to write articles on nationalism. Thomas wrote from Powder Hill on 25 February to "Dear Christopher" that he had talked to Lucy Sutherland and in apologising stressed that "in no circumstances would I have said or implied that my journey to write these articles had any official or unofficial backing from you". Thomas planned to study West Africa and proposed: "I can say in any discussions about the project that I have briefly mentioned it to you and that you have no views. Is that all right?". Lucy Sutherland on 26 February wrote to Cox in support of Thomas: "I am very sorry about it: but the fault certainly lay with the other officers of the Delegacy, and I suppose the Dean and myself for not checking their references, when Thomas was out of the country and knew absolutely nothing about it. I said I would write to you and assure you of this since it distresses him." She added her regrets that Thomas was leaving the delegacy: "He has been a great inspiration in many ways and several interesting experiments have been started in his time. But from his point of view I think he will feel relieved not to have administrative responsibility, and his qualities are those of a freelance rather than those of a director of a machine." Cox pressed for a specific disclaimer on his behalf in the delegacy, writing on 3 March to Lucy Sutherland and sending a copy to the vice-chancellor Maurice Bowra to complain that Cox's name had been used as vaguely supporting Hodgkin's recent journalistic activities in Africa: "I have written to Miss Sutherland asking her to let the Delegacy know that I entirely disclaim the benevolent attitude towards these recent journalistic activities of Hodgkin which I am supposed to have expressed. I should be very grateful if you could so arrange things that she has the opportunity of communicating to the Delegates the disclaimer which I have written to her and asked her to use." Cox wrote at the same time to Thomas rejecting the formula in Thomas's letter of 25 February: "The reply to the question at the end f your letter is that it is not my line of country and that I am neither in a position to give an official view nor prepared to state a personal one. The implications of 'having no views' could be rather different." Cox went

further by invoking the eyes and ears of two dons Alan Bullock and Jack Butterworth who attended delegacy meetings to keep watch on his behalf. Statements as requested by Cox were made by Lucy Sutherland and by Thomas when the delegates met in midMarch. Thomas on 18 March sent Cox the minute recording the statements including key points: "The Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, having gained the impression that Mr. Hodgkin had been in communication with Sir Christopher Cox before his departure and that Sir Christopher had expressed approval of the visit, had said so at the Delegacy meeting. "Sir Christopher had pointed out that he had not in fact expressed any opinion on this matter, and he now wished it made clear that neither he nor the Colonial Office had given backing, official or unofficial, to the Secretary's visit. "The Secretary stated that he had gone to West Africa primarily to collect material for a series of articles on Nigeria which he had been invited to write for the journal 'West Africa'. Since he knew that he would also have an opportunity to see something of adult education and extra-mural work in the Gold Coast and Nigeria he considered that it would be courteous and proper to inform Sir Christopher of his visit, and had suggested that he and Sir Christopher should meet, but there had been no opportunity to do so. He had neither sought nor obtained encouragement or support for this visit from the Colonial Office or Sir Christopher Cox. He regretted that any misunderstanding should have arisen." Cox replied on 21 March: "I think it was a good thing to get it cleared up and on the record in this form, and I am grateful to you and to Miss Sutherland." For Thomas that was the end of a trivial misunderstanding. He prepared his departure from the delegacy on 30 April and his attention was turned to Luke's return to Eton and Elizabeth's progress through selection and interview for admission to secondary education at the Oxford High School for the coming school year. Cox's anxiety to distance himself from a past friendship with Thomas ground on. Cox worked through several handwritten and typed drafts of an internal Colonial Office memorandum where he repudiated any guilt by association, The polished version was dated 2 March 1952: "Without knowing Mr. Hodgkin really well at any time I have some something of him off and on since he was an undergraduate, though with very long gaps when I knew nothing of him....". The scholarly apolitical undergraduate had in his colonial service in Palestine gone through "a violent change of attitude". Hodgkin seen at a college dinner in 1936 bore "obvious traces of some embittering experience". Hodgkin at the delegacy and instigating extra-mural work in West Africa "struck me as being perfectly normal,. candid, sensible and friendly, with no resemblance to the Hodgkin fleetingly glimpsed in 1936." It came as a "a great shock" to Cox in 1947 or 1948 to be told through private Oxford sources that one and possibly two of the tutors lent by the delegacy for work in West Africa were members of the Communist Party. Cox investigated and found that Hodgkin had been and still was a member of the CP. By December 1949 Hodgkin had formally left the party. Hodgkin's integrity was vouched for by three Oxford college heads: Cox thought that even so they might have been relieved when Hodgkin's decision to resign was taken: "The critics , of course, take the line that the obvious and sinister interpretation of his activities throughout is the correct one and have long been eager for his departure." Cox reported that early in 1952 Hodgkin had called on Cox to talk about a project for a full-length study of West African Nationalism on his retirement from the delegacy in May. Cox was not prepared to state any personal

view "which would clearly be used as an indication of the Colonial Office attitude". A full if belated correction of Lucy Sutherland's misleading statement of the previous year had gone to the delegacy. Cox concluded: "Since being sent the minute of this I have heard no more from Mr. Hodgkin and do not expect to." Thomas at Powder Hill spent much of the days from 6 to 8 May writing for Jessup a long hand-over document about policy and staffing issues facing the delegacy and offering to give a party on 7 June as a house-warming a year late for Powder Hill and to welcome Jessup. The colonial work had dwindled to an annual course in colonial adult education and Thomas advised his successor that all sorts of things might be done if he could win the confidence of Cox at the Colonial Office: "I think they only sheered away from us for political reasons, and now you are there they might be willing to work with Oxford again. Worth trying anyway." Chapter 16 Wandering scholar Thomas's departure from the delegacy in the spring of 1952 gave him a freedom to plan more extensive travel in Africa than he had been able previously to balance with his official duties in Oxford. He had drafted a scheme of work for a historians study of nationalism in West Africa, covering four British territories Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the Gambia and French West Africa; the Trust territories of Togoland and the Cameroons; Portuguese Guinea and Liberia. His initial working languages were English, French, and limited conversational Arabic; he intended at a later stage to learn an African language, but perceived that the ideas and arguments of West African nationalism were mainly presented and discussed in non-African languages. He expected to spend at least five years on the investigation carried out in planned stages and considering political groupings; economic groupings; tribal associations and unions; social groupings and religious bodies. For financial and personal reasons Thomas continued to accept invitations and approaches to teach and lecture in adult education that could be fitted round a journey of several months in Africa and would allow him to spend time in Oxford with his family. He used the library resources of the Oxford Union to which his father had given him a lifetime subscription. He scoured the files held at the Institute of Colonial Studies. Thomas on a visit to these files met by chance a graduate student from Princeton University in the United States David Apter, who was a guest at Nuffield College and of the Institute. Apter had been part of an early effort to organize black workers in the southern states and was inspired by news that Kwame Nkrumah was released from prison to lead the Gold Coast cabinet. Apter told Thomas that he was preparing to go to the Gold Coast for field research for a political dissertation on the shift towards African selfgovernment: Thomas immediately invited him to lunch at Powder Hill House, offered Apter advice and they began a friendship. Thomas was planning to return to West Africa, to revisit the English-speaking countries and to extend his experience to territories under French, Belgian and Portuguese administration. He consulted widely on his own plans. He had already in March sought advice from a Sierra Leone specialist Kenneth Little, head of the department of social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, although Sierra Leone was not included in his initial itinerary. David Williams used his Liberia connections to seek a visa for

Thomas from the Liberian Consulate General. Kenneth Robinson at Nuffield College recommended French Africanist contacts: they included Robert Delavignette, Jean Dresch, Marcel Griaule, Henri Labouret and. Charles-Andre Julien Thomas met Margaret Read at the University of London Institute of Education on 26 June and following up a George Wigg connection he had tea with Hugh Massingham of "The Observer" to see whether he might write articles for the newspaper. He carried on to France where he presented to a UNESCO gathering a paper on "Adult and Workers' Education in the Gold Coast and Nigeria" Thomas concluded: "Behind the demand for adult education in West Africa is the idea of national liberation. Education (particularly in historical and social subjects) is thought of as contributing to that end. Hence what exists in West Africa today is a 'people's' educational movement rather than a workers' educational movement." He was assisted in making Paris connections by Virginia Vernon of The Daily Mirror Paris Office. He was pointed to African political circles by Claude Grard, the left-wing Catholic editor of "Afrique-Informations", who gave recommendations for Thomas to friends in several African countries and introduced him to others at a party she gave at the end of June. Thomas outlined his travel plans to Thodore Monod, the director of the Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire, who advised him to spend a week or more at Dakar before following the Trans-Saharan route to Gao and visiting the French Soudan. Monod helpfully sketched on a piece of paper a possible itinerary beginning in Dakar and radiating in three directions from Bamako. Thomas after returning to Oxford in early July went to London on 14 July to seek visas from the French Consulate-General. He had overlooked that "Quatorze Juillet" was a French public holiday and he resumed the quest a week later in a process requiring a dozen visa application forms. Massingham wrote on 25 July that The Observer could not give Thomas any special assignment, but they would be willing to look at anything he cared to submit during his travels. Massingham suggested that Thomas call in and have a talk with Colin Legum, the newspaper's Africa specialist. Thomas on 12 August enrolled as a member of the International African Institute, where Professor Daryll Forde was administrative director. Thomas proposed for "West Africa" magazine articles on the ancient cities of the Western Sudan and a separate series on political developments in Francophone West and Central Africa. Williams supported Thomas's plan to the French and Belgian Embassies. David Williams and Thomas lunched together in London and by 19 August they agreed a strategy for Thomas to write from Africa about eight articles on ancient cities, thematic pieces on the territories to be visited and occasional articles on current events and issues. The ancient cities series was to be completed and sent to Williams by early December. Thomas on return to England would write pieces on the political and social evolution of French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, Portuguese Guinea, Liberia and Belgian Congo. Wigg was urging Thomas to contact the United States papers "New York Times" and "Herald Tribune". Thomas sounded out his Wykehamist contemporary Richard Crossman, by now an MP, on lines to the London offices of American newspapers. Crossman on 20 August counselled Thomas simply to go and see them: "Remember also that American just love geography, archaeology and anti-British nationalism. All three should be up your street!"

Thomas was projected as part scholar and part journalist, but remained ambiguous in both categories. Williams wrote on 22 August to the Portuguese Consul-General in support of an application for a transit visa for Thomas to visit Portuguese Guinea in order to write articles on methods of government and administration; economic development, particularly rice growing; educational development: "Mr. Hodgkin is a member of the International African Institute and Professor Daryll Forde, the Director, has written to Mr. Teixeira da Mota, Senor Correa and the Minister for Colonies, Commander Sarmento Rodrigues about Mr. Hodgkin's visit." The preparations were paying off. Thomas's new passport issued on 18 July was stamped with a Liberian visa on 19 August, French African territories visas on 14 and 30 August, a Guin visa and Belgian African territories visa on 20 September: he was invited to lunch that day with Legum of The Observer. Thomas, after Luke returned to Eton and Elisabeth entered the Oxford High School, had booked a passage on a ship leaving Bordeaux for Dakar in the second week of October .the sea voyage was found to be much less expensive than the overland travel of Thomas's initial intention. He drew a special foreign exchange allowance on 2 October of five hundred pounds and in the following week spent a couple of days in Paris with Dossie. Thomas and Dossie discussed meeting in northern Nigeria in March of 1953 towards the end of Thomas's proposed travels. He also had a long luncheon encounter with Leopold Sedar Senghor, who was both a Deputy in the French National Assembly and founder of a centrist political party for Senegal, the Bloc Democratique Sngalais. Thomas took a night train to Bordeaux and at four in the morning of 9 October sat in the Bordeaux station buffet hoping to board the ship two or three hours later and well in time for a nine o'clock departure he had been led in Paris to expect. The "Foucauld" was not ready to board in the morning and Thomas wandered about the town as a reluctant sightseer of old churches. He thought his command of the French language was feeble: at a little restaurant on the quay he was about to order "escargots" for lunch as one of the cheapest dishes listed, but on looking up the word in a dictionary changed his order to omelette. Thomas queued in the afternoon for customs formalities and boarding and met in the queue a young Frenchman who was journeying via Dakar to make films in Brazil and travelling fourth class. Thomas when he booked at his travel agency in Britain was told that fourth class was "impossible" for Europeans so he was travelling third. Thomas felt "envious" of the Frenchman but soon forgot his regret that he had been made to travel third class when the ship sailed in the evening. The third class passengers slept in bunks eight to a cabin in Thomas's case while fourth class passengers slept between decks on straw bundles. Third class passengers ate in a dining room: fourth class fetched their food in platters and ate in their quarters. Thomas's cabin companions were five young Frenchmen, including three Catholic teachers going to mission schools in Ivory Coast and an engineer, and two Guinean Africans going to Conakry - a middle aged railway official Joseph Soya and a medical assistant Diallo Sidi who had served in the French colonial infantry. The cabin had a table and two chairs and Thomas could sit typing a long diary letter to send to his family. He noted the colonial experiences and varying political attitudes of his fellow passengers. Joseph Soya uncritically accepted that the French pursued a theory of equality between black and white. Diallo Sidi pointed to the unequal practice whereby African exservicemen were sent back to Africa without gratuities, medals or jobs. Thomas likened

the six-day voyage to the life of a college - "as when one was an undergraduate, it needs a positive effort not simply to spend the day in conversation". Thomas found the "continual conversation" good for his French. Even so the Andr Gide book that he was reading slowly he lent to the French filmmaker and Thomas returned to the traveller Richard Burton's account in English of nineteenth century Africans in "A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome". Thomas on arrival at Dakar on the afternoon of 15 October was unexpectedly hailed on the quay with a cry of "Winchester" by the British Consul Gordon Pirie who had been with him in the boy scouts at school. Pirie saw him speedily through port formalities and took him by car into the city. Conversely when Thomas went to IFAN he found that Monod was away and there was no chance of a room on the premises. Thomas, acutely conscious of his tight budget, was installed in the recently opened Hotel La Croix du Sud in the centre of Dakar albeit in the cheapest room on a tariff where the guests were obliged to eat at least one costly meal a day, or incurred a penalty of almost the same amount. Pirie lent Thomas a car and Gold Coast driver, and Thomas searched out the cheaper cafes in Dakar. He was in the company of some of his former fellow passengers and eating the cheapest meal he could find when he heard a radio broadcast announcing the arrival on the "Foucauld" the previous day of Monsieur Thomas Hodgkin, the well known English journalist Thomas rated himself rather an amateur journalist. The IFAN librarian set out a range of materials on the ancient cities of the Soudan and Thomas's reading was interspersed with visits to administration officials, trade unionists and to Joseph Correa an African radical shopkeeper recommended by Basil Davidson. Within three days Thomas's anxieties were eased with the arrival from a conference on Morocco of the IFAN archaeologist Raymond Mauny who could assist with further advice on Thomas's journey. Another visitor to IFAN was Arnold Walter Lawrence, brother to T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, and himself a Cambridge archaeologist now professor in the University College of the Gold Coast at Achimota. Lawrence suggested Thomas consider working at the University College, and they hoped to meet again when Thomas visited Gold Coast in the new year. Pirie arranged for Thomas to move from the hotel to live free in a government guesthouse close to Government House. This brought the comfort of a vast bed in a Second Empire bedroom, a sitting room and a bathroom with a real bath the first Thomas had enjoyed for about a fortnight. Pirie took Thomas to a party for a French colonial adviser on Moslem affairs and Thomas was told of close contact between Islam in northern Nigeria and in Senegal. The Great Council of French West Africa was due to meet in Dakar on 20 October to vote the federal budget and the event drew together political leaders from some eight component countries of the vast territory. Thomas was intrigued by Senghor, finding him reminiscent of Nkrumah although pursuing a different political agenda. He followed Senghor's schedule on the evening of 18 October, including a mass rally called by the BDS and a BDS social in the Dakar Medina held late in the evening (Senghor remarked that Africans seldom slept much since it was not necessary when it was warm), and they had a private discussion in a cafe overlooking the sea. Senghor put to Thomas that the ideology of nationalism was unsuited to the twentieth century and he asserted an interdependence of Europe and Africa.

Thomas decided to watch the Great Council meeting. In an initial assessment he noted in his diary: "The party system here is going to take a long time to understand, since it depends upon an interplay of ideological, economic, regional, and personal factors with the added complication of the impact of metropolitan politics." Thomas found it difficult or impossible to keep awake during the formal opening ceremony of the Council with a panoply of soldiers in scarlet uniforms and politicians in a variety of European and African costumes. He was more stimulated by the informal debate that followed the departure from the session by the High Commissioner Bernard Cornut-Gentille and opportunities in the breaks to meet African political representatives. Thomas was however invited to a copious lunch on 22 October given by Cornut-Gentille for a visiting Air Vice-Marshall (showing off the Canberra aircraft, Britain's first jet bomber that had recently entered Royal Air Force service). The High Commissioner was of an age with Thomas who thought him serious-minded and liberal. Thomas on 25 October left Dakar for a thirty-hour train journey to Bamako, travelling second class "a compromise between pocket and remaining reasonably bien vu" as he wrote in one of his frequent letters to Dossie. The extra expenditure put him in the train's last coach, but he spent the cool of the evening on the front of the coach chatting to a couple of young railway workers about their respective trade unions. Thomas's priority in Bamako was to meet the scholars at the IFAN centre, whose archaeological lorry and driver became briefly his local transport. After two days with a Ukrainian archaeologist Thomas was glad to escape on 29 October to look up Africans recommended by Claude Grard, beginning with Abdoulaye Singar of the Union Soudanaise section of the Rassemblement Africain. Thomas spent a good part of the day seeing what he could of the technical education of Bamako. Thomas suffering from a boil went for treatment to the director for public health in Soudan, Colonel Jean-Frdric Vernier, a military doctor who turned out not only to share Oxford acquaintances with Thomas but also to have known Thomas's godmother Margery Fry during the First World War in France where she was organising Quaker relief work in the Marne and Meuse areas and later in France as a whole. Vernier treated the infection and arranged for Thomas to visit a major research centre on leprosy and sleeping sickness. He also entertained Thomas at home, lent him a rug for sleeping in on the journey and provided a letter of introduction to French and African friends in the Soudan and the parts of Mauritania to which Thomas would be travelling. The IFAN archaeological lorry broke down. Thomas, with nomadic tendencies making him unwilling to remain long in one place, stocked up with biscuits, oranges and Vichy water and took a seat on a commercial lorry taking passengers to Nara on 1 November after Nara motor vehicles might be abandoned for horses and camels. Thomas was seated in the driver's cabin and his chance travelling companion passenger was Mamadou Fadiala Keita, a founder member of the Union Soudanaise, so the three days of slow travel on sandy roads became a political exploration and an opening to hospitality from administration and party officials along the route. The lorry driver picked up some Arabic-speaking merchants on the road and Thomas made the effort to try to speak Arabic again. From Nara he became part of a five-strong caravan with an interpreter Koulibaly Maury, two Moors Mohammed and Omar attending the horses and Demba the Sarakolle owner of a baggage donkey. Thomas rode a horse but soon ached from an unfamiliar Moorish

saddle. When they slept out at night by their campfire Thomas suggested that they take turns as sentinels to keep up the fire and guard against hyenas and serpents. When Koulibaly interpreted the suggestion the owner of the ass said it was quite unnecessary: he knew verses of the Koran that were completely effective against hyenas or serpents. He cried these verses out loud in every direction, dug up some sand and scattered it all around so that nothing harmful should penetrate the circle in which the travellers sat. They did much of their riding in the cool of night or early morning and refreshed their water supplies when they struck a well. They roasted sheep bought on the way but Thomas's standby of tinned sardines was rejected by the horsemen. Thomas on arrival in Mauritania paid off his helpers and was accommodated from 9 November by a French administrator at Timbedra who found Thomas a lift in the lorry a merchant had freighted with sugar and tea for Nema. In Nema another French administrator offered to find Thomas a good camel and guide to Walata and to lend his own saddle. Thomas, guided by Mohammed Abdullah, set off on the two-day journey. Thomas preferred the camel to the horse, but had similar difficulties in making his camel trot that he recalled from his camel ride in Sinai at the end of 1935. He was out of practice with the kick. The solution was that one of his travelling companions rode behind him, and if Thomas's camel showed signs of slowing down the companion stirred it on from behind. Thomas in Walata from 14 November gathered material for an article as he made a round of Islamic scholars and was repeatedly entertained to dates, roast pigeons and sweet tea. Thomas described the experience in a letter to Dossie: "A mixture of Maryport (as we knew it before the War), Basra, and any Oxford (male) Senior Common Room. Highly civilised donnish characters, whose life seems to be spent almost entirely in food and prayer, and remembrance of things past." He followed some of the supporting history in the London Library copy that he carried with him of E.W. Bovill's 1933 publication "Caravans of the Old Sahara". Thomas on the journey erupted in small boils and made hot poultices to treat them until they could be dressed by a male nurse at Nema dispensary. They brought discomfort to Thomas on a rushed lorry journey from Nema to Bamako. After arrival with a fever he was eventually admitted to what he found an extremely comfortable hospital. He received a variety of injections and was able to borrow English books to read, including Mary Kingsley's "Travels in West Africa" that he was encountering for the first time. Thomas's next target was to go northwards of Bamako to the city of Timbuktu which he reached on 29 November by transport means that changed almost on a whim. He spent a couple of days on a boat Koulikoro to Segou along a river Niger about half a mile broad and interspersed with occasional islands and sandbanks. He travelled by aeroplane from Segou to Goundam, whose administrator he had met in the hospital at Bamako and who was on the same flight, without a clear idea how he would travel on the next stage. The Goundam administrator arranged for him to travel onwards with luggage on the open back of a Dodge truck driven by a French NCO, Sergent Chef Jean Verollet, from Meylan in the Isere. They arrived in Timbuktu in moonlight and to the sound of tom-toms as the Imams and the people celebrated the prophet's birthday. Thomas was accommodated in the military camp and ate most meals in the sergeants' mess. He retrod the footsteps of nineteenth century European explorers of Timbuktu, visited the principal mosques and wrote up the visit for "West Africa". He took a lift back to Goundam in an army car on 4 December and from Goundam caught a flight on 6 December to Gao, to

see the capital of the fifteenth and sixteenth century Songhai Empire, and a further flight to Bamako on 8 December. He spent an evening learning about RDA policy from Modibo Keita, the Soudan secretary of the Rassemblement, .He took again the long train journey between Bamako and Dakar. Dossie in Oxford was not well and Thomas wrote and cabled offering to interrupt his African journey if she wished. Meanwhile he worked on his articles on the ancient cities that he wanted Mauny to check for factual correctness. He had missed by one day one of the weekly flights to Bissau and found the next one fully booked. He was rescued by Mauny who took him to the Portuguese Consul in Dakar who arranged a lift for Thomas with a Portuguese agronomist who had been attending a soil science conference in Dakar and was returning in a camionette to Bissau. Thomas after talking to Dossie in Oxford by telephone felt able to continue the journey. The agronomist and his wife and a Portuguese district administrator travelled in front, and Thomas in the back with an African servant amid the tumbling baggage. When they reached the Gambia river and were awaiting a ferry they were able to cross in style since Thomas's Wykehamist friend Pirie who was visiting the Governor in Bathurst signalled for the Governor's launch to fetch Thomas's party. Then the plan began to unravel and on 16 December (his fifteenth wedding anniversary) he was delayed at the government rest house in Bathurst in The Gambia, when the owner of the camionette took to his bed with a fever. Thomas met Bathurst personalities: a note of introduction from E. Lloyd-Evans from a prominent Gambian family led him to the trades unionist Edward Small who founded the "Gambia Outlook" in 1922. When the Portuguese group continued to the Guin frontier post at San Domingos on 17 December Thomas, despite holding a valid visa for a sixty day stay, was refused admission. A letter had been sent a few days earlier to the local administrator instructing him not to admit Thomas Hodgkin. Thomas explained that Teixeira da Mota was expecting him in Bissau. The administrator riposted that da Mota was in San Domingos and Thomas could see him, but could not go on to Bissau. Thomas telegraphed to Pirie in Bissau and received a reply that the Guin Governor had received the instruction from Lisbon not to admit him. Teixeira da Mota was kind and hospitable, gave Thomas meals, arranged a bed and drove Thomas in his car to Ziguinchor. Thomas felt angry and somewhat frustrated, likening the sensation to that of being a prisoner and one that he was experiencing this for the first time. He cabled David Williams to take the matter up with George Wigg and Daryll Forde, contemplated cabling the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. He fumed for a day in Ziguinchor on 19 December, wrote up his earlier travels, consoled himself with a good dinner and wine. Thomas went on next day to Dakar, to stay at an air rest house, continue his writing and his discussions with the IFAN scholars Monod and Mauny. Dakar. He spent most of Christmas day preparing for David Kimble's extra-mural studies school in Gold Coast a lecture contrasting French West Africa with Nigeria and the Gold Coast. A solitary Christmas lunch beginning with tomatoes in vinegar and ending with Cointreau and coffee made him nostalgic for his family in Britain. As Thomas spent ten days teaching at the 1953 New Year School at Wesley College, Kumasi, in Gold Coast and a few ,more days in Kumasi with an extra-mural tutor Dennis Austin and his family, news filtered back on the protests over his exclusion from Guin and of a near recurrence for Liberia. The State Department in Monrovia decided to cancel his visa without explanation and Williams interceded with the Liberian Secretary of State

who was passing through London in the first week of January and was given assurances that Thomas would be welcome in Liberia. Williams through the British Foreign Office made inquiries of the Portuguese Government about the Bissau events. The reply from Lisbon was entirely uninformative; Forde was also mystified. Williams was concerned that any great fuss might come to the ears of the Belgian and the French officials with damaging repercussions on Thomas's further travels (and wrote to Thomas saying that Wigg took the same view). Williams asked Thomas to go speedily to Liberia and to cover an official visit to be made by Kwame Nkrumah as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast. Thomas was sad to hear in a letter from Teddy of the death of Prudence Pelham who had been much in their lives in the late 1930s, and for whom Thomas and Dossie had named their daughter. Since their various travels together in the Middle East she had been married to their friend Guy Branch, become a war widow in 1940 and had late in life lived with the painter Robert Buhler whose name she took by deed poll. Prudence with disseminated sclerosis in an advanced stage had died on 13 October but news reached Teddy only in December and was relayed in a letter he wrote then but delayed posting until mid-January when he had a suitable address for Thomas. Teddy had by the end of 1952 become an established member of the editorial staff of "The Times" after three months' probation and was telling people about the extent and originality of Thomas's travels. Two members of the BBC schools broadcasting team had asked Teddy to let them know as soon as Thomas returned. Teddy believed that Thomas would have no difficulty in recouping part of his travel expenses through broadcasting. Thomas in response to the suggestion from Williams postponed a one-week visit he had envisaged making to Dahomey and arrived on 19 January in Liberia to an airport welcome of drummers and dancers, since he had been integrated into the Gold Coast Prime Minister's suite of a dozen Africans (and musicians and despatch riders) travelling on a Liberian National Airways DC3 to await Nkrumah's arrival: "One of the occasions when I would feel more comfortable if I also were African", he commented in a letter to Dossie. He went to the Monrovia harbour to witness Nkrumah's arrival in the presidential yacht of Liberia's President William Tubman and had renewed encounters with CPP friends and the Sierra Leonean journalist Bankole Timothy. Thomas as a journalist tagged on to the prime minister's party visiting a Tubman farm and an agricultural experimental station. He was able to have one talk with Nkrumah that he thought useful amid the heavy official schedule. Thomas combined the Nkrumah events with visits to educational institutions, one of the recurring motives of the journey. The Nkrumah visit ended on 31 January and Thomas stayed on in Monrovia to prepare an onward journey. He hoped to go by truck through French Guinea to Abidjan (with a foray to Accra to collect a rucksack and return a dinner jacket borrowed for Liberia from the mathematics professor Hugh Blaney at Achimota and not used), and then by boat from Lom to Pointe Noire. The road journey was marked by broken nights and broken springs. Thomas's first lorry from Monrovia left two hours earlier than announced on 4 February and he missed it. He stayed up all night for fear of missing another lorry due to leave around three in the morning of 5 February. This one he caught, but the French proprietor had errands in Liberia and the vehicle did not reach the Ganta frontier post with French Guinea until late that night. Thomas slept on the ground wrapped in a borrowed blanket and caught a heavy cold. They went through two customs checks early on 6 February when Thomas

was offered a lift from a Corsican merchant on his way to Abidjan. This vehicle broke down with dynamo problems: Thomas had some sleep in an African hut, but was woken in the middle of the night by the hooting of a motor horn from a lorry leaving for Man and for Abidjan which would take him onwards. This vehicle was slowed by repeated halts to repair a broken spring. He and a police corporal transhipped near Man to another lorry bound for Abidjan. However when they reached Daloa the driver pulled up beside a house and anchored for the night. Thomas slept stretched out to sleep on the front seat, but was disturbed in the early morning when the corporal reappeared and sat where Thomas had stretched his legs. With more pauses for repair of the spring the lorry reached Gagnoa by the evening of 8 February, with three hundred kilometres to go for their destination. The driver drove through the night and reached Abidjan at dawn on Monday 9 February. Thomas reflected "I could have reached Abidjan in two hours by air on Thursday, but one does see the country and meet people in a way air-travellers never do." He checked into the Hotel du Parc, the first hotel he saw on entering the town. This brought Thomas an exchange from an African to a European life style: he breakfasted on brandy and soda, coffee, bread and butter, eggs and ham, and followed with a shave, wash and shower. He renewed contact with one of the RDA founding members Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly whom he had met in Paris and rose at 6 on 11 February to visit the populous African town in Treichville. He flew on to Accra and stayed with Blaney who took him to a doctor for treatment for the cold Thomas had caught on the Liberian frontier: it was turning into sinusitis. Thomas cancelled the boat journey to Pointe Noire, and bought air passages to Brazzaville and another from Brazzaville to Fort Lamy. He went for the first time to the Legislative Assembly in Accra on 13 February and heard Kwame Nkrumah making a speech on the budget. He was taking things easy, in a mood to say "To hell with everything Im just going to sleep as much as possible." Thomas in Brazzaville was taken in hand by the British consul-general Robert Mason, who at the British Embassy in Baghdad had been a colleague and friend of Thomas's brother Teddy. A specialist prescribed intensive medication for Thomas's sinusitis and Thomas was visiting the hospital twice a day for treatment to reduce congestion. He saw local scholars and the information director, visited the African quarter Poto Poto and spent a fifteen-hour day tramping around fields to see ground-nut and manioc cultivation in the countryside at Nzaza, a three-hour journey south west of Brazzaville. He crossed the Congo into Leopoldville, but felt he had neither the time, nor money, nor energy to do serious work on the Belgian Congo this time round, and he had gathered enough material for the thirty articles he was expected to be writing for "West Africa". On Thomas's last day in Brazzaville he met an African Catholic priest Abb Fulbert Youlou, whom he thought vigorous and intelligent, and they discussed the Conseil Coutumier Africain whose purpose was to bring together educated young men in the towns to prevent the disintegration of traditional customs. Thomas could see this as a ploy to discourage political agitation and conversely as an element of nationalism in defence of African institutions. The Brazzaville doctor on 27 February pronounced Thomas cured of the bout of sinusitis. He was in Bangui next day sitting next to the river Oubangui, and feeling homesick. A helpful French administrator arranged a busy schedule of meetings with representatives of the African and French communities. Thomas's enthusiasm was reawakened, but he

could not quite overcome his sense of absence from family. He went on briefly to Fort Lamy in Chad and then to Maiduguri in Nigeria on 10 March. He flew to Kano on 13 March to meet Dossie arriving by air on the morning of 16 March. After a visit to the old city they returned together by air to Maiduguri and began a round tour of northern and central Nigeria by road with the help of an extra-mural tutor Mallam Aba Gana, who on a visit to Oxford had stayed with the Hodgkin family. The magazine "West Africa" on 21 March began publication of Thomas's ten-part series of scholarly and descriptive articles on "Cities of the Sudan" Thomas and Dossie embarked for England from Kano on 29 March. Routine requests for Thomas to take adult education groups had been coming while he was travelling. From the moment of his return a flow of invitations began from educational and political institutions seeking to draw on his enhanced knowledge of Africa gained from nearly six months of continuous travel. Pickstock for the Tutorial Classes Committee wanted him for a lecture series at the Oxford Summer School due in August on the social consequences of economic and industrial change. The other lecturers would be Asa Briggs and Raymond Williams and Pickstock wanted "Dear Tommy" to do something on the effect of economic change on African society. Thomas called on him and agreed to speak on 11 August. Pickstock tipped off Eric Tams, the WEA North Staffs District Secretary, that Thomas had returned. Tams secured Thomas's participation in a weekend residential school to be held at the Wedgwood Memorial College at Barlaston on 27 and 28 June. with Thomas lecturing on the problems of Africa. Teddy on 14 April saw Walter Taplin at "The Spectator" and suggested articles that Thomas might write. Taplin, who had been a pupil of their father, was amenable, though describing the journal's policy on Africa as "chocolate" - i.e. not aggressively black or white, but middle of the road. Teddy was also making arrangements for Thomas to see producers in the Arabic and schools services of the BBC. Thomas lunched in London with Teddy on 30 April to meet Christopher Holme of the BBC Third Programme. "The Spectator" on 1 May published Thomas's article on "The Leaders in West Africa" as the first in a stream of contributions. Massingham had alerted a friend on The Manchester Guardian to Thomass return from several months of travel in Arica: an assistant editor Patrick Monkhouse wrote to Thomas on 14 May asking if Thomas would care to write something on French Equatorial Africa, an area rarely addressed in the British press. Thomas heard the Queen's coronation of 2 June as background music when he was writing articles to try on "The Guardian" and other outlets. He had a chapter in the Basil Davidson and Adenekan Ademola book "The New West Africa: problems of independence" (Ademola on going into chambers had moved from author to editor and brought in Amanke Okafor as a contributor on history). Eric Bellchambers, WEA South Eastern Secretary, wanted two lectures on Africa at a summer school from 8 to 15 August. John Rhodes, WEA East Midland District Secretary, wanted Thomas for a weekend school on 3 and 4 October, "to raise the larger issue of African Nationalism and British Policy". Sam Lilley, a resident tutor for University of Birmingham Department of Extra-Mural Studies, wanted Thomas to take a course of twelve fortnightly meetings on African at Fircroft College, Bourneville, from 30 September. David Holbrook, of the WEA East Midland District. wanted Thomas for Melton Mowbray in the latter half of October for two sessions in a one-day school on Africa.

Thomas dashed over to Paris from 15 June to 19 June to fill in gaps from his travel notes and to meet people whose views he needed for various articles. Virginia Vernon and Claude Grard ensured that he lunched with African politicians, including a senator of France Mahamanne Haidara, and Tiemoko Diarra. Thomas wote a brief note on political parties in British and French West Africa intended for The Observer but steered by Legum to the Information Digest of the Africa Bureau, with Thomass consent. The invitations to teach and lecture in Britain continued, not least from the Oxford Delegacy. The University Extension Lectures Committee on 1 July sent a provisional programme for Thomas to give sets of ten to twelve lecture in the Michaelmas and Hilary terms: at Brighton on Mondays, at Hanley on Tuesdays, six lectures at Mold on Wednesdays. These were under a generic theme of "The crisis in Africa", which meant that similar material could be used with different audiences, but the conjuncture would bring a schedule of travel between Sussex and the Potteries reminiscent of his train journeys of the war years. The Tutorial Classes Committee on 9 July appointed Thomas to a more conventional task as tutor in an introduction to philosophy class to be held at Abingdon from the autumn of 1953. This was a substantial three-year commitment with annual sessions requiring twenty-four meetings each of two hours' duration: the first year would address some problems of ethics. The conference that Basil Davidson with Thomas had held in Sussex in October 1950 had been on a crisis theme too - a growing crisis in relations between colonial peoples and governments throughout Africa and in contrast to the prevailing academic orthodoxies. Nearly three years later an early sign of a shift in academic sensibility came with a conference called at the School of Oriental and African studies in London for teachers of history in African university colleges. It was held on the initiative of British historians and Cambridge contemporaries John Fage and Roland Oliver and timed from 7 to 9 July 1953 when university teachers on leave in Europe could attend. The conference helped marry African history to the disciplines of archaeology and ethnography. Thomas, attending the conference and writing brief journalistic reports, was impressed by a conference concerned with the history of African peoples as contrasted with the history of the processes by which European powers established themselves in Africa. He noted a second theme in the value of oral tradition, and an alarming rate of destruction of local written documents that supplemented the oral tradition. He saw a beginning of a way of thinking about Africa in its unity and diversity without the interruptions introduced by modern frontiers. Thomas in his travels was already making a contribution to the process. Monod wrote from Paris on 29 July urging Thomas to keep him informed of his plans for his next African voyage, with particular interest in Thomas's Saharan projects. Thomas in August was writing more articles on his previous journey, preparing the courses he would teach in winter and considering plans for the following summer. To keep pace with the lecturing requests he had to look a full year ahead for his own travel plans and by 20 August he had a provisional itinerary for a journey to Africa from May to August of the following year. He would leave for Dakar at the end of April, spend two or three days in Dakar with IFAN, and continue by train and lorry to Chinguetti, then by road or camel to Wadan, on by camel to Tichit, more camel to Tegdaoust, lorry to Kayes, rail to Bamako. This route based on advice from Monod could account for the first four weeks. The next few weeks might be spent in northern Gold Coast, Cameroons and Belgian Congo. He

would see the Belgian territories, Northern Rhodesia and Uganda. Late in the journey he would hope to take in Ethiopia and Sudan. With the Belgian Congo at the heart of the journey it might be judicious to make a winter visit to Brussels to line up contacts. Thomas began his Abingdon class on 17 September and confessed in writing to his mother on 26 September that he was sometimes alarmed to think how many lectures he had to prepare and give in the coming weeks. He was keeping in touch with Williams and Wigg on the West African matters, but anxious to include East Africa in his next travel round. This meant cultivating Taplin's interest and making connections to Ethiopia. The talks Thomas had given in the summer of 1953 sparked fresh requests for winter schools and for events in the early months of 1954. The WEA weekend school at Lenton Hurst in Nottingham in early October on "Africa and the modern world" had an unexpected sequel. He was asked by the Committee for Adult Education in H.M. Forces to give sessions at another Lenton Hurst school in late November on the subjects of "The pre-European History of West Africa" and "Impressions of French West Africa". Thomas was approached to write a book on colonial affairs for the Man and Society series published by Frederick Muller. The series of the 1950s was intended to provide new books for adult education purposes and Thomas had been involved with it in its early phase. Mullers editorial director J.C. Reynolds wrote on 28 October to explain that Raymond Williams (an extra-mural literature tutor and a member of the political advisory board of the series) had asked Leonard Barnes to write a book; Barnes with two other books on hand declined and suggested that Thomas would write the book extremely well and that no-one would do it better. The advisory committee endorsed this view and Reynolds was ready to commission the book. Thomas gave a cautious and conditional assent: he did not want to go outside African matters and could not do the writing until the following autumn. Reynolds delegated to Raymond Williams the task of negotiating with Thomas on content. Raymond Williams wrote on 30 November that the political advisers wanted a broad brush treatment of political development in a wide range of colonies. The book Thomas determined to write was essentially the project he had nursed through his latter days at the delegacy and his months of independent travel in Africa from October 1952 to March 1953. Meanwhile the Lenton Hurst course attracted some thirty students from the services, about a third of them officers of the Army and Air Force. Whatever political clouds might have hovered over Thomas's departure from the Oxford delegacy seemed now to have dispersed. In the new year of 1954 Reynolds sent a contract dated 6 January for Thomas to write approximately 40,000 words on the colonies for delivery the publisher Frederick Muller by 31 December 1954 and for an advance of fifty pounds payable on publication. The British journal The Twentieth Century recruited Thomas as an occasional contributor on Africa on the strength of his writings in The Spectator, with aspects of the French and Belgian terriories as an initial theme and a first article expected before Thomass next Africa journey. Lecture requests came from Cambridge with Frank Jacques, as WEA Eastern District, secretary, writing on 13 January to invite Thomas to lecture at a weekend school on Africa at Jesus College in March and to take sessions in a summer school at King's College on the problems of underdeveloped areas. In addition to his regular classes he gave on 8 February a public lecture in Oxford on education and the adult in Africa, was director of studies for a WEA school in North Staffs at the end of the month. Thomas's

mother went down to Cornwall for the last hours of Thomas's aunt Lucy Violet Holdsworth (the "RTY" of his childhood), who died on 6 April. Teddy and many of the family, with Helen Sutherland, gathered for a Quaker thanksgiving service at Budock on 10 April. Thomas did not attend since he was committed to two lectures for a school at Harrishead. Thomas's mother reported to him that the family thought he was right not to have come "as it meant cancelling a duty". Thomas had gained a new reputation in British academic circles, and his work was being noticed in the United States. From the University of California's political science department James Smoot Coleman, whose doctoral dissertation at Harvard was on nationalism in Nigeria, had written on 24 January describing himself as a very avid reader of Thomass articles in West Africa and seeking Thomass advice on sources on political developments in French West Africa. He read Thomas's series published in "West Africa" from January to March of 1954 and wrote to Thomas on 15 April that they answered many questions he was asking himself. It was the first information he had seen in English and he had drawn the series to the attention of Professor Rupert Emerson who was interested in comparative nationalism. Coleman, who was revising for publication a dissertation on nationalism in Nigeria, recalled Thomas's 1951 "West Africa" articles on that subject: "In writing up my own material I was struck by the completeness of your coverage of the essential factors in the nationalist awakening in Nigeria. Thomas had in March 1954 made a round of London embassies and consulates for visas to Belgian and French African territories, Cameroons and Ethiopia. He drew a special foreign exchange allowance on 29 April for a sixth Africa journey to traverse from west to east. He began with a preparatory visit to Brussels in May to identify officials and institutions in the Belgian colonial and mandated territories who might help him in Africa and he went briefly to Paris to refresh his connections with Claude Gerard and her circle of African politicians. He had become a regular contributor to "The Spectator", which entailed a leaning towards contemporary events rather than the historical background that "West Africa" magazine could encompass. Thomas delayed the start of his journey out of concern for Dossie temporarily in poor health. He abandoned the camel ride to ancient cities of Mauritania (mapped out in discussion with Monod) in favour of looking at the second general election campaign in the Gold Coast. The marriage broke up of Dossie's sister Joan to Denis Payne and Dossie was helping her with the responsibilities of five young children of the marriage (just as Dossie and Thomas had helped another of Dossie's sisters Liz when she became a single mother of a boy John Crowfoot). Thomas flew to Niamey and entered northern Gold Coast at Navrongo on 20 May and travelled south. He had supper on 29 May - his last evening in Gold Coast - with Polly Hill, who had from 1951 to 1953 been on the editorial staff of West Africa and since her recent marriage to the Registrar of the West African Examinations Council Kenneth Humphreys was living in Accra. Thomas next day left Accra via Lome to Douala in the Cameroons. He typed his first on-the-spot article for "The Spectator" about Gold Coast sent off so that it could be published just after the first stage of voting due on 10 June. He made the round to which he was becoming accustomed of administration officials, trades unionists and local politicians, including the prosperous contractor Paul Soppo Priso in Douala and Yaounde. He flew on 6 June to Brazzaville and made the boat crossing to Leopoldville in Belgian Congo. When the immigration process required him to state his race he was disconcerted

and asked the immigration officer's help. He was informed his race was "blanche". Thomas encountered what was virtually de facto racial segregation - to which he was unaccustomed although as he toured Leopoldville he noted some barriers being lowered cautiously. Away from the city he was impressed by the argument of a veteran administrator Ren Schillings who feared that mission and other external intervention was permitting the rapid destruction of the beautifully balanced social and moral order that people like the Bakuba built up over hundreds of years.. He took a three-day train journey from Mweka to Elisabethville and in his carriage began for "The Spectator" a piece on "Congo Progress" that mixed travelogue with political analysis. He drew on mining community contacts he had collected in Brussels to conduct iterviews over three days in Elisabethville that tied in with his long-standing interest in social change. He flew on 26 June to Usumbura in Ruanda-Urundi, where the colonial governor's office provided a car with a Congolese soldier driver to take him to a research institute at Astrida through densely populated mountainous countryside. Thomas in a long conversation with a Belgian anthropologist Jan Vansina who was doing field work among the Bakuba discussed the degree to which the Bakuba were resistant to European culture and ways of working. The government car took Thomas to Bukavu. He contemplated going on by road through the Mountains of the Moon to Uganda, but opted for speed's sake to fly to Entebbe on 4 July, while regretting being reduced to taking an aeroplane. The aeroplane was stuck: Thomas was anyway delayed and turned up a day later than announced and made his way to the University College of East Africa at Maker ere. He was on new ground but among familiar faces and on 6 July lunched with the college principal Bernard de Bunsen, a part contemporary at Balliol, and with Lady Cohen, the wife of the British governor Sir Andrew Cohen: she as Helen Stevenson had been Thomas's junior at the Dragon School in Oxford. Thomas found letters from home including one written by Grease Mathew on 11 June as he invigilated in the examination schools at Oxford. Mathew listed upper class Ethiopians who had been at Oxford and had returned to Addis Ababa in the Imperial service, including Michael Imru a grandson of Ras Imru, and other members of the administration who might be more forthcoming. He reported that he had been invited by the General Board to lecture on African Archaeology at the Ashmolean every Michaelmas term.. He saw this as the first step towards the establishment of a centre of African studies in Oxford, with an emphasis on history and sociology not linguistics, that would grant a Diploma in African Studies. The idea was strongly backed by Maurice Bowra. Mathew was on the unofficial committee drawing up plans, with anthropologists Edward EvansPritchard and Godfrey Lienhardt: "I have already insisted that you should be in on the ground floor of it all." Thomas interviewed members of the Ismaili and African communities and dined with Cohen when the conversation was partly about Congo and partly about Uganda: Thomas recognised him as "much more intelligent than most Governors". Thomas was also gathering information on Ugandan nationalism and history. He met the anthropologist Audrey Richards (a former pupil of Malinowski), political historian D.A. Low and sociologist Peter Gutkind, a graduate of the University of Chicago. Thomas's journey was continued on 10 July by train to Nairobi for a flight to Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian Airlines flight was delayed; Thomas was accommodated overnight

by the airlines in the Norfolk Hotel and wrote later to his brother Teddy: "I'd rather be a giraffe than an African in Nairobi." He felt more at ease when he flew to Addis Ababa on 13 July and was met on arrival by a son of Brigadier Daniel Arthur Sandford (the Brigadier and his wife Christine had known Ethiopia since 1920; she had known two of Thomas's maternal aunts at Cambridge). An Ethiopian pilot took him to meet Michael Imru - "entirely Oxford (Exeter, PPE) at the Ministry of Civil Aviation, who in turn led Thomas to other people. Thomas went north to Gondar's mediaeval castles and tea with Ras Asrate Kassa, Governor-General of the Province of Begemder and Semien. He continued to Asmara, in haste since he was tied to lectures in England in early August, and on to Khartoum on 24 July., to Rome for a few hours on 28 July and to Paris where Dossie had gone to lecture in the Grand Salle of Sorbonne about her work on vitamin B12, the structure of which her research team were close to solving. Thomas on return wrote up the last stages of his journey for "The Spectator", but was conscious that he had spent too little time in Sudan to assess current tensions between political factions. Richard Crossman wanted Thomas to speak to a House of Commons sub-committee. He received a fresh round of requests to speak at Barlaston and to a WEA Easter District weekend, took on an Oxford extension course at Ashford for twelve Tuesday sessions on "The crisis in Africa", and on 25 September lectured to a Quaker conference on race relations held at Friends House in London on the topic of "Africa as part of a world problem". Thomas on 30 September began the second year of his introduction to philosophy class at Abingdon. In the first year the class had discussed questions associated with beliefs about moral obligation, with particular reference to the ethical theories of Plato, Spinoza, Hume, Kant and J.S. Mill. The second year was intended to examine beliefs about the external world linked particularly to Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". He began an introduction to philosophy class in Oxford with a similar concern with ethics, but running a year behind the Abingdon class. Thomas in the new year of 1955 continued to accept invitations to speak about Africa. He scaled down his journalism to draft the book that had been in his mind three years earlier as he prepared to leave the delegacy. He had spoken then of a full-length study of West African nationalism. The subsequent travel gave him the confidence to look at the continent more broadly and through the challenges to colonial power from the national movements generated after the Second World War. He was weaving together the threads he had gathered on his journeys and convinced that African political institutions should be studied for their intrinsic interest in the same way as British, French or American institutions were studied. By the beinning of April and before Thomas's Abingdon class closed for the year on 28 April Thomas had completed a draft of the book on nationalism. He carried on in May with supporting material and revisions. In June he was contemplating a visit to Sudan and secured a visa, but could not fit this in. Dossie went to Brussels at the beginning of August to give a more definitive report on the structure of B12. The family accompanied her: Thomas had a meeting at the Belgian Colonial Ministry and they all visited Tervuren and Louvain. The Institut de Sociologie Solvay was planning an international conference in Brussels for the following January on indigenous economic development in the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. Professor Jean Ghilain on 10 August wrote inviting Thomas as a participant and Thomas at once accepted the invitation. He was also keeping up Middle East connections and on 29 August in London saw the Palestinian Musa Alami and Lebanese Edward Atiyah.

Thomas lectured on 25 September on African nationalism to a national weekend school held in Oxford for dock workers. He was giving another Oxford extension course on "The crisis in Africa" from 27 September, for ten sessions this time and delivered at Lewes in Sussex. He began on 28 September the second year of his philosophy class in Oxford looking at the meaning of "Minds; Things; Causes; Beliefs; Gods". He began next day the third year of his philosophy class at Abingdon. The third year content had been left intentionally vague in the original syllabus. Thomas now proposed to spend the teaching year considering contemporary philosophy, particularly conflicting points of view of differing schools of thought (Bertrand Russell, Alfred Ayer, Marx and neoThomism). By late October Thomas was reading proofs of the nationalism book and seeking comment from selected colleagues. He had a sympathetic response on 31 October from Kenneth Little at Edinburgh University, whose advice he had been taking since the early 1950s. Thomas had been discussing with Little a project for a further historical study of African lites but this would be contingent on institutional funding. He was turning his mind to yet another project :a long essay on West African political parties, promised for a Penguin West African Series edited by David Kimble and Helen Kimble. Helen, writing from the University College in the Gold Coast on 2 November, confirmed that the book was expected by April of 1956: Allen Lane was pleased with the early progress of the regional series in West Africa and had agreed that it should be transformed into an African series. Helen suggested that Thomas might feel able and willing to extend hisa essay on political parties to cover Africa as a whole. Despite lecturing three nights in a row over many weeks Thomas continued the weekend additional talks. After a Lewes session on 6 December took a night train to Hull to give a talk on Africa to a student group. Thomas had no African travel in that 1955 year but had begun to plan out a journey to follow the swathe of Moslem influence in the north of the continent that he could roll over to the following year. He wrote on 24 December to Roger Robin at the Office du Maroc that he would be in Paris in the new year and seeking appointments with specialists on Islam in black Africa (Robin replied that they were sadly few). Thomas spent the new year of 1956 with Dossie's parents at Geldeston in a house "swarming" with Hodgkin and Payne children. He was doing a final check on proofs for the nationalism book in a scramble to return them before going to France and Belgium. He spent the night of 3 January in London with Teddy. Teddy drove him early on 4 January to Fleet Street to leave the corrected proofs at Frederick Muller's and on to Victoria just in time for a boat train. Thomas was also completing a note for "West Africa" on French elections and left this with a friendly porter to post. He was one of the last passengers to board. The few days in Paris were crammed, including a talk with Senghor, in his French government ministerial office, and a family Sunday lunch on 8 January at the home of Alioune Diop. Thomas found it difficult to tear himself away and just caught an afternoon train to Brussels for the conference on Belgian Africa, where his invitation ran from 8 January to 13 January. He renewed acquaintances there and went also to Louvain, but had to leave Brussels early on 12 January to be back in time for his Abingdon philosophy class that evening. Morocco was much in his mind: he secured a Moroccan visa in mid-February and gathered recommendations from Basil Davidson about journalist contacts and from

Norman Bentwich about leaders of the Jewish community in Morocco. The secretary of the Fabian Colonial Bureau Hilda Selwyn-Clarke after seeing an uncorrected proof of Nationalism in Colonial Africa as a review copy wrote to Thomas on 1 March that her editorial committee would be keen to have in addition to their review in Venture an article by Thomas on the theme. Thomas, as his book continued through the production process, was thinking about new subjects and beginning the essay on political parties for Penguin. In March he sent his mother the first draft section and asked her to type four copies that he could send round to people for comment. When the round of tutorial classes closed at the end of March Thomas was able to go on a three-week family holiday to Greece from early April. The Hodgkins stayed with Dossie's cousin Sinclair Hood at the British School of Archaeology in Athens (where Thomas's paternal aunt Nelly Bosanquet had lived as a new bride) and moved on to other parts of Greece. Thomas was retreading much of the ground he had traversed with undergraduate friends in 1929. Hood drove the family to Mycenae and they stopped for lunch at the Belle Helene inn. Thomas found the same proprietor as before, who dug out the 1929 visitors' book with the signatures of Thomas and his travelling companions Bickham Sweet Escott, George White and Geoffrey Cross. In London in early May he collected fresh visas for French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. He had added the "Daily Herald" to the existing string of "West Africa", "The Spectator" and "Manchester Guardian". By the end of April Thomas was far from completing the Penguin book and in May he secured from the editors an understanding that he could delay delivery until later in the year on the grounds that his extensive African tour of mid-1956 would allow him to gather more material. Helen and David Kimble preferred a continental rather than a regional account and for the broader treatment could wait until the end of 1956. Thomas began his seventh African journey across Islamic Africa with two crowded days in Paris in mid-May. He saw Virginia Vernon and Roger Robin, Basil Davidson's journalist friends from "France-Observateur" Roger Paret and his wife Eve Dechamp, officials at the French Overseas Ministry and the "Manchester Guardian" correspondent Darsie Gillie. He visited Alioune Diop at the offices of "Prsence Africaine" and went on to a lecture on black poetry organised by Diop where he was introduced to Aim Csaire, the West Indian Communist poet and deputy whose "Discours sur La Colonialisme" Thomas had recently been reading. Thomas left Paris on 18 May: he sat and talked with Claude Gerard in a cafe and was seen off by her from on a night train from the Gare Austerlitz to Bordeaux. She had just spent a fortnight with the Algerian maquis and was going to risk arrest by writing sympathetically about the Algerian anti-colonial struggle. He went by ship from Bordeaux to Casablanca and then by train to Rabat. He chose third class for economy, only to find soft seats and that there was a fourth class with wooden seats where the masses travelled. His third class travelling companions included two soldiers in the new uniforms of the Royal Moroccan Army for a country whose independence under Sultan Mohammed ben Youssef had been declared on 2 March. Thomas on arrival in Rabat on 22 May he felt he had struck lucky by checking into the Hotel Monplaisir, chosen from the lowest and cheapest category of hotel in the guide, but opposite the spectacular tower of a ruined twelfth century mosque. The French family hotel was close to the British Consulate but not calculated to impress the British Consul-

General Harold Freese-Pennefather whom Thomas found uncongenial (though he was a Balliol graduate slightly senior to Thomas and a friend of Gervase Mathew). Thomas had neglected the advice from Mathew not to appear as a doubtful journalist nosing about in current politics, but as a scholarly ex-fellow of Balliol with good connections and archaeological interests engaged in serious research. His presence also aroused interest from a series of French detectives keen to know from hotel staff what telephone numbers he called. He found the editor Claude Gerard had recommended - Zhidi Zhour of "Al Alam who gave Thomas further introductions. Thomas, identifying Istiqlal (the "independence" party) as the most powerful political force in the country, went twice to see the acting general secretary Mehdi Ben Barka who recounted the local cell structure that allowed the party to survive when it was illegal. He continued on 26 May by train, crowded with French soldiers for the Algerian war, to Fez to an even cheaper entirely Moroccan Hotel Boujlond in the Medina to which he was directed by a young antiquities dealer Laroussi Othman, he had met on the boat from France. Thomas was pursuing an interest in the Islamic sects and brotherhoods - and in the ancient university of Qairawiyin that seemed to him rather like Oxford in the Middle Ages with theology as the queen of sciences. He was also treading in the path of a journey made by his great-great uncle the medical doctor Thomas Hodgkin, who identified and gave his name to Hodgkin's disease. Thomas on 4 June spent a day in Agadir with David Corkos whose great-grandfather Abraham Corkos had entertained "Uncle Doctor" at Mogador. Thomas was running behind schedule and passed up a possibility of going to the Spanish territory of Cisneros in favour of taking a boat on 12 June to Las Palmas en route to Dakar and the IFAN research resources and hospitality (though he was chagrined to find that through his late arrival family letters had been sent back to Oxford). His primary goal at this stage was historic Mauritania with its religious centres, but the history spilled into contemporary political issues. Thomas in conversation at Boutilimit with Sheikh Abdullahi ould Sheikh Sydia, an influential religious figure, was reminded that the Moors had in the Almoravid past ruled Morocco. Sheikh Abdullahi said that Moors would not now be ruled by Moroccans, as Istiqlal seemed to want. Thomas went on from Boutilimit with a fifteen-hour lorry ride to Rosso and the subsequent long train journey from Dakar to Bamako: familiar faces in the hotel and encounters with historians Marcel Cardaire and Amadou Hampat B at the end of June. Thomas had more than a year before conceived this journey as an investigation into transSaharan communications including the movement of ideas between North and West Africa. He intended to travel as far as possible along the Hajj route in his own case only as far as the Sudan. He left Bamako on 29 June by bus and went south to the Voltaic town of Bobo-Dioulasso where he thought he would be stuck for days and was rescued by the fortunate chance of a seat on a special pilgrim flight that took him to Niamey (next stop Mecca). From Niamey he chanced upon a lorry bound for Borni-NKami on the road to Sokoto. He reached Kano in Nigeria on 3 July and left through Maiduguri on 15 July to Fort Lamy (his brief presence again aroused the interest of a French detective). He went on by air to Khartoum, arriving early on 16 July and finding government offices about to close for several days of the great festival of sacrifice for Ramadan. Khartoum was familiar territory and he called at the university office of academic friends. Sa'ad-eddin Fawzi, newly appointed as economics professor, had a copy of Thomas's book

"Nationalism in Colonial Africa" published by Frederick Muller and brought in by air from London by another friend - the first time Thomas had seen his new book in final print form. They found Jamal Mohammed Ahmed with yet another friend considering whether to accept the ambassadorship to Ethiopia he had been offered. Sa'ad and Jamal put Thomas up in a university guest house and swiftly mobilised for him to spend one out of his two weeks in Sudan on a journey to the south where an army mutiny in August 1955 had troubled the transition to independence on 1 January 1956. The "Manchester Guardian" was particularly keen for something from Thomas about the south. Among the letters for Thomas sent on to Jamal's house was a request for him to take on an Oxford delegacy tutorial class in philosophy at Wantage in the coming round. Thomas had planned to look at Sudanese-African and Egyptian-African relations, but he was running out of the time he could allow himself away from family obligations. He spent a crammed week of interviews in the south, flew back to Khartoum on 28 July, to Cairo on 1 August and left on 4 August homeward bound. He returned to a fresh crop of requests for speaking and lecturing engagements and to generally favourable reviews of the book on nationalism. He was pleased by a notice in The Times Literary Supplement of 17 August describing him as one of the few British students of Africa well versed in non-British African territories and judging the work as a balanced and scholarly book, which regards nationalism as an inevitable growth from the new African society, with common characteristics from Kumasi to Cape Town. He spent time with his mother and with Dossie's parents, but was already preparing for future work on Africa. He broadened his broadcasting outlets with the BBC domestic and external services, partly on the coat tails of connections that his brother Teddy had already made through his comparable international interets. The BBC Arabic service on 27 August asked him to write a talk on observations of Morocco that could be translated and broadcast in Arabic. He was approached on 5 September for a contribution to a Home Service schools geography broadcast to lead to an October rehearsal and recording date on Ethiopia as Africas oldest kingdom (for transmission on 8 November and a fee of twenty guineas plus fares about four times the going rate for a lecture). He was asked for a piece on nationalism by Carey McWilliams, edtior of the Nation in New York ast the suggestion of an academic Julius Lewin in South Africa who was writring reviews of Thomass book for the liberal and progressive press in South Africa. Thomas wrote up his travels for the newspapers and journals, including a nine-part series on "Islam and politics in West Africa" that was published in "West Africa" magazine from 15 September. The West African Newspapers group were giving financial assistance to a series of West African history books under the general editorship of Gerald Graham, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at the University of London. Thomas under the guidance of George Wigg and David Williams had taken the initial steps for a book in this series. He put on hold his essay on political parties and was beginning to gather elements for an anthology of Nigerian history from the ninth century on. He and Dossie were considering moving from the Powder Hill house in the woodlands of Boar's Hill back into the city where an extended family (including Dossies sister Joan Payne whose marriage had ended and left her responsible for the upbriging of five children) might be accommodated in 94 Woodstock Road, a Victorian house in north Oxford.

Thomas, before plunging into the Wantage class and a syllabus refined from his experience of similar classes in Abingdon and Oxford, had one more brief overseas journey to make. Alioune Diop sent from Prsence Africaine in Paris the appeal made to black writers and artists to attend the first Congress of Scholars of the Negro World to be held in :Paris from 19 September to 22 September. The score of signatories included several of the people whom Thomas had met in nearly a decade of close involvement in Africa: including the Gold Coast painter Kofi Antubam, sociologist Kofi Busia, from Martinique Aim Csaire, the Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu ((who had studied under Kenneth Murray at the Government College, Umuahia, and was introduced to the Hodgkin circle after he travelled to England in 1944 to study art), Leopold Senghor. The US signatories were largely new to him and included the musician Louis Armstrong and novelist Richard Wright. Thomas on 19 September made another channel crossing to attend the Congress. He saw it as a dialectic, with the mystical-metaphysical thesis of Senghor, contradicted by the liberal-rationalist antithesis of Wright, generating the Marxist synthesis of Csaire. A countryman of Csaire, the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon was nominally in the Martinique delegation but since 1953 had been a French government appointee as medical director of the psychiatric hospital at Blida-Joinville in Algeria. His experiences were drawing him closer to the Algerian revolt against French colonialism in late 1954 that soon became a war. Fanon on 20 September spoke to the conference on reciprocal action between racism and culture, with coded references to Algeria (and Thomass notebook jottings included Fanons view that the aimof a colonial system is a perpetual agony rather than a total destruction of traditional culture). Thomas returned to Oxford to his teaching and journalism. The nationalism book was having a ripple effect. Sir Stephen King-Hall, chairman of the the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, read Thomass book and wrote to Thomas through the publisher on 22 October about its outstanding value and importance. He hoped Thomas would write for the societys journal and could meet to discuss the idea. Thomas had more mundane concerns. A keen member of his Wantage class was the aristocratic Penelope Betjeman, the daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode now describing herself as a specialist in table breeds of ducks and geese - and married to the poet John Betjeman. She was enthralled by lectures on Plato but perturbed by a straight jump to Spinoza in the syllabus. In late November Thomas was undecided whether to take the Woodstock Road house: his mother sent him a gift of a thousand pounds towards the cost. Recognition came too from the United States. David Apter, the American researcher whom Thomas had met by chance in Oxford in 1952 and invited home to lunch at Powder Hill, had moved on from field work in Gold Coast to Evanston, Illinois. Apter was a junior member of the team teaching African studies at Northwestern University. This African studies programme was formalised by the anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits in 1948 as the first of its kind in the US. Apter believed that Thomas, who spoke French, read Arabic and had a range of knowledge of Africa not common in the US, should be brought to Evanston. He was asked in November to compile a shortlist of people qualified to take temporary teaching posts in political science for one or two quarters in the African studies programme. Apter wrote from Northwestern on 28 November with an informal inquiry whether he might put

Thomas in as his strongest candidate for the autumn and winter quarters of the next academic cycle. Apter discussed the possible invitation with Herskovits who wanted to meet Thomas. Apter then wrote on 11 December that there would be a chance for such a meeting when Herskovits would be in London for the last week of December en route to an Africa tour. Thomas on 18 December wrote from Powder Hill to Herskovits: "I would be glad to come and see you in London, and could manage almost any day though perhaps Christmas itself ought to be reserved to the family." They did meet. Meanwhile Thomas's breadth of knowledge was being recognised in a variety of forms. After the "Manchester Guardian" published his articles in December the newspaper received an appreciative letter from a reader: "Your reporting on the Islamic world is far above that of any other British paper." The Anti-Slavery Society wanted to send Thomas to Africa to investigate allegations of slavery. Penelope Betjeman wanted to put a bushel of good cooking apples in Thomas's car for the Hodgkin family to enjoy apple pie during the Christmas holidays. On the last day of 1956 Reynolds wrote from Frederick Muller that the New York University Press had agreed to publish a United States edition of Nationalism in Colonial Africa. Chapter 17 A marvellous year When Thomas and Melville Herskovits met in Oxford just before the new year of 1957 they discussed the possibility of Thomas teaching for a semester at Northwestern with an understanding that Thomass past membership of the Communist Party might cause visa difficulties. Herskovits was reassured that the affiliation was indeed in the past and became keen to follow Apters endorsement of Thomass unusual qualities. Thomas continued the pattern of writing, speaking and travelling that he had followed since leaving the extramural delegacy in 1952. He spoke on 2 January 1957 about political trends in French West Africa to a Christmas vacation short course held by the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was approached on 4 January by Henry Cawthorne of the City of Stoke-on-Trent Education Department to give a talk to Shrewsbury Schools Forum Society of which Cawthornes son Hugh was president. He was commissioned by Geoffrey de Freitas MP to write a paper on political parties in West Africa for the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Governments conference to be held in Oxford in the autumn the Society asked Thomass advice on other contributors. He agreed to speak on 6 February on nationalism in Moslem Africa south of the Sahara to Cambridge Universitys Bandung Society. The Hodgkin and Payne families (three adults and eight children) and their helpers moved formally into 94 Woodstock Road in the days from 14 to 16 January. David Apter wrote on 14 January from Evanston with a progress report on the Hodgkin and Herskovits encounter. Apter had submitted Thomass name to the Northwesterns department of political science for an initial decision, the advisory committee of the program of African studies would have to approve (Herskovits as director would ensure that outcome) and then a formal approval must come from Northwestern University. Apter would himself be going to the nearby University of Chicago in the next academic year but he and his wife Ellie would continue to live on hand in Evanston. From France the journal Esprit, identified with the Catholic left, was planning a special issue on black Africa with guidance from Balandier. The editors impressed with

Thomass book approached through the publishers and on 15 January asked for a piece on the Gold Coast background. From the United States, the editor of the monthly magazine Current History Carol Thompson (at the suggestion of another editor, Keith Irvine, of Africa Weekly in New York) wrote on 21 January asking Thomas to wrote on Islam and sub-Saharan Africa for a June special issue on the world of Islam. The Northwestern proposal was moving forward and from the political science department William Bascom sent on 21 January an official invitation to spend the Fall Quarter of 1957-58 at the University, teaching in the Department of Political Science under the auspices of the Program of African Studies. This would cover the period from about 15 September to about 19 December and build on interest among the graduate students in the African field begun by David Apter and Roland Young. Thomas was asked to teach a post-graduate course number D-52 entitled Authority Systems of Africa. previously taught by Apter. The university prospectus described the course: Examination of various African authority systems, both traditional and secular. Special reading will be presented for students with a limited knowledge of African culture. Two two-hour meetings a week with graduate students were expected and the pay would be three thousand dollars. Thomas wrote from his new address in Oxford on 31 January accepting an offer he regarded as generous: I very much look forward to the opportunity of working with you and Professor Herskovits, and contributing what I can in the field of African studies and, even more, of learning from you. Bascom replied on 5 February asking if Thomas in addition to teaching the post-graduate course would be willing to give half a dozen lectures that would be open to all faculty and students interested in Africa. Thomas was embroiled in the preparations for his eighth journey to Africa to complement his journey in May to July of 1956 when he studied communications and links across the Sahara and Moslem Africa in particular. He planned now to look further at trans-Saharan links and influence but along the Tunisia-Tripolitania axis, to see the Fezzan in Libya and possibly to continue into northern Nigeria. He had invoked Teddy Hodgkins connections to the diplomatic corps in London. Thomas through Teddy arranged to meet the Tunisian ambassador in London Taieb Slim on Thomass return from the speaking engagement in Cambridge. Thomas, with several articles and two books on the stocks, decided to give up the project for a study of African lites that he had been considering with Kenneth Little and wrote on 10 February of his decision to pursue existing commitments. Thomas back in Oxford was tidying papers after the move to Woodstock Road and came across a letter from Taieb Slim written to him in Paris on 17 July 1939 after a meeting there that Thomas had forgotten in the interim. Slim, who had been explaining Arab aspirations, had been trying to bring Thomas together with nationalist supporters of the Parti Populaire Algrien founded in March 1937 by Messali Hadj. He wrote on 21 February to Slim reminding him of their pre-war encounter. He wrote on the same day to Bascom to agree to give six public lectures at Northwestern. He proposed to draw on work he was already doing towards the book on African political parties, with a lecture each on the Gold Coast, Nigeria, French West Africa, the Sudan and Morocco, and a final lecture of summing-up and discussion of tentative conclusions. When the Fabian International Bureau on 25 February requested a pamphlet of some twelve thousand words on Moslem influence in Black Africa with no payment Thomas felt obliged to decline.

With the independence of Gold Coast as Ghana due on 6 March Thomas was in demand to write on this topic. He provided a guest editorial on Ghana in the African setting for United Asia with the caveat that in the contemporary world no State is genuinely independent, that a small ex-colonial State in a corner of West Africa is in no position to make a big splash. He predicted that Ghanas struggle for a wider African independence is likely to prove a great deal more difficult and painful than the struggle for Gold Coast independence. The publishing house Thomas Nelson on the day of independence published the prime ministers Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah. Thomas, reviewed the title for the Ruskin College magazine New Epoch commented: It would neither worry nor surprise me if Ghana, or any other independent African state, were to evolve a form of democracy quite unlike the forms existing in the West. The prospect of a oneparty State does not make my flesh creep. He was worried whether Nkrumah had retained intact the critical and analytical powers that enabled him to build the Convention Peoples Party. He had responded to a request from Janet Adam Smith for a review of the Nkrumah autobiography for the New Statesman and Nation Thomass own book continued to attract attention. A new socialist journal Universities & Left Review was launched in the spring of 1957 under four editors with Oxford connections: Stuart Hall, Gabriel Pearson, Ralph Samuel and Charles Taylor. One of the cover lines pointed to a review by Basil Davidson of Nationalism in Colonial Africa, where Davidson commented that nationalism in contemporary Africa is a liberating idea primarily because it is an organising idea. Thomas, invited by sociologist John Rex for the West Riding Council for African Affairs, was in Leeds on 5 March explaining why rejoicing should accompany the independence of Ghana, an event he saw as an enlargement of human liberty. He recognised that there were risks, drawing a comparison with the legend of Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, but believed the price was worth paying. Thomas spent much of 6 March in London: he lunched with De Freitas to discuss the Hansard conference and called at the US Embassy to discuss his Northwestern invitation with Peter Rutter, the foreign service officer concerned with African and colonial affairs. Thomas was advised that he would qualify as an exchange visitor to the US and wrote next day to the visa section to apply for an American visa, to cover the actual period of his assignment at Northwestern University and for a further month to visit other universities concerned with African studies. He was working on journal articles and was in London again on 20 March to respond to invitations to the Libyan and Tunisian Embassies. Dossie was staying at Geldeston where her mother slipped into a peaceful death during the afternoon. Thomass departure for Africa was drawing close and he had no affirmative response on his US visa application but a probe into his Communist background. He wrote to Apter of his concerns and Apter mobilised university support. The chairman of the political science department George Blanksten, acting on the advice of a member of the universitys legal department, wrote on 6 May to Margaret McClellan in the visa section of the US Embassy in London: Mr. Hodgkin is one of the most distinguished and knowledgeable scholars of African studies in the English speaking world. He has been actively engaged in writing and research in Africa for several years, and in particular is a top authority on French Africa. . His former political affiliation with the Communist Party has never been a secret. Neither has his departure from the Communist camp. Like many British intellectuals he was attracted to Communism for a time. Judging from his

writing and the knowledge of many people who are acquainted with him, he is far too much of an individualist to submit himself to Communist dogma. He is a Quaker, of a highly respected Quaker family. He stressed that the university unhesitating endorsed the applicant as a good visa risk and that this instance would be an example to Great Britain and to British Africanists that academic and intellectual freedom in the United States is a vital and stirring part of the American democratic heritage. Thomas on the day of departure for Africa sent on 18 May his own dossier to Margaret McClellan: he gave as references from Britain three respected figures Archbishop David Mathew, Sir Maurice Powicke, late Regius Professor of History in the Oxford University, and Professor Asa Briggs in the department of history at Leeds University. In response to a request for a brief note in his former membership of the Communist Party, he wrote: I joined the British Communist Party in the autumn of 1936, on my return to England after resigning from the Palestine Civil Service. I joined this party because I strongly disapproved of the inhuman relationship existing between the British and the people of Palestine and because I believed that, of all political organisations, it was most capable of transforming this relationship into a human one. Indeed, it seemed to be the only effective political organisation through which Arabs, Jews, and British could work together, on the basis of common understanding and sympathy, for the ending of colonial rule and the enlargement of political liberty. When, from 1939 on, I became absorbed in adult education, first as an extra-mural tutor, and later as a university administrator, I ceased in practice to have an active connection with the Communist Party, although I did not finally give up my membership of the party until the summer of 1949. My principal reason for formally withdrawing at this date was a desire to be entirely free to pursue my work as a teacher, and the African studies to which I was then beginning to turn, without any external obligation or commitments, real or apparent. Thomas with a new typewriter in his luggage flew from Lympne in Kent to Beauvais in France and went on to Paris where he renewed contact with friends including Claude Grard, Virginia Vernon and Georges Balandier. He was entertained to lunch on 20 May by a friend of Alioune Diop, Marguerite Marteau whom he had met at Prsence Africaine events. She wanted to send her teenage son Pierre on a visit to an English family and Thomas suggested that he should stay at 94 Woodstock Road since he was of an age with Luke. Thomas spent an evening with an intellectual leftist Andr Raymond who had been recommended by Kenneth Robinson as a good historian who had done his doctorate at St Antonys; Raymond suggested Tunisian personalities for Thomas to meet and shared ideas on the political situation. One of Claudes helpers led Thomas to another contact whose brother-in-law Andr Dechezelles was president of the court in Tunis and she provided also a letter of introduction to the president of the National Assembly. These pointers supplemented those already given by Taieb Slim, Kenneth Robinson and Teddy Hodgkin. Thomas took a night train to Marseilles and embarked for Tunis with twenty six useful names in his notebook, and disembarked in Tunis on 22 May. Thomas followed the advice of Tunisian passengers on the boat to avoid the porters on arrival since they might oblige him to ransom his luggage. An elderly half-blind man pursued Thomas into a taxi and refused to leave. Thomas looked in his pockets for a coin, but failed to find one, whereupon the beggar pinched a book from Thomass coat pocket

(John Duncans The Sudan Path to Independence he was carrying to review for West Africa). Thomas stepped out from the taxi, recovered from the inside of the book a letter to his mother and handed back the book with compliments a gesture well received by the watching crowd. Thomas recounted the incident in a letter to Dossie explaining that he had not yet done the review but had read the book. Thomas was allowing himself about a week to build up a picture of the Neo-Destour party whose founder Habib Bourguiba had taken Tunisia to independence in 1956. Thomas worked along his contact list and in the corridors of the Ministry of Information he bumped into Cecil Hourani from Manchester to whom he had given advice in 1939 as Hourani prepared to travel in Palestine and Syria. Hourani was moving from academic pursuits into an advisory role to Bourguiba. Thomas on 27 May attended a special session of the constituent assembly where Bourguiba spoke about French financial pressures on Tunisia. Hourani had come with Bourguiba and took Thomas off in the American ambassadors car to an unexpected dinner in Carthage where the guests included the American ambassador, a Spanish diplomat and Tunisias chief of police. Thomas on 30 May went to visit Bourguiba at his home at Saida and wrote up their discussion in an article for the New Statesman under the title The illusion of grandeur where the illusion was Bourguibas sense that the French suffered from the desire to be great to compensate for the humiliation of German occupation in the second world war. Bourguiba told Thomas that Nkrumah and he shared the idea of African liberation on a basis of friendship with the West: they were planning to hold in Accra in the following year a conference of independent states of Africa to ease the transition from colonialism in other African territories and to keep Africa aligned with the West. Bourguiba saw repressive French policy in Algeria as the great obstacle to such cooperation with the West. Thomas travelled on by bus through Ben Gardane into Libya on 4 June and to Tripoli where he had a relatively thin list of contacts to make. He conducted interviews on the Libyan monarchical and parliamentary political system, but was eager to be away from towns and left on 12 June as a car passenger for a venture into the Sahara to Sebha, Murzuq and Ghat to probe the historic links of the Fezzan with the Maghreb and Egypt in one direction and the western Sudan in the other. He was contemplating returning to Britain by the end of the first week of July. He hoped to reunite with Dossie before she went to an international crystallography conference at Montreal and then to be with her in Paris around the time of what he saw as their twentieth anniversary dating from the time they became lovers. He doubted if his own semester in the United States would occur because of the question mark over his visa. Thomas was consciously following in the footsteps of such 19th century travellers as Captain George Francis Lyon and Major Dixon Denham but found the caravan cities in a somewhat dying condition with little current trade. But he felt comfortable with the Libyan officials and rambling conversations over the customary three successive small glasses of tea. Thomas returned from Ghat to Sebha at the end of June. His typewriter had been battered in the journey and would not function: he had kept it in his baggage rather than on his knee since his knees were encumbered with other items including London Library books. Thomass thought of making a swift return to Oxford was forestalled when in Sebha he met someone from the Algerian Front de Libration Nationale (FLN), a political front

that emerged in 1954 and directed an armed revolution in the interior of Algeria through an Arme de la Libration Nationale (ANA). Thomass first interlocutor urged him to take an opportunity to meet the Algerian Army of Liberation in the interior. Thomas was referred to FLN supporters in Tripoli and referred again to the FLN representation in Tunis. Thomas returned to Tunisia on 4 July and deferred his onward journey to Britain to mid-July, while remaining cautious about the reasons he gave to his family in a telephone call and letters. He had a foot in two worlds: on 6 July he was invited by the British Ambassador to a lunch for African, Indian and other Commonwealth delegates to an international trade union congress in Tunis (the Old Etonian Ambassador Angus Malcolm a grandson of actress Lily Langtry - had played Montano in the OUDS 1929 production of Othello, for which Thomas was assistant stage manager and in the role of Third Gentleman). At the FLN representation Thomas was vetted by a French Algerian teacher and passed muster to hold a long conversation about the Algerian situation with Frantz Fanon. Since the Paris congress of writers Fanon had resigned from French government service, been barred from Algeria and had made his way to Tunis in January 1957. Fanon continued to work as a psychiatrist but by May his identification with the FLN was becoming overt. The corpses of some three hundred villagers of fighting age were found at Mechta-Kasba near Melouza in southern Kabylia and on 31 May the French authorities in Algeria denounced this as a massacre blamed on the FLN. Algerian nationalists called for an inquiry they believed would point to the French fabricating colonial propaganda. Fanon appeared at a press conference in Tunis for the FLN with a view that the Melouza massacre was stage-managed by the French (although even the left in France was unconvinced and saw the corpses as victims of rivalries within Algerian nationalist tendencies). Thomas only a month later needed to make or sustain a political rapport with Fanon to be allowed into the interior maquis. He again passed muster and arrangements were made for Thomas to pay a clandestine visit to the Algerian Army of Liberations 2nd Battalion, Eastern Command. He was offered a visit of several weeks, but could give only several days. Thomas wrote from Tunis on 7 July to his mother saying only that he would be spending a few days longer in this neighbourhood. At regimental headquarters he was asked if he would like to see a battle, but declined (the commander of the battalion he was visiting was instructed to avoid attacking the French while Thomas was his guest). Thomas had to don Algerian battledress before going into the hills. He crossed the frontier from Tunisia to Algeria in military gear with further disguise as a Tunisian peasant - the ostensible effect of burnous and kefia was undermined by his wearing of conspicuously English shoes (in his absence the FLN cleaned and pressed his own clothes). Thomas reached the battalion late at night after a three hour ride on mountain paths. His principal host was Captain Abderrahmane Bensalem, an Algerian-born former sergeant-major in the French army and service in Tunis, Italy, Germany and Indochina, who had deserted with his unit and their equipment in March of the year before . Thomas stayed at battalion headquarters in an oak forest in the mountains: he slept in a brushwood hut on a vast communal bed, and visited individual companies within the battalion and talked to supporters from the villages who came into camp with food and information.

Thomas spent only four days with the fighters but he came away impressed at an organised and efficient uniformed force with strong political consciousness and moved by the character of people engaged in a revolutionary mountain wars. The goal seemed to be a secular liberal independent Algeria. Thomas returned via Tunis and another long conversation with Fanon, and he left on 15 July on a flight to the Paris Orly airport, fearful of arrest by the French. As a passenger in direct transit he was not checked by the French control and after a brief pause in transit he felt deep relief to be in the air on the next leg to London airport where he was met by Joan Payne, the three Hodgkin children and Pierre Marteau visiting from (Dossie was still in Canada). Thomas had been welcomed by Captain Bensalem as the first English guest of the liberation army and whether this was justified or not the Algerian expedition was a news story of greater impact than usual for Thomass journalism. He prepared to spread the story more widely than usual, but first Thomass scholarly side asserted itself as he plunged on return into the second conference on African history (a sequel to 1953 event held by Fage and Oliver), where Gervase Mathew pushed him to the fore on various working groups and he found many of those who had become friends particularly during his African travels: including Lawrence, Mauny, Vansina and Teixeira da Mota. Thomas slipped away from the discussions on 17 July since through George Wigg he had secured an appointment to make the Algerian nationalist case to Aneurin Bevan a Labour MP in opposition, but the British politician of whom the Algerians had seemed to think most highly. At the history conference Daryll Forde was particularly friendly and on 18 July after the close invited Thomas his home to meet some of the European and African participants, where Thomas talked particularly to the Nigerian historian Saburi Biobaku, to the British anthropologist Mary Tew Douglas and to Kenneth Robinson who had given Thomas many of his leads into Francophone Africa. Robinson was about to move from Nuffield College and his post as Reader in Commonwealth Government at Oxford to become director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London: he told Thomas there was already an almost certain favourite for the Oxford readership. Thomass article in the Current History on Muslims South of the Sahara was an introductory overview based largely on secondary sources. The lead article on Islam in the Modern World was written by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a Canadian specialist who had lived in Lahore and was now professor of comparative religion and director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill. Cantwell Smith had seen Thomass writings in the Manchester Guardian and heard a rumour that Thomas might be spending a term at Northwestern. He wrote on 17 July asking if Thomas might come to Montreal on his way to or from the US, in which case he would like to invited Thomas to visit the Institute and to give a lecture on African Islam or some aspct of it. He hoped to make Thomass acquaintance when he himself was next in the UK. Thomas went to Shrewsbury School for a speaking engagement on 21 July that had been sought in the previous January, stayed overnight and took an early morning train to Oxford to be in time to accompany Luke to London for his departure on 22 July to eastern Europe and to Moscow where he and a fellow Etonian Perry Anderson were in the British delegation to the World Youth Festival. Thomas went on to Geldeston on 23 July for a two-night visit to his recently bereaved father-in-law John Crowfoot. He was turning his attention to the newspaper articles he wanted to write on Algeria for the

Manchester Guardian and unusually and apprehensively for the Daily Herald through an intervention by Basil Davidson, and these tasks competed with domestic duties. David Willams whom Thomas saw briefly in London on 25 July endorsed Thomass reluctance to go to France as Algeria pieces were appearing. Thomas abandoned his hope of joining Dossie in Paris where she had gone from Montreal. Thomas was helping with the cooking for the truncated household (several of the children were away: some of the Paynes on a visit to Geldeston and Thomass mother took Elizabeth and Toby to a Smith family party on 26 July) but for supper that day Joan Payne and her daughter Sue were joined by Pierre Marteau and by Anna Davin and her pen friend from France Claire Barraud. Anna was a daughter of a New Zealand writer Dan Davin, formerly a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol and now a publisher at the Clarendon Press in Oxford. She was attending the Oxford High School and had through knowing Nikkie Payne at school come into the ambiance of 94 Woodstock Road and was increasingly Lukes companion. Thomas had no news of the outcome of his US visa application and wrote on 30 July to Herskovits about the Montreal invitation and wondering whether the time had come for Herskovits to exercise further pressure on the authorities. The Daily Herald published Thomass Algeria article on 31 July as a prominent news feature at the top of an inside page, and in the layout underlined one paragraph: I heard and saw much of French cruelty. One of the last people I met had been nailed by his hands, heels and back to a board half crucified in fact. He showed me the wounds, not yet healed. This was a reference to Shabi Ahmed Ben Rabah, an Algerian whom Thomas had met as a refugee in Tunisia. A correspondent in Paris Henry Kahn filed a report published on 7 August under a headline Crucifixion report shocks France and quoted an unnamed Quai dOrsay official as sceptical of aspects of what he had read in Thomass piece: Thomas defended his original report. The Manchester Guardian Weekly of 8 August carried a mores substantial and detailed report from Thomas on Rebel army in Algeria and this tone was sustained in a broadcast script by Thomas for the BBC on 16 August. Thomass appeal to Herskovits had been forwarded to him in Africa and he responded on 13 August by sending a memorandum to his colleagues at Northwestern with detailed steps to support the application and to seek the backing of the National Academy of Sciences: And all concerned should get going fast. He would be going to London later in the month and was willing to intervene with the US Embassy. In the flurry of telephone calls, letters and cables the US Consul in London replied by letter to Northwestern on 22 August that Hodgkins former membership in the Communist Party had rendered him ineligible to receive a visa and excludable from the United States under existing United States immigration laws. His case had been submitted to Washington for consideration by the Attorney General for a temporary waiver of the grounds of inadmissibility. The Embassy had not received notification of the Attorney Generals decision, but this would be notified to Thomas Hodgkin as soon as a reply came from Washington. Northwesterns vice-president Payson Wild received the letter on 26 August and sent on the information to Herskovits at his hotel in London. Thomas and Dossie snatched a brief family holiday at Bamburgh in early September, and had Cantwell Smith, who was returning to Canada from a journey to Indonesia, to visit them in Oxford to make the personal acquaintanceship Cantwell Smith was seeking. The Aylesbury WEA branch organisers were pressing Thomas to know if he would take a

weekly philosophy class as he had done for other branches in recent years. Thomas, thinking that time was running out for a departure for the US that was proposed for 15 September, agreed to take the Aylesbury course for which the branch on 16 September wrote requesting a preliminary meeting before teaching began on 30 September. The US Embassy wrote also on 16 September to advise Thomas that the Attorney General had authorised his temporary admission into the US for a period of approximately six months. The visa office would issue Thomass visa whenever it was convenient for him. The sudden reversal of expectations after Thomas had almost given up hope put him into a state of doubt whether he should take up a flight provisionally booked for 29 September or delay a term, and he wrote on 18 September to Herskovits about these doubts. After a day or so of reflection he decided to seize the opportunity and on 21 September he cabled Herskovits that he would proceed as arranged and arrive in Evanston on 30 September. Herskovits arranged for a cable to go on 23 September welcoming Thomass arrival for the beginning of classes on 30 September. Amid preparations to leave Britain for several months Thomas made another gesture towards academic respectability. Thomas went on 23 September to talk about the pending appointment to the Oxford readership in Commonwealth Government to Margery Perham (for whom it had been created) who was Robinsons predecessor and still influential in such matters (privately he did not share her enthusiasm for Lord Lugard and the doctrine of indirect rule and thought her a schoolmistress). Thomas collected a US visa on 26 September and next day sent Margery Perham a luke-warm letter seeking consideration for the readership and explaining that he had not formally applied earlier in the year since he had been away travelling in Africa. He wrote that he had published one book and a chapter in another and a great many articles: The need to earn a living partly by writing has meant that, for the most part, I have published in journals which pay for contributions. He had to finish two books on which he was working an anthology of Nigerian history and an introductory study of African political parties. He had resigned from the Delegacy for Extra-mural Studies in 1952, principally because he thought he could do more useful work in the field of African studies: I have now reached a stage at which, if there were an opportunity of taking some part in the development of the study and teaching of African political history and institutions in Oxford, I should certainly welcome it. Thomas flew to the US and was admitted on 30 September at Detroit, Michigan. He was speedily inducted into the Northwestern system. Roland Young, who had written on Tanganyika and whose wife had been a plant pathologist in Kenya, arranged for the university calendar of events to announce two public lectures by Thomas: for 5 November on African Nationalism and European Reactions, and for 6 December on African Nationalism and the Moslem World. Thomas found the students and dons agreeable, but thought the general absence of liquor disagreeable: Evanston was a stronghold of the Women's Temperance League and dry by local option. He wrote on 3 October to his daughter Elizabeth: I can't even drown my sorrows (unless invited out). He was formally appointed on 4 October as a lecturer in political science in the College of Liberal Arts. By contrast with this local dry option he was invited by Blanksten to a welcoming supper on 5 October with David and Ellie Apter, was served three strong Martinis (said to be nineteen parts gin to one part vermouth) and fell quietly asleep over the meal.

He faced the first Sunday alone in a flat at seventh floor level on the top floor of a faculty apartment building. He had to complete a syllabus and reading list for the students and had brought from Britain several urgent writing chores to complete, including the continuation of a series for West Africa on Arab Africa and West Africa and an article on a related theme requested by Rosalind Ainslie for Africa South. The solitary eyrie was in stark contrast with the sprawling household in Oxford of a dozen or so occupants and a stream of friends of the children and relatives and friends of the adults from many parts of the world. The isolation from that Oxford life made him deeply homesick, but Evanston did not bring him the excitement of his Africa travels. He was initially unsure if he had made the right decision in coming to Northwestern despite the substantial financial reward. He had doubts if he was fitted or disposed to return to academic life at the age of forty-seven. He felt himself old to try to master the new political theory frameworks in which Apter and other US scholars were working. He was reminded of his spell teaching philosophy at Manchester University in the first quarter of 1934 as a temporary replacement for J.L. Stocks who was spending a term in the West Indies. He saw and advantage in his Northwestern work load fitting in well with the two books he had to complete, but remained ambivalent about the academic life. The Herskovits program of African studies formally established in 1948 was effectively the first of its kind in the US, and Bascom from 1936 had been Herskovitss first doctoral student in anthropology (on the Yoruba of Nigeria). Seminars of African interest had been held at the Herskovits home before the second world war, but in the late 1950s the Africanist community in the US remained small and fairly close-knit. Herskovits made sure the way was open for Thomas to meet pr renew acquaintance with others in the network. Thomas warmed to his situation as he came to know colleagues and graduate students better, to learn their particular interests in Africa and to accustom himself to the US penchant for theoretical discussion: after lunch on 15 October with Apter and Blanksten he wrote on 15 October to Dossie: The curious thing I find here is that people talk much more about Things That Matter. Thomas at Northwestern in the evening of 15 October gave his first public lecture in the US - on Africa and world politics. He addressed the implications for western Europe and north America of profound political changes taking place in post-war Africa. He saw the colonial epoch coming to an end. He cited the influence of pre-European African civilisations and denounced the myth of African barbarism that dominated European thinking during the latter half of the 19th century. The phenomenon of African nationalism could be thought of as a release of popular energies expressing itself through modern organisations of various types such as dissident and revivalist religious movements, Christian and Moslem, trades unions and political parties. He spoke (largely from personal acquaintanceship) of the new elite of African political leaders who were not anti-Western but anti a Western ideology of empire. He discussed the legacy problems of colonial settlers and assertions of tribalism: the process of establishing coherent, stable, independent African states must be expected to take some time. Half a dozen dominant ideologies were likely to emerge: Pan-African, Islamic, Communist, Liberal-Democratic, Traditionalist, etc. Thomas through Apter was also in touch with the nearby University of Chicago, where he spent the next day, including lunch with Herman Finer - the father of Samuel Finer whom Thomas already knew. He went on to see the geography professor Edwin (Ned)

Munger. Munger was a member of the US step-family of A.L. Smith and had in 1951 visited the Hodgkins in Oxford when a fellow dinner guest was the Nyasaland politician Hastings Banda firmly opposing the Central African Federation. Thomas took keen interest in the graduate students at Northwestern and wrote on 17 October to Kenneth Little at Edinburgh University seeking advice for John Eric Peterson who was thinking of working on the development of social and political institutions in 19th century Sierra Leone. Thomas spent the weekend wrestling with an overdue article for Africa South on Islam in West African history. He had on 21 October a consolatory lunch with James Coleman just back from Tanganyika and the Northern Rhodesia copperbelt and Gray Cowan just back from Morocco where they could talk about Africa in a wide ranging way Coleman proposed bringing Thomas to Los Angeles and Cowan offered to do the same for Columbia and the East. Herskovits actively supported such contacts and on 26 October sent a round robin memorandum to Gwendolen Carter, Vernon McKay, Gray Cowan and William Brown that Thomas would be in the East from 15 to 24 November and could speak on three key topics: Nationalism in Contemporary Africa, Political Developments in French West Africa and Islam in the African Setting. Thomas heard from Dossie that the Oxford readership in Commonwealth Government had gone elsewhere not to the candidate that Kenneth Robinson had in mind in July but to Frederick Madden, another safe proponent of imperial history in the Perham tradition. Thomas received the news with equanimity since he had not expected it for himself. He was enjoying his teaching at Northwestern but still doubtful about the academic life notwithstanding the attractions of a regular salary and status and very homesick. By the end of October he had completed the main journalistic and reviewing tasks he had bought with him and was building up extracts he needed for his Nigerian historical anthology with some material feeding into the graduate seminar at Northwestern. He juggled old and new history, lecturing on African nationalism to the broader Northwestern community on 5 November and jesting about Guy Fawkes and ancestral tastes for fire-worship. The European and north American advance over African civilisations was strictly technological and even the technological superiority was a relatively recent development from the 16th century. He examined a range of European stereotypical responses to Africa and warned that the main point of these stereotypes was that they had little to do with Africa and Africans or with the new movements emerging in Africa. They were primarily the traditional rationalisations that all dominant minorities had used at all periods of history to defend authoritarian political systems when these have been challenged by popular movements. Thomas extended his Chicago explorations to Roosevelt University where on 12 November he met the black sociologist St Clair Drake, who was beginning to interest himself in African matters. Thomass reputation in Africa was spreading beyond the northern and central countries where he had travelled. Godfrey Le May, a lawyer in the defence team for the 156 men and women appearing at a preparatory examination for treason trials in South Africa, wrote on 18 November asking Thomass help. A prosecution witness was attempting to show that documents found in the possession of the accused were either orthodox communism or the kind of things that communists said. The defence were seeking from Thomas a memorandum on the influence of communist

thought on colonial nationalists, with special reference to the extent to which noncommunists in these movements had borrowed parts of communist vocabulary and ideas. Herskovits memorandum to colleagues in other centres of African studies on Thomass availability to give talks drew largely favourable responses and Herskovits stage managed a whistle-stop train tour for Thomas to meet old and new friends in New York on 18 and 19 November, Boston on 20 and 21 November, Northampton on 22 and 23 November, Washington on 24 and 25 November and return to Evanston by air in time for his seminar class on the morning of 26 November. In New York he was mainly with scientist friends of Dossies but he made time to visit the Algerian FLN delegation for an update on their struggle. Bill Brown was Thomass host at Boston University and brought Thomas together with Carl Rosberg who was doing substantial work on Kenya. Thomas lectured on French West Africa. Brown took Thomas also to the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thomas found Dot Wrinchs daughter Pamela Wrinch teaching political science at Boston (she had been the schoolgirl over whom the then Dorothy Crowfoot was watching when Thomas had first met her at Margery Frys house in London in March 1936). Pamela took Thomas, with Brown and Rosberg and their wives, to her flat so that the exchanges on Africa could continue. Thomas on 21 November met more scholars including Arthur Porter from Fourah Bay and working on Sierra Leone and Harvards Rupert Emerson writing a great tome on nationalism in Africa and Asia. Thomas went on to Northampton and lectured twice to the young ladies of Smith College for Gwen Carter. Gwen gave a party and dinner where another guest was Dossies former colleague Dot Wrinch. Gwen Carter also made telephone calls to Washington to consolidate Thomass schedule there and arranged for him to be met by Robert Baum responsible for Africa research at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. Thomas was accommodated at Smith in a university suite whose elegance reminded him of the luxurious standard Helen Sutherland had maintained when she lived at Grosvenor House in London. Thomas took a long train ride to Washington and was met in the evening of 23 November by Bob Baum who turned out to be a most un-State Department type according to Thomass preconceived notions on the matter. Baum took him on a night drive around the sights of Washington and pointed out the illuminated Capitol. Thomas struggled to remember what happened there and felt fortunate to guess correctly that it was a kind of parliament. Baum impressed Thomas with a knowledge of Eritrea, Mauritania and particularly the Fezzan where Thomas had travelled recently and where Baum had been on a United Nations Commission. Baum led him on to McKay for a family Sunday then a crowded day of encounters with the African American Institute, Baums research team at the State Department, a seminar at Howard University and a lecture organised by the African American Institute. He flew late at night on 25 November to Chicago and rode home in a taxi to Evanston, learning from the black driver from Missouri of his experiences as a soldier in Korea. Thomas had returned in time to be with David and Ellie Apter and their friends for a seven-hour thanksgiving dinner on 28 November (he was puzzled why the pie did not have the shape of a pumpkin). He recounted the event in a letter to his mother next day and in reflecting on a hectic but interesting week that had brought so many intelligent people of different kinds commented: Of course, one cant help enjoying the red carpets,

even if theyre really only pale pink rugs. He saw that he had little hope at Northwestern of making real progress on the two books he was writing, but could keep on with New Statesman reviews for Janet Adam Smith and journalistic pieces including an article for Current History on the Maghreb. He gave a public lecture at Northwestern on 6 December about African nationalism and the Moslem world considering particularly the large areas of Asia and Africa in which Islam was the dominant religion. He examined variant forms of Islam in Africa north and south of the Sahara, their likely long-term effects and the degree to which they engendered a sense of Moslem community and solidarity. He went on 8 December fleetingly to Montreal for an overnight visit to Canada to fulfil his commitment to spend a day with Cantwell Smith in the Institute at McGill. Thomas was in New York on 12 December for a talk at Columbia University (Gray Cowan following up their October lunch with James Coleman), stayed overnight with Andrew and Helen Cohen (Sir Andrew was British Representative to the UN Trusteeship Commissiom) and flew across the US to the University of California in Los Angeles (James Coleman also following up the October lunch). He was with Philip Curtin at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on 19 December to lecture on the now practiced theme of Nationalism in Africa and arguing that the aggressive and expansionist associations of the term nationalism were largely irrelevant to Africa where there was little prospect of counter-colonisation. He did perceive a certain unity running through the differences among the national movements in contemporary Africa south of the Sahara. Thomas had been joined in Montreal by Dossie for the last few days of north American travel (they were then feted by the Herskovits household and the Northwestern Africanist community) and they returned to Britain to join Thomass mother and other members of the family on 23 December for Christmas at Crab Mill.Thomas wrote from there to Mel and Frances Herskovits to thank them for their kindness, hospitality and friendship and for the support and encouragement that had made the journey possible: Actually, this quarter spent at Northwestern has been stimulating and illuminating in ways that its difficult at the moment even to assess. He thought that the two books he was writing would be improved, and felt less that he had drifted into being some kind of litterateur. Thomas also in response to a request sent detailed comments on the introductory chapter to the book Herskovits was writing on The human factor in changing Africa. Chapter 18 History in the making Thomas and Dossie spent the new year of 1958 at Geldeston in optimistic mood. Cantwell Smith had persuaded Thomas to take a three year part-time appointment at McGills Institute of Islamic Studies. This would mean spending a term away from home each year in Canada, but provided an academic affiliation that could lead to American foundation support for his African journeys. Canada with proximity to Dossies sister Dilly and her husband Graham Rowley in Ottawa and without the visa anxieties seemed to Dossie and Thomas more accessible than the USA. Meanwhile Thomas faced the usual flow of invitations to speak or to write for journals and the WEA classes he had deferred to take up the stint at Northwestern. As he looked back on his recent travel in north America he detected an echo of one of his primary concerns throughout the 1950s. For the West Africa issue of 25 January 1958 he wrote:

Whether because of the absence of colonial preoccupations, or for some other reason, American students of politics seem to have been quicker to grasp the point that the emergent African states deserve to be studied with the same kind of combination of detachment, sympathetic insight, devotion to detail, careful observation, interest in the relationship between present and past, and between institutions and their social setting, that anthropologist have achieved in their studies of pre-literate communities. . Thomas was continuing confidential guidance for the treason trial in South Africa after a defence attorney Michael Parkington wrote on 20 January asking for additional material on the terms of art and philosophies that were cropping up in African liberation movement documents for the trial. Parkington said that the defence aimed to show differences between the Afro-Asian Neutralist position and that of the Communist Bloc, and how far criticism of Western Imperialism was common to both. Thomas agreed to write a script for a BBC radio series on early African history. This was a moment for Thomas of converging rather than fragmenting worlds. He reviewed a book on Islam by Cantwell Smith - with some doubt whether he should review the work of someone he was regarding as a friend for the New Statesman in February. The Hodgkin household entertained for tea on 9 February Janet Adam Smith and her three children: she regularly sent him books to review for the New Statesman and was a long-standing friend of the family and of Helen Sutherland. Joe Price, lecturer in government at the University College of Ghana, wrote on 13 February to sound Thomas out confidentially on a proposal to invite him as a visiting lecturer for the Trinity term to be shared between the economics, divinity and history departments. Price wanted Thomass assent for a proposal to go to the general board of the University College. Kenneth Robinson wrote from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London on 19 February that he had been approached two days earlier by the Fabian social reformer Leonard Woolf for a piece on the future of French North Africa for Political Quarterly: Robinson had declined and said that Thomas Hodgkin would do it much better. A letter from Leonard Woolf soon arrived, via the old Powder Hill address, asking Thomas for some three thousand words for a special issue on the passing of colonialism or empire. Price on 26 February wrote that the Ghana invitation was going to the general board with support of five heads of department: economics, archaeology, history, divinity and extramural studies. A request was sent on 5 March by the literary critic and educationist Boris Ford as editor of the Universities Quarterly about a special issue on Commonwealth universities. Ford wanted Thomas to write some four thousand words on what kind of university should be made in Africa whether the English or American model was to be preferred, or indeed a specifically African model. Fords editorial office was at Great Turnstile where the New Statesman was housed and after Thomas had accepted the Universities Quarterly request he was sent on 28 March a warm letter from Kingsley Martin as editor of the New Statesman, who had heard that Thomas was likely to be in Ghana in time for the Conference of Independent African States to be held in April and asking if Thomas would cover the event for him: It is very much up your street, not only because you are a great authority on Africa but also because five of the nine countries represented are inside your special Muslim field. The Ghana invitation was confirmed and the University College arranged entry permits for Thomas and for his daughter Liz whom the parents had agreed could accompany Thomas. Dossie and Luke went to London on 15 April to see them off, and they called

first on Margery Fry at 48 Clarendon Road where she had returned from a spell in Westminster Hospital as her life was thought to be ebbing away. Liz and Thomas left in the afternoon from the Victoria airways terminal and flew into Accra next morning, going initially to Dennis Austins house where Liz would stay with Thomas as well for a couple of days until his visiting lecturer flat in Commonwealth Hall became available. The university was built in the grand style and two of the architects Austen Harrison and Pierce Hubbard were friends of Thomass from his Palestine period in the 1930s: Thomas commented in an arrival letter to Dossie: Commonwealth Hall, where I am to live, is the largest and grandest, at the top of the hill, at the end of a mile-long avenue, leading from the entrance gate. Dennis Austin lived close to the gate and Liz was to have a bicycle to move between the two locations. In this convergent world Thomas was repeatedly encountering people he knew. He gave his first lecture early on 21 April and went on to the preliminary press conference for the Conference of Independent African States given by an old acquaintance in the Gold Coast and Ghana administration Yaw Adu; and, as he described it to Dossie, then a succession of parties Sudanese, then Tunisian (the former providing squash and the latter, not surprisingly, whisky) meeting a continual succession of old & new friends. This admirable mixture of Libyans, Moroccans, Tunisians, Sudanese, Ghanaians, etc. whom one kept running into and talking about totally different subjects to rather wearing trying to switch ones mind rapidly and to remember people from the past. Thomas found it difficult to get away and more difficult to get David Williams away, as they moved onto a dinner party where Ghanas ambassador to the US Dan Chapman and the Moroccan charg daffaires from London Abd-el Ali were among the guests. Thomas went next day to Akropong to give a lecture on French West Africa and found time to lunch with Peter Canham, who as a progressive colonial civil servant had helped Thomas in securing from the Gold Coast governor Sir Alan Burns a favourable response to the proposal in 1947 to institute extra-mural education. He dined on 24 April with Polly Hill and Kenneth Humphreys and heard from Humphreys of the death on 16 April of Dossies crystallographer colleague and friend Rosalind Franklin at the age of 37. She had latterly been working in Bernals laboratory and Humphreys had seen Bernals tribute to her in The Times of 19 April. Thomas heard in a letter from Dossie that reached him on 26 April of a death that touched them even more closely of Margery Fry on 21 April at the age of 84. He felt this represented the biggest gap for Dossie and himself after their own parents since it was Margery who had brought them together in the spring of 1937 (and had been significant in their separate lives before they met). Thomas was giving departmental lectures to students and for a wider audience including dons and outsiders a public series on Islam in West African History. He spoke on 1 May about Sufi Brotherhoods with John Fage, who had become the University Colleges professor of history, in the chair and the archaeologist Peter Shinnie in the audience. Thomas in his reflections for the New Statesman on the Conference of Independent African States regretted that a decision to limit participation to fully sovereign Africa states had excluded Nigeria and parts of French West Africa on the verge of independence. Accra with Nkrumahs new prestige was the locus for other continental and international events. Thomas on 2 May on an errand to the Ambassador Hotel encountered Modibo Keita, leader of the emerging Mali Republic. Keita whom he had

previously known in Bamako and Paris was now leading a Francophone delegation to a conference of the Food and Agricultural Organisation: Thomas promptly invited him to dinner next day. He saw also in the hotel Kalu Ezera, a Nigerian looking at his countrys constitution who had been at Nuffield College in Oxford. When Thomas went north on 9 May to Tamale (by road with Dennis Austen for a ten-day school) the journey seemed to him more or less a holiday after the Accra lecturing schedules. By 23 May Thomas was writing to Dossie from the Ridge Hospital where he was admitted with a fever. Thomas suspected malaria: a doctor who examined him on 24 May looked at Thomas left leg red and swollen and diagnosed as the cause of the general fever a local skin infection erysipelas (known in the Middle Ages as St Anthonys fire). Thomas responded to treatment sufficiently to turn next day to an overdue article for Leonard Woolf. He wrote evading a request to go to Johannesburg in connection with the treason trial defence. By the end of May he was back to his Ghana lecturing, and willing with Liz to accept for 4 June an invitation to lunch with the Governor General Lord Listowel (chosen by Nkrumah just after independence because of Listowels involvement in the Fabian Colonial Bureau). Thomass visiting lectureship ended and he with Liz left on 7 June for Nigeria where Thomas could gather material for his historical anthology. He spent a couple of days in Ibadan (staying with the Ogunsheye family) reading in the library of the University College, with work time much interrupted by a succession of scholars seeking him out: they included Ezera; an American political scientist from Princeton Dick Sklar (who had visited the Hodgkins in Oxford and at Crab Mill); Adenekan Ademola; Saburi Biobaku; the literature specialist Molly Mahood; and a British historian of Nigeria Charles Smith. Leonard Woolf in July was pressing Thomas to revise his Political Quarterly contribution that seemed to Woolf and to his co-editor too hard on the French in comparison with the Algerian nationalists. The OUP were pressing for delivery of the Nigeria book since they wanted to send it to press in the autumn for publication in the run-up to Nigerias independence. The treason trial in South Africa resumed in August and Thomas still had work to do on additional material he had promised the defence team. His family were in holiday mode. Dossies crystallographer colleague Max Perutz, who had come to Britain as a refugee from Austria, arranged accommodation for the Hodgkins and Anna Davin at Alt Aussee in Austria and to link up with the Perutz family holiday as a preliminary to Dossie attending the International Congress of Biochemistry in Vienna. They left by train from Victoria on 19 August: Thomas at the last moments before departure handing the South Africa writings to Pierre Marteau for photocopying for transmission to South Africa. He took writing tasks with him but found little spare time to address them. After return to Oxford on 7 September he took on an obligation to write for the Unesco Courier magazine on European and Arabic documentation on medieval and post-medieval West African empires. Basil Davidson as editorial consultant for a special issue on early cultural contributions of Negro Africa has suggested his name and delivery was expected by 1 December. Thomas was in correspondence with BJ and in a postcard of 25 September accepted Thomass suggestion that her elder daughter Lucy should call on the Hodgkin household in Oxford if she came to Somerville for an entrance interview. Meanwhile Thomas flew to Montreal on 26 September to take up his McGill part-time post, and took Toby Hodgkin with him to spend the term with Dillys family in Ottawa. The McGill teaching

load seemed light in comparison with the Ghana duties and he felt he could make progress on two pending books: Nigerian history and contemporary African political parties. He estimated a return to Oxford about 14 December. After a week he took the train to Ottawa on 2 October to see Toby and Dillys family and in cheerful mood wrote during the ride to Dossie of his relative contentment with McGill: But what Im getting is an opportunity to learn about things that Ive badly wanted to learn about for a long time and from people who are thoroughly sympathetic as well as knowledgeable and to be paid for it into the bargain! And I suspect that its that thats been all along the real attraction not the money, nor the status, but the desire to be among colleagues with whom one can discuss the questions in which ones interested which on the whole one misses in Oxford .. He found typists in Ottawa and McGill to whom he could feed material at weekends and mid-week - and decided to give the Nigeria anthology priority over the political parties study. Cantwell Smith on 8 October held a lunch with the McGill principal Cyril James (London born son of a municipal water board inspector) and colleagues to entertain Richard H. Nolte of the Rockefeller Foundation. Nolte was a student of Arab history and institutions in Middle East countries and not the Rockefeller Foundations humanities officer and Africa specialist Robert W. July with whom Thomas had been negotiating about possible work on Islam in Africa south of the Sahara. Thomas attended the lunch in the RitzCarlton Hotel and engaged in the general conversation but did not press his own cause. He was telephoned in Montreal on 16 October by Herbert Steinhouse from the Canadian Broadcasting Company with a request for a brief wireless talk on Tunisia and a row with the Arab League. Thomas noting that Steinhouse had heard of him, wondered for a moment if he was being mistaken for Teddy, then found that Steinhouse had just published a novel on Algeria and France and was a friend of Basil Davidson and of the FLNs Chanderli. Meanwhile Teddy in London at a supper party on 16 October given by Ann Sitwell and her second husband an architect James Cubitt wrote to his mother next day that several Nigerians were among the guests all of whom exclaimed with delight when they found he was Thomass brother. (The Cubitt partnership had an office in Nigeria from 1957 and had a client/architect relationship with Nnamdi Azikiwe). The Eastern Nigeria premier Azikiwe (whom Thomas had met in 1947) was in London for a resumed constitutional conference setting the date for Nigerias independence on 1 October 1960. The artist Enwonwu recounted with enthusiasm that when he came to Oxford in the mid-1940s Thomas and Dossie had carted him home to supper and talked left-wing politics to him: They talked such high language. Thomas in Montreal recorded his broadcast on 17 October before taking his usual Friday afternoon train to Ottawa and telephoned to Toby so that the Ottawa household might listen to the transmission. The OUP series editor Gerald Graham, who had heard from David Williams that Thomass Nigeria manuscript was in an advanced state, wrote asking if Thomas would consider on return writing a short biography of the 18 century Islamic scholar Uthman dan Fodio. Thomas was attending frequent classes in Arabic, but doubted if his Arabic was up to the task and was hesitant about doing the fieldwork in Nigeria unless Dossie felt like coming as well. Thomas received the suggestion on 20 October and wrote next day to Graham telling him to expect the main part of the anthology soon and giving a cautious nod to the dan Fodio prospect. Word had gone out on the US academic grape-

vine that Thomas was in Canada and in the next few days he received several invitations to universities and Africanist institutions in the US. He sent copies and a visa request to the American Consulate General in Montreal. Thomas in Ottawa on 1 November heard from his brother-in-law Graham Rowley that Dossie had been trying to telephone. He returned the call from a callbox in a noisy hotel and made a second call later in the day from the Rowley home. Dossies news was that their son Luke in his final undergraduate year at Balliol and Anna Davin in her final year at the Oxford High School were expecting a child and wished to marry in the Christmas vacation (when Luke would have turned 20 and Anna was 18). Thomas was content with the prospect as long as Luke and Anna were themselves happy. He hoped Annas parents were content (as Dossie had indicated) and glad that the marriage could be held after he was back in December. After the second more leisurely telephone conversation he sent more reflections in a letter to Dossie: on the practical front he wondered if they might live in the cottage in the garden of 94 Woodstock Road: if not otherwise disposed of this would be a nice African arrangement. He recalled too that 1 November was the date in 1930 when he aged 20 had proposed to BJ aged 18, and he liked the parallels. Dossie, who had simultaneously thought of offering the cottage (as yet unlet) to Luke and Anna, went to Crab Mill on 2 November to tell Thomass mother of the proposed early marriage (there was a sense within the family that they might anyway marry after schools in the next year). Thomas wrote on 3 November to Winnie and Dan Davin : I am extremely happy at the prospect of having Anna as a daughter one couldnt hope for a nicer one or more beautiful and, after a long telephone conversation with Dossie on 3 November, he wrote on 5 November to his mother urging that everything be done to help ensure that the marriage worked out happily: the moral of Romeo and Juliet, it has always seemed to me, is the fearful troubles one can unwillingly produce if one creates obstacles for young lovers. He went to the American Consulate General where the consul remembered him from his visit of a year earlier and issued a multiple-entry visa for a year so that Thomas could take up his lecture invitations. Thomass brief foray into the US in mid November was another instance of convergent worlds. In Oxford in 1957 he had been keeping a friendly supervisory eye on the work on French Africa by a graduate from Barnard College in New York Ruth Schachter who lodged in Warnborough Road. Ruth, who had returned to the US and was writing up her research, wrote inviting Thomas to stay in New York where he was to spend some twenty four hours before moving on to a couple of days in Boston. Kilson wrote from Harvard on 13 November about Thomass forthcoming visit arranged by Emerson. Kilson was invited to Thomass lecture and to a faculty club lunch for him. He asked if Thomas would be his dinner guest with George Bond (a son of Max Bond and nephew of Horace Mann Bond, prominent educationists) and several others who wanted to meet him: African students and a leftist American economist Paul Sweezy. The Rockefeller Foundation were writing to ask about Thomass research plans. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace telephoned to say that they had heard he was going to be in New York and asking if he would come and see them about French Africa. Thomas agreed to visit: he had been told by Ruth Schachter that she was jobless and thought this might be a means of putting some work in her way.

Thomas embarked on a schedule of five lectures and seminars in the four days from 17 November to 20 November that he described in retrospect to Dossie as at times somewhat fantastic this collecting together of people friends old and new, from so many unexpected quarters. His New York day on 17 November began with breakfast in Grand Central Station and telephone calls to confirm appointments. He went to talk to Chanderli about de Gaulles overtures on the Algerian war, and met Ruth at the Metropolitan Museum since he was determined to visit the collection. She drove him on to an appointment with a publisher Victor Weybright who was familiar with paperback publishing in Britain and as founder of the New American Library was key to the development in the US of quality paperback books. Weybright and one of his editors over a grand lunch invited Thomas to write a Mentor book on African history, of between 65,000 and 90,000 words, for an advance of three thousand dollars: this seemed to Thomas a princely sum in comparison with the fifty pounds advance he received on Nationalism in Colonial Africa. Thomas saw the proposal as an opportunity to write several essays in African history and not as an attempt to be definitive. He walked on from this meeting to the offices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he met their publications editor-in-chief Anne Winslow and a colleague who wanted some 20,000 words on French Africa for the journal International Conciliation for a fee of three hundred dollars. Thomas proposed the collaboration of Ruth Schachter (whom he envisaged doing the main work) and that the entire sum should go to her. Ruth collected him and they went on to dinner and a colloquium at Columbia arranged by Gray Cowan, who had drawn in among others a Princeton anthropologist Paul Bohannan, from Nebraska but with a doctorate at Oxford and interest in the Tiv in Nigeria, and a Mozambican Eduardo Mondlane working with the United Nations Trusteeship Council. After the discussion Thomas asked to see some of the night life of New York and went with Ruth and her friends to hear cool jazz at Birdland and to a Harlem nightclub in the early hours. By the time Thomas reached Ruths parents home near the Hudson River and had only a couple of hours to nap before Ruth took him to his Washington flight on 18 November. Thomas found his day in Washington less satisfactory as he was in the hands of Raymond Smyke of the African-American Institute and was able to see the friendly Bob Baum and Vernon McKay only over an early dinner. Meanwhile he escaped from Smyke and spent an afternoon at the State Department in informal discussion with Africanists, including several he had previously met in the US, France and Africa. He took a night train to Boston for his Harvard appointments on 20 November, meeting Emerson and finding Kilson with him before Thomass lecture whose subject he changed to a more generalised topic with ten minutes to look through notes. A varied audience of some seventy people included the Aga Khan. Thomas talked to several of the students before lunch with colleagues at the Harvard Center for International Affairs and a grilling on African political parties from seconded diplomats, colonels, admirals and what-not, where too few were Africanists although Bill Brown and some others were familiar faces. Kilson took him to tea with another familiar scholar, the Ottoman specialist Sir Hamilton Gibb, for a discussion on Arabic sources for West African history. Then came the dinner that Kilson had arranged for his particular friends: a mix of America, Nigeria, Ghana and Sudan. Thomas was particularly delighted that the Sudanese on a teachers course -

turned out to be Ibrahim Nur (a teacher from Khartoum University) whom he had met at Robin Hodgkins house in 1948 chosen by Robin as an intimate friend. At their Harvard encounter Thomas and Nur talked about Sudan and Nurs disapproval of the military putsch on 18 November by Ferik Ibrahim Abboud. Kilson and Sweezy adjourned with Thomas for more talk at Bill Browns house where Thomas was staying overnight before a flight back to Montreal for his regular Friday morning seminar at McGill, and family weekend in Ottawa. Thomas had booked a flight back to England on 18 December to arrive at London airport on the afternoon of 19 December: in Oxford Luke and Anna set their wedding ceremony at the registry office for the morning of 20 December with Winnie Davin giving a wedding reception at the Davins home at 103 Southmoor Road. Meanwhile in early December Thomas was trying to complete the introductory chapter to his Nigerian anthology. He signed a contract with Weybright for the African history book. Cantwell Smith was looking for a book by Thomas in their Islamic studies field and hoping for Rockefeller Foundation support for Thomas that would benefit the Institute. Weybright sent Thomas a five hundred dollar instalment of the book advance. Thomas had written reminders to Liz and to Dossie that they should offer hospitality to Bjs daughter Lucy Gaster when she came for Somerville examinations. Dossie dropping in at the college on the morning of 10 December found Lucy seeing the principal and tutors and hastily invited her to lunch that day at 94 Woodstock Road. The Hodgkin family (except for Thomass mother) attended the wedding celebrations on 20 December, where Thomass mentor Gervase Mathew spoke. The Hodgkins and the newly weds joined Thomass mother for Christmas at Crab Mill and Luke and Anna subsequently went to the Izaak Walton Hotel at Dovedale in Derbyshire for a honeymoon. Thomas had finishing touches to give to the Nigeria anthology and completed the broad draft around midnight on 30 December. He was anxious to post it off within the 1958 calendar year and spent the morning of 31 December in Oxford numbering the pages before the family drove to lunch at Teddys and on to Dossies family in Geldeston for new years eve. The trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York on 31 December approved a grant of 7,500 dollars for travel and field expenses in Africa for Thomass work through the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies. This included 2,000 dollars for books and documentary material that were expected to end up in the McGill Library, but allowed 4,500 dollars for travel and a thousand dollars for secretarial and clerical assistance. Thomas began the new year of 1959 with fine polishing still to do on the Nigeria book but with a working draft that could be circulated for informed comment. He received in January news of confirmed support for Africa travel that permitted clear priority for scholarly concerns over the demands of journeyman reporting. He was committed to several other key tasks that were pending or overdue and continued to accept requests to write or lecture. His focus on the Nigeria book meant that he had disappointed Helen and David Kimble over the African political parties paperback: they were expecting a text by September of 1958 and planned to have it in production at the beginning of 1959. Helen wrote from Legon on 7 January that Thomass default was holding up another completed manuscript since Penguin liked to publish new titles in pairs. Anne Winslow wrote from New York

on 27 January confirming the oral agreement of the previous November that Thomas and Ruth Schachter would collaborate on an issue of International Conciliation about the background and status of French West African territories for delivery at the beginning of 1960. The OUP overseas editor D.M. Neale wrote on 17 February confirming an invitation for Thomas to write a short biography in about 25,000 words of Uthman dan Fodio. David Kimble on 5 March followed up his wifes letter in semi-mock fury but saying that Walter Birmingham was revising a book for the Penguin series Thomass title could be moved, but Kimble urged him not to slow up. Dossie and Thomas were in London on 6 April Dossie to show vitamin B12 structure models at a conference and Thomas to record a broadcast: they both attended the Lugard lecture given by Herskovits during which Herskovits made a friendly reference to Thomass own work: Thomas (whose narcolepsy made him frequently fall asleep in seminars and similar events) saw that on this occasion it was Dossie who had dozed off and he had to tell her. OUP advised Thomas on 10 April that the Nigeria publication was deferred to May 1960 to be ready in time for Nigerias October independence, and that the finished script should be ready not later than June 1959 (Thomas was receiving suggestions about the draft from many directions: Sir Alan Burns, a senior administrator who had written a general history of Nigeria; an orientalist from Durham University Richard Hill; a French anthropologist Claude Tardits who had been visiting Oxford; James Coleman in California and through him from a political officer in the Nigerian colonial administration Anthony Kirk-Greene.) The historian Michael Crowder, as editor of the Nigeria federal government quarterly magazine Nigeria, was planning a special independence issue and wanted from Thomas a year ahead an article on Othman dan Fodio and the Fulani Jihad. Dossie had science engagements in Leningrad and Moscow in late May. Thomas also took the journey as an opportunity to seek out Africanists and African students in the Soviet Union on lines suggested from Prsence Africaine in Paris and by the secretarygeneral of the Committee of African Organisations in London Dennis Phombeah, who had visited Thomas for tea in Oxford. Phombeah had studied in Hungary and on 15 May wrote warning Thomas that the number of Africans studying in the Soviet Union was very small. He recommended his friend Professor I.I. Potekhin at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Thomas already knew of the work of Dmitry Olderogge, as director of the department of African studies at Leningrad University. Thomas in Leningrad made contact with Africa ethnographers and students of West African history and on 22 May he lectured to a small and somewhat quiet group of Olderogges students. Basil Davidson wrote on 8 June suggesting that Thomas write an analysis of nationalism in Africa as a chapter in a short book to be published on behalf of Universities and Left Review and the New Reasoner in a proposed series of New Left Books, but the project fell within a fortnight. Thomas was more concerned with his Nigeria anthology and with family matters as a son (named Thomas Dominic) was born on 28 June to Anna and Luke to the excitement and delight of the Davin and Hodgkin households. Thomas went to London on 30 July to meet Gerald Graham and with the intention of handing over a typescript of Nigerian Perspectives, albeit not fully revised, but found that with

industrial action affecting the Oxford University Press the book could not be processed until the end of August and Thomas had a reprieve for finishing touches. He and Dossie went for the latter half of August to the Villa Lincolnia at San Remo in Italy (a residence of Dossies Hood grandparents and relatives), and they were apart in September (Dossie in China and Thomas mainly at Crab Mill to work on his second current book project on African political parties). Thomas was also planning his next African journey, torn between his interests in Africa and his wish to be with Dossie and his family in Oxford after her return from China. He tried to condense the itinerary into as short a time as possible consistent with his principal goal of collecting material documentary and oral for a study of Islam and its impact upon modern political movements south of the Sahara. His secondary aims were to collect material for the African history book he had promised to Weybright, to bring himself up-to-date on political developments since 1956 in the former French West Africa for the pamphlet with Ruth Schachter promised to the Carnegie Endowment, and to gather historical and contemporary documents for the library of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill. The plan had the practical and pertinent cachet of the Rockefeller Foundation which with Wilfred Cantwell Smiths academic recommendations carried weight with the French diplomats. Thomas was travelling as a researcher rather than a journalist and the French Cultural Counsellor in London supported Thomass visa application for Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Tchad. While these and subsequent visa applications were being processed Thomas returned to the draft on African political parties and kept in touch with old and new friends in Africanist circles, particularly those who had recently been travelling in Africa. From the French consulate general on 10 September he went on to the Scots House for a lunch of roast beef and beer with Basil Davidson, to an afternoon meeting at the Anti-Slavery Society and then to a discussion with Dennis Phombeah who wanted an objective report on the situation in the Cameroons and possible French repression before a UN debate Thomas was hesitant since even if the task were possible for him he would want to do it with a French African. He was working on the book at Crab Mill, where on 12 September his mother helped entertain St Clair Drake, from Roosevelt University now acting head of the sociology department at Ghana University College, with spouse and two children, plus Martin Kilson and his newly married anthropologist wife Marion Dusser de Barenne Kilson. Thomas went into Oxford on 13 September to lunch at the Kings Arms with Gervase Matthew, just back from Africa. Gervase approved of Thomas curtailing and delaying the Africa journey so that Thomas could cover the essential ground and be back in time for Lukes twenty-first birthday on 20 December and a family Christmas. The American publisher Victor Weybright and his wife came to lunch at Crab Mill on 19 September. Thomass mother provided chicken and mushrooms and apple pie and meringues and Thomas a bottle of Pouligny Montrachet. For the history book Weybright was seeking Thomas could show only a synopsis of the first six of a proposed ten chapters. His attention was further distracted from the political parties text by a meeting in Oxford with a South African treason trial lawyer on 27 September and by lecturing on West African nationalism in a Roland Olivers short course at SOAS in London. The book draft was incomplete when Dossie returned from China on 5 October and soon the exigencies of his Africa journey took hold. He collected visas in London on 29 October

for Senegal, Soudan and Niger, lunched on 30 October with the North Africa specialist Nevill Barbour, in Paris on 2 November collected a Guinea visa and lunched with Philippe Decraene in a Chinese restaurant close to Decraenes office at Le Monde. The meeting jogged Thomass conscience that he had promised Hella Pick at West Africa to deliver a review of Decraenes book Le Panafricanisme by 4 November and he spent much of the afternoon and evening writing the review so that he could post it late that night. He found time also to visit Prsence Africaine (Alioune Diop had gone to Dakar) and talked about Guinea to the Malagasy poet .of negritude and nationalist Jacques Rabemanjara, who was restricted to France. Thomas flew to Rabat on 3 November, uncertain whether he had thought through the questions about Islam he might address on this journey. After ineffective telephone calls to names on his contact list he decided to walk about in Rabat to see whom he might find. He met Andr Adam, who was a fellow contributor to Barbours survey of North-West Africa, and then at the university he found Charles-Andre Julien of the Sorbonne who said he would send Eve Dechamp of France Observateur to talk to Thomas. Thomas initially did not recall meeting her but when she appeared within minutes (she had been at home nursing a cold) he remembered her as Eve Paret who had taken him round Casablanca for a day during his 1956 visit to Morocco. She again took him in tow - to a press briefing and to the royal palace press office. A palace official al Alawi, with medical training, recognised the Hodgkin family name (Maladie de Hodgkin, he said) and instructed Thomas to be ready to start at dawn on the following day 5 November for a one and a half day expedition to the Moyen Atlas with the Crown Princes sister Princess Lalla Aisha (who would be distributing clothes to the needy on behalf of the Socit de Bienfaisance). Thomas was disheartened by the vast number of the needy as contrasted with the apparently small number of garments to be distributed. Once back in Rabat he resumed his intended goals and decided for the weekend to revisit Fez as the centre of Tijani pilgrimage and the seat of the University of Qarrawiyyin. This rather than Rabat seemed to him a spiritual home: he soon found a Tijani book wanted by an Oxford student of Albert Houranis, and visited the headquarters of the Alal al-Fassi Istiqlal faction to gather more contemporary information: al Fassi was in Tangier and one of his cousins was willing to arrange a meeting in Rabat for the following Tuesday. A Shinqiti Mauritanian, Muhammad al-Mukhtar ould Bah, talked about the controversial claims of Morocco over Mauritania a topic on Thomass wish list. When Thomas met al-Fassi in Rabat on 10 November they discussed another item on the wish list: how the Salafiyya, a traditionalist reforming movement within Islam, first penetrated into Morocco and who were the people and what were the ideas that influenced al-Fassi. most. They moved on to discuss the post-independence period, and how far the ideas of the Salafiyya were still valid (as al-Fassi believed they were). Thomas met representatives of other political parties (with the Kimble book in mind) including the Moroccan Communist Party whose ban by the monarchy had been ruled unconstitutional in the courts. He spent his last day in Morocco pursuing these political contacts in Casablanca and again Eve Paret took him around during an afternoon and early evening until it was time for Thomas to take a flight to Dakar. He spent a night of unintended luxury and expense in the Hotel Croix de Sud (though the bath was welcome), then moved into free accommodation at IFAN. He felt really lucky to

meet up with old friends Alioune Diop (who took him for a prolonged talk over dinner) and Raymond Mauny, who gave Thomas a couple of hours despite being on the verge of leaving for Algiers to spend two months in the Sahara. Thomas on 14 November lunched with Seck Assane, a geography professor at the University and a particular friend of Ruth Schachters, and in the evening was invited out to dinner with the director of IFAN Thodore Monod and his wife Olga where his fellow guest was the Islam scholar Vincent Monteil who had arrived to take up a professorial post at IFAN (whom Thomas had known in Morocco in 1956) Monteil was much out of favour with the French authorities for active opposition to the war in Algeria. Monod suggested that Thomas on the following morning should browse through the personal African library he had at home. Thomass foray into the vast collection was punctuated by periodic entrances by Monod pointing out sources in German, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese as well as French and English to be found on shelves and in drawers in various parts of the room. Thomas came away with a loan from Monod of confidential memoranda. The British consul David Pearson, who had been helpful to Thomas during his 1956 visit to Dakar, was again of assistance with links to the marabout El Hadji Ibrahma Niass whom Thomas wanted to see at Kaolack. A visit proposed for 19 November was held over for the weekend after Thomas encountered the veteran administrator and politician Gabriel DArboussier at home and was persuaded to lunch with him and Alioune Diop on that date. DArboussier had been born in Djenne and was a kinsman of one of the Tijani marabout families in whom Thomas was interested (Seydou Nouri Tall, a grandson of El Hadj Omar Tall who had been one of the main proponents of the sect in Senegal). Thomas did have meetings with Niass on 20 and 21 November (seeing him amid the habitations of thousands of pupils and followers) and received several of the grand marabouts works. Thomass travel continued with the almost familiar train ride to Bamako, with a first class ticket this time (excusing this to himself since first and second class passengers shared a coach, but grateful that the first class sliding seats permitted sleep on the long journey). In Bamako he found none of his old friends and found it awkward explaining his new role. He travelled on, slowly by pirogue (with Thomas almost characteristically leaving his towel behind), and was in Djenne by 28 November where DArboussiers introductions proved useful: his half-brother Youba led Thomas to Keita Sekou Beyla, regarded as the best local informant on Djenne history. Beyla was in the midst of harvesting, but spared time to discourse on traditional history. The French commandant provided transport along the river Niger to Mopti in a relatively swift official pinnace and provided a Land Rover for Thomas to make a fleeting visit to the historically important Hamdallahi (capital of the nineteenth century Fulani Empire of Massina). Thomas flew back to Dakar on 1 December. He intended going on to Guinea: after a contretemps over an announcement of a delayed aircraft that turned out to be misleading he missed the connection. He had tidying up tasks at IFAN: Monod invited Thomas to lunch on 2 December to meet Monteil again and the Qadi of Timbuktu (which brought an interesting conversation a bout the Salafiyya). Thomas was anxious to return home, but his presence was also being sought in Ghana where Kimble wanted him to participate on 13 December in a weekend school and the Attorney General Geoffrey Bing wanted to discuss in confidence a committee on university education in Ghana.

Flights from France became unpredictable because of a strike in France. Thomas was able to reach Conakry on 5 December and by chance on the same day as Guineas President Ahmed Sekou Tour was making a triumphal return to the city and the Hotel de France was full (as host to delegations and embassies to the recently independent state). Thomas put himself into the hands of the historian Jean Suret-Canale who was at the ex-IFAN (reborn as Institut National de Recherche et Documentation) and teaching in Conakry, and lodged in a cabin at a small restaurant Rat-Palmiste. After a night of attacks from mosquitoes Thomas (succumbing to what Dossie had teasingly identified in a recent letter as a basic liking for luxury) transferred on 6 December to the costlier Hotel de France overlooking the ocean. Thomas spent the next day trying to make appointments with persons who seemed largely to be away from Conakry or abroad and in making arrangements for the Ghana continuation. When he went in the evening to the institute he was handed by SuretCanale a telegram from Dossie that her father had died on 6 December. Thomas wrote offering to return at once if Dossie wanted that and subsequently telephoned. He took on 10 December a hedge-hopping flight to Accra, with stops at Freetown (where John Eric Peterson, one of his students from Northwestern, came to the airport to talk about his research on Freetown history), Robertsfield and Abidjan. Geoffrey Bing in Accra explained the reasons for an urgent meeting with Thomas. The Ghana Government hoped by 1961 to set up a University of Ghana from various existing and proposed educational institutions, and wanted to assemble an international committee of sufficient strength and ability to make a thorough review to be made of the whole of the university education. The committee should visit Ghana in April and December of 1960 and two secretaries would work more or less full time through the year. Thomas was being asked to be one of the secretaries. Ghana had in mind as a second Ghanaian secretary Nana Kobina Nketsia IV, who as Omanhene of British Sekondi was a paramount chief and with Nkrumah and others was imprisoned in 1950 for defiance of emergency regulations: Nana subsequently at Oxford took a doctorate in anthropology with a thesis on the impact of Christian missionaries on Akan social institutions. The proposed chairman Daniel Chapman, formerly Ghana ambassador to Washington and permanent representative to the United Nations after service as Cabinet secretary and head of the civil service. He too had an Oxford background with an honours degree in geography after being a school master at Achimota. Thomas advised Bing that he could be available from the following February provided that he had one short break to deliver a course of lectures already pledged. Thomas left for home on 14 December. The Principal of Somerville College Janet Vaughan wrote on 17 December to Liz with an offer of the Winifred Holtby Exhibition to be held from October 1960 (though Liz had already decided to go away from her family and taken in November the Cambridge University entrance papers: she was interviewed by Newnham and by Somerville in the second week of December and accepted an offer from Newnham). Kwame Nkrumah as Ghana Prime Minister wrote on 19 December confirming his wish that Thomas serve as a secretary to the proposed committee on the new University of Ghana and welcoming his presence in Ghana to start on the preliminary work early in the new year. Thomas and Dossie with Liz and Toby spent Christmas with Thomass mother at Crab Mill: Luke and Anna with Dominic were in the cottage at 94 Woodstock Road entertaining Pierre Marteau.

Ghanas choice of Thomas was some measure of an international standing he was gaining in the Africanist arena. In the early days of January 1960 Sir William Bragg wrote to the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics with a cluster of names including Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin for prize consideration for x-ray crystallography of proteins and this was not the first time her name had been put forward for one of the sciences. Julius Lewin on 23 January wrote to Thomas from Witwatersrand asking if Thomas might prompt an African university to confer an honorary degree on Basil Davidson for his recent book Old Africa Rediscovered. Thomass maternal aunt the twice-widowed Molly Hamilton died on 30 January the first of his mothers siblings to die and bequeathed to Dossie a thousand pounds (an echo of Frederic Hamiltons admiration for Dossie as a scientist and previous generosity to her, and lingering doubts within some of the Smith circles of Thomass political and financial soundness). Liz went away to Sudan to spend several weeks with the Bedri family at Ahfad School in Omdurman, missing a party her parents gave on 17 February for Alioune Diop on a visit to Oxford. Dossies international standing in the science arena was already well founded, and she was sounded out by Thomass former mentor Sir Charles Morris, as vice chancellor of the University of Leeds, whether she would take the professorial chair that the crystallographer Gordon Cox was leaving in the summer. Cox would be taking up the executive secretaryship of the Agricultural Research Council and Morris wrote on 26 February with a private and personal appeal to Dossie to succeed him. Dossie and Thomas felt that Leeds would be an alternative to Oxford if it provided an academic base for both of them. Dossie struggled over an interim response to Morris that would leave options open until after a discussion Morris was suggesting. Thomas was due in any case to go to the north of England. He had in the previous July been asked by a paternal cousin Charles Bosanquet, as rector of Kings College, Newcastle upon Tyne, to give the Margaret Allan Memorial lecture in the footsteps of Arthur Gaitskell and Lord Hailey and they had agreed on 10 March 1960 on the topic of The Mass Political Party in the African setting. Thomass gave an evening lecture and Dossie a lecture next day. They went for a family week-end at Rock with the Bosanquets and then to meet Morris on 13 March, in the hope of assessing the Leeds offer. They saw Morris and Asa Briggs: Briggs was supportive of the idea that Thomas should have a defined post in African studies within the history department at Leeds, but the power to ensure appointments rested with Morris who appeared sympathetic but non-committal. Thomas flew briefly to the US on 27 March to give lectures and James Coleman urged that they should have written assurances from the vice-chancellor on the universitys intentions. Thomas with Dossies help at Geldeston on 10 April composed a letter to Morris that reaffirmed a willingness to go to Leeds if it looked likely to give them both the chance to work alongside one another and asking again if Leeds had a clear commitment to Thomas and African studies. Ghana was moving into a plebiscite in April on a republican constitution and a contest for presidency between Nkrumah and Danquah. Thomass old friend Yaw Adu on 19 April as secretary to the Prime Minister signed a letter to Thomas with the formal invitation to serve as secretary to the committee on university education, and detailing those members already identified. Chapman, now headmaster of Achimota School, was a member, but the chairmanship was going to a politician and Nkrumah confidant Kojo Botsio. One of the US members would be the dean of Atlanta Universitys school of education Horace Mann Bond (president from 1945 to 1957 of

Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where Nkrumah had been a prize student in the 1930s). Thomas was scrambling with the proofs of his Nigeria book and set off for Africa with this task incomplete. He went first to Omdurman in Sudan on 23 April to spend a weekend with the Bedri household and to collect Liz to accompany him to Accra. Dorothy continued to stall the Leeds offer: the situation was complicated by intimations within the science community that she might be in line for a new style of personal science professorship the mail order businessman and philanthropist Isaac Wolfson was funding through the Royal Society to encourage research. Thomas and Liz were met on arrival in Accra by Dennis Austin and installed in a university house, with modern equipment and supplied with a cook and were visited by Nana to discuss the joint secretaryship. They met Botsio on 26 April for a brief discussion on the main lines of work, before Botsio had to go election campaigning. Nana was leaving next day to attend Togos independence ceremony. Thomas turned down the prospect of attending as he faced the task of completing the Carnegie pamphlet and continuing the Nigeria proof-reading. Thomas and Nana on 28 April had a second meeting with Botsio who was leaving for several weeks in the Soviet Union. They then saw Nkrumah who explained that the sort of a university he wanted would differ from the existing pattern with good provision for part-time evening students and plenty of African studies and Arabic. (Nana saw this formula as opening the way for Thomas to spend a year or two in Ghana on the development of African studies here, during which Dossie could take a sabbatical year and join him). Nkrumah was about to leave for a visit to Britain and might see prospective additional members of the committee (since these were likely to be scientists he was looking to Dossie for help). Thomas visited friends and acquaintances including St Clair Drake, Bill Tordoff, Polly Hill (whose husband Kenneth Humphreys had given up his job as registrar at the West African Examinations Council and gone to England to look for work) and Modje Dowuona. Thomas in early May visited Kumasi and saw the Asantehene and the Kumasi College of Technology. Dossie in London on 5 May to hear papers read at the Royal Society was tipped off by president Sir Cyril Hinshelwood that the council had just decided to offer her the first Wolfson professorship. Dossie on 6 May wrote the news to Thomas and wrote to Morris turning down the proposal of a chair at Leeds. The decision was not yet official but Dossie heard from Kathleen Lonsdale on 8 May that the decision of the council was unanimous and in a telephone call to her was encouraged to send Thomas a cable with the outcome. Her telegram arrived in Accra after Nana and Thomas at dawn on 8 May had left on an overland drive to Nigeria for discussion on university prospects and with Nigerian history sources to check and another crowd of acquaintances to be found at Ibadan: Kenneth Dike, Molly Mahood, Peter Lloyd, Kalu Ezera, Michael Crowder Charles Smith and Ayo Ogunsheye. Nana and Thomas continued to Lagos and returned to Accra on 12 May. Next day Thomass letters were sent round to him from the Prime Ministers office he used as a mailing address with Dossies telegram of the joyful news of the Wolfson chair. Thomas wrote to Dossie that he was so glad that all the problems about Leeds should have been disposed off in this best of all possible ways. and agreeing with Dossies

feeling that she should hold the professorship at Oxford: his own plans for the future while fluid did not rule out the possibility of working in Ghana on African studies once the committee was done. That evening Nana and he gave a party on the roof of the Ambassador Hotel to air the question of African studies with a mix of Ghanaian an d British academics (Kimble, Walter Birmingham and Peter Shinnie) and political personalities (Nathaniel Welbeck, Ras T.Makonnen, and the widow of the recently deceased George Padmore). Nkrumah and Michael Dei-Anang returned empty-handed from their soundings in Britain of scientists to join the committee: they were well received but turned down by the retiring chairman of ICI Sir Alexander Fleck and by the Rector of Imperial College London Sir Patrick Linstead, (names that Dossie put into consideration after a discussion Dossie had in late April with Kathleen Lonsdale). Botsio returned to Ghana on 25 May and next morning Nana and Thomas had a further talk with him about the committee. Thomas suggested Desmond Bernal as the most useful addition from Britain as a distinguished physicist and the most distinguished British Marxist. The latter characteristic counted in Bernals favour in Botsios opinion. When Nana and Thomas saw Dei-Anang later in the morning he took the same view: the idea would be put up to Nkrumah who was currently away. The committee secretaries flew to Sierra Leone for a visit of less than 24 hours to ask the new principal at Fourah Bay Dr Davidson Nicol to join the committee (valuable person to have - with his combination of Biochemistry, African history, and poetry). Nicol invited several people to his home to meet the visitors including the head of the history department Arthur Porter whom Thomas had last met at Boston University and Martin and Marion Kilson engaged on field work. Thomas heard from Dossie in Oxford that BJ was visiting her daughter Lucy there at the end of May and would like to see Thomas, but with Thomas abroad this was impossible. Thomas with five weeks work almost entirely on the committee preparations felt he had done as much as he could for the moment and that could write keynote documents in Oxford. He felt that neither he nor Nana were best fitted to ensure administrative development and he alerted Adu to the need for an effective secretariat. In a confidential report of 3 June to Botsio as chairman Thomas suggested further candidates for the committee including Oxfords professor of social anthropology Edward Evans-Pritchard, and as an agriculturist the Principal of Wye College Dunstan Skilbeck. Thomas included a reminder that he would be involved in research and teaching at McGill from midSeptember until mid-December, and again from about 12 January until April of 1960. He hoped the committee meetings could be arranged in the light of these constraints. Thomass OUP editors were increasingly anxious to have completed proofs of the Nigeria historical anthology as Nigerias independence was close at hand. Thomas, whose proof reading involved checking of references as well as the typography, still had much to do and resumed the task in Oxford in June in between the usual distractions of visitors frequently wanting to talk or ask about Africa. A doctoral candidate at Yale University William J. Foltz wrote from New York on the suggestion of Ruth Schachter about his work on the formation of the Mali Federation that would take him to West Africa for a year on a Ford Foundation grant. He would be in England en route. Thomas invited him to visit on 29 June and they were joined unexpectedly by Nevill Barbour who wanted to talk about the Maghreb.

Nkrumah took office as president of the republican Ghana on 1 July. The university committee was still under formation but the Ghana Government announced its partial composition on 26 July: Bernal and Evans-Pritchard were in and the Soviet Government had nominated a chemical engineer Nikolai Torocheshnikov. Adu writing on 2 August from the office of the Ghana president at Flagstaff House confirmed that steps were being taken to set up a small secretariat. A civil servant David Carmichael, whom Thomas had never met, was posted to the committee as he learned when he returned in early August from leave in London and soon found how elusive the key players could be. Carmichael wrote to Thomas on 16 August that Nana Nketsia was in Ibadan, that Botsio was embroiled in emergency matters and difficult to see; he did see Adu who then went off to Nyasaland. Thomas was also on the move and arrived that day in Tunisia for a brief visit with the intention of following up his 1956 encounters with the Algerian maquis. Thomass Algerian interlocutor Commandant Kaci who was to take him to the Algerian frontier was delayed when he felt obliged to attend a funeral for the father of the Tunisian Minister of Information (? Mohamed) Masmoudi. Thomas found he spent more time with politicians in the Algerian provisional government than with partisans as he hoped. Before leaving on 24 August he gathered enough material that would eventually make two Manchester Guardian feature articles in support of Algerian independence from France. He corresponded with Carmichael on the direction of the committees work, and the exchanges continued when Thomas and Dossie with Liz and Toby .went for a family holiday in the early days of September at Ramsgill in the West Riding of Yorkshire: Dossie took things gently when the others went hill climbing. They went on to see Helen Sutherland at Cockley Moor and on 10 September recrossed the mountains (Liz at the wheel in preparation for a driving test) to a broader family gathering in Bamburgh that included Luke and Anna with Dominic, the Paynes, and Mary Cowan with her daughter and son Antonia and Nicholas. Thomas began but deferred his writing tasks in favour of holiday pursuits and took them with him when he left on 18 September for Canada for the first day of the new term at McGill. After he settled in lodgings and attending Cantwell Smiths staff meeting and beginning of term party Thomas returned to the articles on Algeria, a book review for the New Statesman, the preparation of his first lecture and the drafting of papers for the Ghana university proposals. Since the committees working sessions in Ghana would cover the Christmas and New Year holiday period Skilbeck wanted to bring his wife and Evans-Pritchard his family. Carmichael on 30 September wrote to Thomas that he had suggested to Botsio that all committee members be invited to bring spouses: Botsio opted for a compromise without a general invitation but agreeing to pay fares and provide hospitality if individual members wanted to be accompanied. Dossie joined Thomas in Canada on 1 October so that they could share their respective schedules of lectures, meetings and seminars in north America in October and November (Liz was going up to Newnham College, Cambridge, for the first year of her history degree). Thomass Nigerian Perspectives was ready in time for the countrys independence, with the last stages eased by Annas inspired suggestion that her mother Winnie Davin should do the index. Thomas wrote on 2 October to Winnie regretting that he had not amended the foreword written in mid-July to reflect her subsequent contribution.

At the Rockefeller Foundation the assistant director Bob July, who had supported Thomass Islamic studies, was taking keen interest in the Ghana project and arranged calendar of appointments and meetings in New York for 11 and 12 November. Julys intention was to assist Thomas and Nana jointly. Nana, engaged in African reconciliation attempts over a constitutional crisis in the Congo, seemed to be what July in a letter of 24 October to Thomas called the worlds most elusive person. Thomas and Dossie went first to Toronto from 2 to 4 November for Dossie to meet biochemists and to lecture and they stayed with the family of a Canadian Africanist friend of Thomass Cranford Pratt who was working on East Africa. (Toronto was of particular interest to Dossie as the place where Frederick Banting had come in 1921 to the university to develop, with Charles Best, his idea for the extraction of the insulin hormone from the pancreas of dogs and where in January 1922 at the general hospital the first successful injection of insulin was administered to a patient). They went on to Philadelphia on 9 November for Dossie to give seminars - Thomas met one of the US prospective members of the Ghana committee Laura Bornholdt, dean of women at the University of Pennsylvania - and then to New York for Thomass meetings with other educationists. Thomas and Dossie had decided to follow up Botsios proposition and to go together to Ghana for the committee session, taking Toby with them: Carmichael had written on 1 November that Botsio was raising the committee to the status of The Commission on University Education in Ghana and this would require Nkrumah to sign a formal commission. Thomas and Dossie stayed in New York with a connection of Dossies science world Louise Trueblood at Dobbs Ferry. July scheduled a Yale Club breakfast on 11 November with the botanist and educator Sir Eric Ashby, chairman of the Nigerian commission on the future of higher education the report was about to be published and July had sent Thomas a draft. Ashby told Thomas privately that the commission had been more or less obliged to leave University College, Ibadan, intact because Dike who was a member of their commission was appointed principal of the University College while the commission was in operation and the other members did not want to confront him with recommendations that would tie his hands. Thomas met another member of Ashbys commission Francis Keppel, dean of Harvards Graduate School of Education, and the Ford Foundations Frank Sutton who was incubating an Africa programme. The group discussion at the Rockefeller Foundation on 12 November brought in other specialists including Columbia Universitys Karl Bigelow who was leading innovative approaches for British and American involvement in teaching in East Africa and Thomass Boston University friend Bill Brown. In a discussion on entrance qualification for the Ghana students Bigelow recalled the general education tests used in the US after the Second World War to pick out ex-servicemen for university education who lacked the formal qualifications. Thomas shared Julys hope that Nana would come to the group discussion but it clashed with a Congo reconciliation committee meeting where Nana was required as Ghanas representative. Thomas was able to talk to Nana and they brought each other up to date on the project. They were joined by Ruth Schachter whose advice Nana requested on the recruitment of students from French-speaking Africa. Bob July and his wife gave an Africanist dinner party at their apartment, enlivened for Dossie and Thomas by the presence of a Ghanaian studying choreography in New York

with a view to developing new forms of Ghanaian ballet. and for whose sake July had added an influential member of the New York ballet world to the guest list. They had the Sunday and much of Monday in New York for their own pursuits lunch with Dossies aunt Frances Hood (mother of the archaeologist Sinclair Hood who had looked after the Hodgkin family during their holiday in Greece in 1956), a visit to the Metropolitan Museum and dinner at the Carlyle with Victor Weybright and his wife the publisher of the short history of Africa that Thomas had so far failed to write. They were due to fly to Canada on 14 November but learned in the afternoon that flights were grounded by fog and went instead by the night train: they arrived at nine in the morning and Thomas thought this in good time for his ten oclock seminar. They returned to the US almost immediately Dossie leaving for Berkeley California on 17 November and Thomas following on 21 November to see James Coleman and to give lectures in Los Angeles and then had four days of holiday with science friends Eddie and Ruth Hughes and Linus and Helen Pauling. They were back in Montreal on 28 November for the last fortnight of term Dossie leaving for England on 7 December and Thomas a week later to make the Ghana journey. He had sent Carmichael working papers including one on African studies and continued to gather views on the universitys role. Thomas found a stimulating interlocutor in the principal of McGill University Cyril James, who had been in post since 1940, and relayed to Carmichael comments by James that universities during their flourishing periods including the Middle Ages had always been functional in their approach. The idea that a university should be primarily concerned with the pursuit of learning was a product of the worst period of university history, the first half of the nineteenth century. James argued that in a new, developing, society the primary function of a university should be to promote economic growth; and only insofar as it made a substantial contribution to economic growth could it enjoy the confidence of the society and its rulers. Thomas thought the approach might find a place in Botsios keynotes speech. Thomas was insistent (on moral grounds, he wrote to Carmichael) that they should not travel first class to Ghana, but the journey was made in unusual style. They were booked on an overnight flight on 16 December with Bernal and with Bing who was returning from leave. Dossie was accorded an observer or adviser status to the commission without a vote but able to participate in discussions and she and Toby were also eligible for the entertainment programme for the families of commission members. They lunched in London at the Little Acropolis restaurant with Teddy and Nancy Hodgkin and their daughter Joanna and then went to the air terminal. When they reached London airport they found the flight was delayed and as Thomas was about to buy tea they were invited by a steward to join Bing and Bernal for VIP treatment and champagne courtesy of the Ghana diplomatic mission. They were all in Accra for a swearing in of commission members on 17 December and the start of a round of cocktail parties and dinners alongside the informal and formal meetings of the commission. Thomas and Dossie on 18 December went to a christening party for the daughter of Ghanaian friends while Toby went surf-bathing with Bernal and Torocheshnikov. Carmichael had arranged a large party for the evening where Nkrumah and others would meet the commission and the families, but Nkrumah was in the event indisposed and did not attend.

The commission was formally opened on 19 December and in the run-up to Christmas the commission members, sometimes in sub-groups, visited educational institutions and landmarks in Cape Coast, Elmina, Sekondi and Takoradi (Botsio on 22 December laid a foundation stone for the Osagyefo Teachers College at Cape Coast). For Christmas the hospitality was intensified: Adu entertained the Hodgkins and Bernal for dinner on 24 December; the Hodgkins went to drinks with Peter Shinnie on the morning of 25 December before Botsios Christmas lunch for the commission (and for the Hodgkins tea with the Kimbles and supper with the Shinnies). It was the turn of the vice-chairman Daniel Chapman on 26 December to invite the commission to lunch and Bings for a buffet supper in the evening. Dowuona on 27 gave a lunch .for the Hodgkin family with Torocheshnikov and Bond. The commission on 30 December went by an overnight special train to Kumasi for a formal lunch and reception by the regional commissioner. A suggestion that they might see in the new year more informally was enthusiastically taken up by Bernal. The night club was rowdy and Toby reported to his grandmother that they had seen in the new year of 1961 with the singing of Auld lang syne and the Soviet professor Torocheshnikov dancing to Highlife music with a Ghanaian partner. Chapter 19 To Ghana with love The Commission on University Education in Ghana was in session in Kumasi for the first days of 1961, and visited the Asantehene on New Years Day. Thomas was largely retreading ground familiar to him since his first visit to the country in 1947 to initiate extra-mural and extension classes. The commission members had been chosen for a range of competences and were meeting after nearly a year of preparation of background papers and collection of representations from individuals and institutions, especially within Ghana. They represented a broad spectrum of opinion that had somehow to be subsumed within a collective report that could in a preliminary but substantive form be submitted as the commission disbanded. The regional visit was in expectation that the Kumasi College of Technology would become integral with the University College at Legon in a prospective University of Ghana. The requirement of a decision within days responded to the Ghana governments wishes and was an understanding from the early stages: Thomas in his progress report of the previous June had projected a timetable of sessions from 17 to 23 December 1960 and from resumption after the Christmas and Boxing Day festivities to 10 January for the preparation of a report. Davidson Nicol had in early October urged on Botsio that the members should reconvene in March. Botsio was initially sympathetic but Nkrumah wanted a January report. The terms of reference suggested that the commission was looking at a single University of Ghana, but Nkrumah was keen to see a new university college at Cape Coast which hinted at two or more universities in the future and looked pre-emptive of the commissions power to make recommendations. Other sensitive issues were the role of African and expatriate staff in the future and the status of existing expatriate staff in the university colleges. The commission members (Botsio, Chapman, Bernal, Bond, Bornholt, Nicol, EvansPritchard, Skilbeck and Torocheshnikov) initialled a draft report in time for Botsio on 11 January to submit the findings to Nkrumah, with the proviso that it was subject to

amendment in respect of detail. They reported on the assumption of a single university: Bornholdt and Bond from the United States left as did Evans-Pritchard and Thomas with his family (Toby was due back at Magdalen College School in Oxford). Other members of the commission heard on 14 January that Nkrumah wanted two independent universities, one at Legon and one at Kumasi. The rump of the commission in discussion on 16 January decided to recommend to the commission as a whole a revision of the draft report at least to recast recommendations on the constitution of a single university to meet the needs of separate institutions (which would in any case have been a preference for some commission members). A process of revision by correspondence was begun and Carmichael undertook a round of overseas visits to discuss the further report with individual members and try to reconcile any divergences. Thomas, after a weeks break in Oxford and at Crab Mill, went on 21 January to Montreal to resume his McGill seminars. He found on arrival that Cantwell Smith wanted an immediate note by Thomas about future prospects for Muslim African studies in the Institute, which Thomas prepared by excluding himself as far as possible from any direct part in the plans. He was disoriented by the start of another separation from Dossie and wrote to her on 23 January that he wanted to find a way of staying put in Oxford to write and going with her when he went to Africa. He telephoned Ruth Schachter in the United States who wanted Thomas to discuss the first chapters of her book draft on political parties in French-speaking West Africa and she said she would visit for the weekend. Thomas wrote on 25 January to Nkrumah to say that he and his family had all enjoyed their stay in Ghana and regretting that the report was prepared in a hurry. A rapidly corrected version was circulated in late January. Bornholdt was unhappy on a technical ground that additional paragraphs on university constitution had been formulated outside the commission session. Torocheshnikov had reservations on possible obstacles to Africanisation of university teaching staff. Thomass resolve to be at home in England was wavering. He sent Dossie a copy of the letter to Nkrumah and in a covering letter to her an ambivalent signal that he would like a university work room as a base of operations in Oxford while acknowledging that if he were definitely wanted in Ghana for two or three years on a reasonably part-time basis it would be difficult not to respond. Ruth and Thomas worked during the weekend on her draft book and Thomas when writing to Dossie on 29 January mused: Ruth is here, but doesnt believe clearly in sleeping together and, though in a way this is disappointing, in other and more fundamental ways its a good deal of a relief really, as you will know from past experiences! My basic instincts and desires being always magnanimous and you-centred so that this other way of living always feels a kind of deviation even though we had thoughts that it would be a way of making these two months more supportable. Bob July visiting the Institute on 31 January was cautious about Cantwell Smiths expansion proposals, partly because Cantwell Smith indicated that Thomass role was central to the proposal and Thomas said he could not commit himself to anything without consultation with Dossie and consideration of other factors. July showed more enthusiasm for the prospect of an Institute of African Studies in Ghana. Dossie in Oxford was actively pursuing the notion of an Oxford academic base for Thomas. Their friend Sally Chilver as Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies had hinted at the possibility of a part-time research fellowship. She was dining in Somerville on 16 February and Dossie arranged for her to be brought round to 94 Woodstock Road later in

the evening. Sally Chilver told Dossie there could be a choice between a basement or attic room in the Keble Road building and likewise space for Thomas when the Institute moved to Queen Elizabeth House in the following year (Thomas had a slight penchant for the group around Albert Hourani at St Antonys). Thomas was conscious of the inconvenience of being in Oxford but not of Oxford. Ruth Schachter had recommended Thomass writings and personality to a United States researcher James Spiegler whose interest in French politics and third world nationalism had been stimulated by a chance meeting with Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Spiegler after studying in Paris joined Nuffield College and wanted to work with Thomas as university advisor. Thomas warned that he had no formal status in Oxford University. Spiegler under insitutional pressure to work under Margery Perham and Kenneth Kirkwood secured Kirkwoods agreement in principle for Thomas to be the university advisor alongside the reluctant Margery Perham as college advisor. Botsio had decided to send Carmichael to see Thomas in Montreal to work on the Ghana universities draft report before it was again circulated to commission members. Since the visit was scheduled for the weekend of 18 February Thomas took Carmichael to Dillys in Ottawa where they spent several hours on the redrafting. Thomas was pleased to be able to bring back a good deal of the original document which might assuage those who disapproved of the operations of the rump commission. Several of the younger members of the Hodgkin Oxford family circle and Luke and Anna were joining the Bertrand Russell Committee of 100 meeting in Trafalgar Square and the anti-Polaris sit-in outside the Ministry of Defence on 18 February Liz coming from Cambridge. Lucy Gaster was there with her mother BJ to whom she pointed out Liz disappearing into the distance at the sit-down. Dossie was replying to confidential notice that Cambridge and Manchester Universities wished to award her honorary doctorates. Thomas had agreed to give a talk in Toronto on 23 February to a UNESCO conference on Africa, and found time to go to dinner with Cranford Pratt and his wife Renate. Carmichael was travelling on to meet Laura Bornholdt and other commission members, albeit with an element of window dressing. Nkrumah in Ghana had set up an Interim Council for Higher Education and Research, with subordinate working parties, to prepare for the establishment of the Universities of Ghana in September that year. Nkrumah wrote to Thomas on 24 February thanking him and Dossie for their contribution to the commission deliberations. He was supportive of Thomass perspective on African studies: I have taken note of the points you have raised in your letter regarding, in particular, the establishment of the Institute of African Studies which, as you know, is regarded as one of the most important developments which the Universities of Ghana should undertake. Without it, they will not have the personality which Africanbased universities must have if they are to make any contribution at all to human knowledge and experience. He hoped that Thomas and Evans-Pritchard would help in this and would sound out the US foundations for financial assistance. Thomas sent off to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace the corrected proofs of the contribution with Ruth Schachter on French-speaking West Africa, and turned his thoughts to an appendix for the African Political Parties book long promised to David and Helen Kimble for Penguin. An echo from Thomass past as a fairly frequent contributor to the Spectator came with a letter from Anthony Hartley, now on Encounter, sending a galley proof of an article

by Elspeth Huxley on African Personality and seeking a remunerated riposte of five to seven thousand words from Thomas within five weeks. Thomas was sufficiently stirred by the Huxley piece to agree to attempt a counterblast. He wrote on 2 March a birthday letter to BJ with a suggestion that she and Jack come to stay in Oxford in the summer. He had more work to do next day on the Ghana report, since Carmichael had sent a version modified to take account of observations by commission members some of which Thomas found legalistic. He sent to Carmichael a pragmatic view that so far as truth is concerned, you have to choose between oversimplification and writing a three-volume novel. The compromise of writing a few paragraphs of such a novel has all the disadvantages of both solutions. He begrudged the time on unnecessary tasks and the narcolepsy and sleep disorder diagnosed in 1936 continued to limit his productivity the long-term writing commitments had to be fitted in with the preparation and conduct of weekly seminars and other lecture engagements. [Pine Avenue Roman feast] With Dossie preparing to rejoin Thomas in Montreal he wrote on 14 March that he was almost out of Benzedrine and asking Dossie to secure a new prescription from the family physician James Gillett and when she came the following week to bring a fresh supply made up at the pharmacist. Thomas and Dossie were in demand for lectures in the US from a start at Evanston and Chicago (Melville J. Herskovits and his wife Francis were looking forward to seeing them at Northwestern) and for a widely publicised series of five lectures that Thomas was to give in early April on Islam in Africa in Boston Universitys African studies program. Martin Kilson who had returned to Harvard after his work in Sierra Leone wrote on 22 March asking if they would spend some time with him and his wife Marion at their Cambridge apartment. Thomas and Dossie on 23 March had a serious talk with Cantwell Smith about Thomass future and McGill. Thomas supported by Dossie turned down an offer of an associate professorship with the Institute. BJ on 23 March in a reciprocal letter to Thomas for his birthday in early April remarked that their friend Mary Fisher (now Mrs Bennett) had been reviewing in The Times Literary Supplement Thomass St Anthonys Paper on the language of African nationalism. Mary Bennett on a visit to Ghana had sent BJ a letter (with a parrot on the stamp) describing all the marvellous birds there. Thomas returned from the Boston lecture week to an unstructured summer in Oxford that would allow time for writing. James Coleman, on a visit to Ibadan, wrote on 14 April asking for a completion date on a Mali chapter promised by Thomas and Ruth Schachter for a collection edited by Jim Coleman and Carl Rosberg on political parties in tropical Africa (Martin Kilson was writing a Sierra Leone chapter). Ronald Segal, as general editor of an African Library series to be launched by Penguin, write from London on the same date seeking a short book from Thomas on African history to be delivered within three or four months. Segal editor of Africa South and the editorial board had a wish list that included with Thomas: Modibo Keita, Leopold Senghor, Chief Albert Luthuli and Jack Simons of the University of Cape Town (the history paperback contracted by Weybright in December 1958 remained unwritten, though in December 1959 Weybright had negotiated hardcover publication with World Publishing in New York and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London).

Thomass apparent poor health was arousing the familys concern. He was coughing a great deal and Joan Payne thought this was due to his smoking (she had given up smoking when she found herself coughing too much). In the last days of Tobys holidays before he returned to school on 22 April Thomas spent several afternoons playing golf with him at Frilford. BJ visiting Lucy in Oxford on 20 May the Saturday of the Whitsun weekend brought her family to visit the Hodgkin family though the stay proposed by Thomas had dwindled to an almost formal tea party at 94 Woodstock Road. Thomas at a distance was trying to follow events in Ghana, especially in the university context. On reading a report in The Times on 27 May that the Ghana Government was cancelling the contracts of Legon teaching staff he was sufficiently alarmed to send an urgent protest to Nkrumah that a decision to cancel all contracts which will be regarded simply as a piece of legal jugglery, designed to get rid of the unwanted is likely, surely, to unite the teaching staff including those Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians who are most valuable and whom the University is going to need most badly over the next few years in opposition to the Government and the interim National Council. He argued that Legon needed a reforming vice-chancellor working in close co-operation with the National Council and not reforms imposed from outside. The academic board of the University College of Ghana passed a resolution on 31 May defending the principle that universities must themselves have the right to appoint (and by implication to terminate the appointment of) their own staff. Nkrumahs office cabled on 1 June an acknowledgment of Thomass letter and promising an early reply (a letter from the cabinet secretary Enoch Okoh followed a week later). David Carmichael, who was serving as secretary of the interim National Council, wrote separately and privately to Thomas on 2 June about a view taken by Geoffrey Bing as Attorney-General that with the abolition in law of the university colleges the prior staff agreements and contracts became invalid. Nkrumah intervened to try to defuse the threat to academic staff. Carmichael disclosed that Nana Nketsia was being persuaded to accept the post of interim Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, on condition that it was only for a few months, and that Nana was enthusiastic that Thomas should come out to work with the university. Thomas on 28 June wrote again to Nkrumah, accepting that the main issue had been cleared up and welcoming the appointment of interim vice-chancellors, but urging a continuing role for Modje Dowuona as academic registrar Thomas recalled an association with Dowuona since 1947. Thomas was keeping in touch with Africanists from both sides of the Atlantic (including Gervase Mathew, Basil Davidson and Philip Curtin) and with the Anti-Slavery Society in London. Thomas and Curtin read proofs for Basil Davidson of his book on slavery Black Mother. Davidson wrote on 28 June thanking Thomas for valuable points that made him feel confident the book made no howlers. Sally Chilver wrote on 29 June confirming progress on making a niche in Oxford for Thomas: working accommodation was secure; Hourani was enthusiastic about the idea of Thomas running seminars and lecturing. Support and possible finance came from Bill Williams at Rhodes House and her own successor at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and she thought the Rockefeller Foundation might provide research funding. Thomas accepted an invitation from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania to be one of

five participants in the following year in a lecture series on self-government in developing nations - which would require an accompanying publishable text. Thomas attended the third of Roland Olivers four-yearly conferences on African history and archaeology held in London in from 3 to 7 July and provided a paper on Islam and national movements in West Africa that synthesised the lecture series he had given in Boston in April and the seminars he had been offering at McGill in the past two years. In conference discussion on Arabic manuscript materials for African history he appealed for international co-operation in the study of this historical resource within Africa. In Oxford again he was working on another subject in a paper on the idea of freedom in African national movements. This was promised for an international anthropology conference in Austria to be held early in August at Gloggnitz under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. He was preparing also for a longish journey to the Horn and East Africa. Since Dossie had tasks she wanted to do in Germany she and Thomas decided to combine the Austria conference with a family holiday, going initially by car and taking Liz and Toby and Joan Paynes daughter Sue. Thomas heard that All Souls was considering appointing a senior research fellow and he wrote on 28 July to Isaiah Berlin for advice on whether and how he might pursue this, while admitting that he was quite contented going on working on the subjects that interest me, not bothering much about where I belong. Thomas crossed into France on 30 July, travelled via Liechtenstein to Gloggnitz for the conference phase from 2 to 11 August. Isaiah wrote on 2 August from his vacation address at Santa Margharita in Italy that he saw no reason why Thomas should not apply to All Souls but disclosing that the college was really looking for an additional economist. He warned that decisions were unpredictable since they were taken by a literally democratic ochlocratic majority vote. He encouraged Thomas to write to the Warden John Sparrow: you might add that you were not elected in 1932 through sheer blindness, even tho you it is that says it. Thomass conference had an intensive schedule that limited his time with the family. He took a complete afternoon off on the last day for a mountain walk with Liz, Toby and Sue Thomas earning a reprimand in consequence from the conference chairman from Indiana. On a sudden whim of Thomass in Austria the family group went on by train to Greece, arriving on 13 August to spend two days with Austen Harrison at his house at Limni in Euboea. They took a boat on 16 August from Piraeus to Alexandria and on 19 August on to Cairo where an old acquaintance Harold Beeley was ambassador. Teddy Hodgkin had written to Beeley and to a friend from Teddys Iraq service Geoffrey Arthur (like John Richmond a political officer) who was now Counsellor in the Embassy under Beeley. Arthur was living in a large official house (built by John Richmonds father Ernest Richmond as government architect in Egypt) with many rooms and servants and gave hospitality to the travellers. After a few days of comfort and luxury the caravan moved on to Luxor and Aswan (Thomas mildly sprained his ankle on 26 August by slipping on the marble staircase of the Grand Hotel) and by boat to Wadi Halfa on the Nile and by train to Khartoum where they visited the Bedri family in Omdurman and friends in the university or at Ahfad School. Dossie and Toby left for Britain on 12 September Thomas was very conscious that this was virtually his first separation from Dossie in nearly six months since March. Luke was taking up a fellowship at St Johns College and he and Annie pregnant with their second child had in July moved into a new home (a house rented from the college at 93

Woodstock Road) where Dossie came to see them soon after her arrival in Oxford on 13 September. Yusuf Bedri as Thomass host in Omdurman invited the Sudanese politician and Ansar personality Sadiq al-Mahdi to lunch. Sadiq stayed on for several hours and Thomas enjoyed a prolonged discussion about the history of the Mahdiyya and contemporary Sudanese politics. He had decided not to apply to All Souls and had written to Isaiah of his decision provided that Isaiah did not have a strongly contrary view. Thomas with Liz travelled on 14 September by train to Kassala near the Sudan border with Ethiopia, crossing on 16 September and going on by shared taxi and by bus to Asmara in Ethiopias Eritrea province. Dossie attended a party in Oxford given by the Baroness Kinloss and her archaeologist husband Greville Freeman-Grenville, who had just been appointed education adviser to the Aden Protectorate administration and was keen that Thomas should come and stay in Aden. Toby with his youthful active involvement in nuclear disarmament campaigning had planned to attend a demonstration in London called for 17 September by the Committee of 100 and found on return that this had been banned (Earl Russell after speaking at a Hiroshima vigil in Hyde Park in August was in Brixton Prison for a week for inciting civil disobedience). Toby wanted to persist and was taken by Dossie to the Oxford assembly point at the Martyrs Memorial. When she noted a shortage of cars she responded on the spur of the moment the Hodgkins car with Tobys school house master Freddy Porter to drive it, and as many of the Oxford demonstrators were non-sitters she decided to go as well. Toby with a friend Nicholas Lampert during the demonstration separated from the adults. The latter were about to return to the parked car and Oxford. Almost immediately they met by chance Linus and Helen Pauling who were en route from Germany to the United States and had come into an ad hoc peace conference in London. They talked and watched for a couple of hours: Toby and Nicholas joined the sitters for several hours but were not among the more than a thousand demonstrators whom the police arrested and mostly sent in batches through the magistrates courts for one pound fines. Ruth Schachter coming to the close of several months of her own travel in Africa joined Thomas and Liz in Asmara for a couple of days discussion on three more draft chapters of her book. Ruth declined to join the three day bus ride through the mountains to Addis Ababa that Thomas and Liz were keen to undertake: she was going via Rome and Paris to Oxford and then back to her classes in Boston. Thomas and Liz did on 20 September begin the journey, making overnight stops in extremely modest hotels where accommodation cost a few shillings a night. They were met on arrival (on 23 September Lizs twentieth birthday) in the Addis Ababa bus station by Sudans ambassador their friend Jamal Mohammed Ahmed. Later in the week they went by train to Dire Dawa on 29 September continued by car to Harar to explore the old city, inadvertently coinciding with a visit by Emperor Haile Selassie to the Military Academy prize which gave them more insight into Ethiopian modern history and less into Harari ancient history than Thomas had expected. Dossie in London on 29 September for a Chinese national day party crowded with guests ran into Jack Gaster and BJ BJ said she was sitting near Toby on the 17 September demonstration but took her younger children away early while Lucy stayed on with her

boyfriend John Syson and was arrested. Ruth Schachter looked in on Dossie on 30 September with recent news of Thomas and Liz. Dossie in Oxford and Thomas in Addis Ababa were closely following news of a political convulsion in Ghana: a faltering economy, a railway and harbours strike put down, a rising ascendancy for Tawia Adamafio, a presidential journey to Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China, and a purge of some of the party old guard ostensibly as a drive against corruption. Anna had a daughter on 3 October Kathy named not for dynastic reasons but in reference to the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield and Liz left Addis Ababa on 4 October to return for Cambridge term. Carmichael had sent Thomas a letter that had followed him to Sudan asking him to come to Ghana. After Thomas had seen Liz safely off he went round to the Ghana Embassy and found a telegram asking him to come to Accra at Ghana Government expense and to advise on an Institute of African Studies. He spent a couple of hours at with Embassy officials gathering background on forced resignations that included Botsio and detentions that included Danquah which he felt sure was a mistake that Nkrumah might be persuaded to reverse. Thomas with much misgiving prepared to leave on 8 October for an exploratory few days in Ghana after which he would resume his plan of visiting Somalia. He went on 6 October to the Somali charg daffaires Abdurrahman Hussain Mohamoud to request a visa, but the mission of this recently independent country had no equipment to issue visas and directed him to the Italian consulate, or the Somali consul in Aden might have the appropriate stamps. Thomas riposted that he would rather try in Aden than approach an ex-colonial power (thinking to take up the Freeman-Greville invitation relayed in a letter from Dossie). He travelled on 8 October via Khartoum and Lagos to Accra where he went to David and Helen Kimble and found David preparing a departure to Tanganyika to work with Cranford Pratt and to establish an Institute of African Studies and Administration in Dares-Salaam. Thomas met many Ghanaian and expatriate friends on the visit but his principal contacts were with Nana Nketsia and with David Carmichael over the next stages in the universities and over the substantive choice of a vice-chancellor for Legon. Thomas on 13 October went with Nana to Kumasi to see Nanas counterpart Bob Baffour, and Carmichael urged Thomas to stay long enough to see a possible British candidate for Legon. Nana was encouraging and David Kimble was discouraging about Thomass own participation in the new university; Carmichael agreed with Thomass stance of avoiding any commitment until he could with Dossie in Oxford discuss the matter at a detached distance. Nana was holding a consultation meeting of Ghanas ambassadors in Africa and Thomas was persuaded to lecture to them on 16 and 17 October. Thomas followed up a telephone conversation with Dossie on 17 October with the written observation: The vicechancellor, whoever he may be, is going to have a fairly tough time ahead of him, and will have to combine tremendous strength of character and clear sense of direction with a lot of diplomacy and the ability to preserve Kwames confidence. Thomas regarded the historian Adu Boahen as a good candidate but one unlikely to meet with Nkrumahs approval and the classical scholar Alex Kwapong as an alternative. He planned to take the opportunity before returning to East Africa of going to Bamako to for a refresher on what had become the Republic of Mali that would feed into the Mali chapter for the Coleman collection.

Thomas was taken on 19 October for a private interview with Nkrumah who asked what Thomas thought of the British candidate and Thomas replied that he favoured a Ghanaian solution. To Thomas it seemed that Nkrumah was taking for granted that he would come and run the Institute of African Studies: Nkrumah portrayed this as the heart of the university. Nkrumah spoke rather of current African tensions that were on his mind between Somalia and Ethiopia, Morocco and Mauritania, the prospects for regional economic union. Nkrumah recounted how on his Soviet Union visit he saw elements of autonomy for the various republics. When the conversation did move to university matters Nkrumah offered reassurances that there would be adequate resources and a clear policy of non-interference with research workers and teachers handling current controversial questions objectively. On the vicechancellorship Nkrumah was aware of several potential Ghanaians but had a preference initially for an expatriate out of concern that the University of Ghana should stand well with the world of universities. Thomas reiterated his own fear of Ghanaians and good expatriate members of staff leaking away to other universities, and of the difficulties of recruiting additional academically able Ghanaians to the staff if the university did not seem a happy place in which to work. Nkrumah assented, and it was in Thomass mind to underline the preventive detention of Danquah and others. Instead he made a special plea for Dowuona, either as registrar or with a proposed Ghana University Press. Thomas on 20 October travelled on to Mali. He had at the ambassadorial gathering in Accra met the Ghana resident minister to Mali [? Andrew Amagacher] who gave him free run of his house in Bamako in his own absence. Thomas made a round of government ministers and party leaders (several already known from earlier visits). He felt he was growing old for fact-finding about political parties and was soon drawn back to the excellent library of the ex-IFAN and his friend the historian Amadou Hampat B. Freeman-Grenville had cabled confirmation that Thomas was expected in Aden and Thomas left Mali on 29 October for a series of flights through Abidjan, Lagos and Khartoum a two night stop with the Bedri household before he could find a seat on a flight to Aden. On the Lagos to Khartoum leg he found himself travelling with David Kimble on his way to Dar-es-Salaam and with Ghanas Ambassador to Ethiopia Miguel Augusto Ribeiro who as the Achimota senior history master had made a strong impression on Thomas when they met there in 1947 during Thomass first visit to Africa. Thomas spent the day and the evening of 31 October with various Sudanese intellectuals (including friend Mohamed Omer Beshir now the universitys academic secretary) and remarked to Kimble that if he could choose where in Africa to live he would choose Omdurman rather than any of the other places he knew. Thomas in Aden from 2 November made contact with trade unionists and tried to disentangle their opposition to a proposed Aden Federation they expected would be run by feudal rulers Freeman-Grenville in the Secretariat regarded such fears as groundless. Thomas in the absence of the Somali consul-general could not procure a visa and left on 6 November with a letter of introduction from the acting consul requesting a visa provided at Freeman-Grenvilles insistence. Dossie in Oxford went for a drink with Evans-Pritchard at the Lamb & Flag, near St Johns College, to discuss Ghana prospects. She wrote to Thomas that Evans-Pritchard was strongly in favour of Thomas going into the university - with a hope of stopping the rot and that this required an act of faith due to Africa. Thomas in Mogadisciu was making friends with the museum and antiquities

director a Somali poet William Syad, who had been educated at the Sorbonne, was associated with Alioune Diop and Prsence Africaine and a friend of Pierre Marteau. Thomas changed plans so as to linger at the museum and study its collection of Arabic funerary inscriptions. He remained absorbed in cultural interests, talked to some diplomats but made no round of politicians. Thomas was committed to Makerere for several lectures on his recurrent themes of political parties and Islam in Africa and left Mogadisciu on 10 November for Uganda with a transit stop in Nairobi (airline accommodation in what Thomas described as the terrible settlers hotel the Norfolk: Not much sign of the Africans having taken over there yet.) Thomas was met on arrival at Entebbe on 11 October by Cherry Gertzel of the University College who had contributed a paper on nineteenth century trade in the Niger Delta to the London conference in July and written a favourable review of Thomass Nigerian Perspectives in the second volume of the Journal of African History She gave him lunch with the college principal Bernard de Bunsen, an acquaintance of long standing and helped with a schedule of lectures and parties for Thomas. He lectured on 13 November on African political parties during the period from 1945 to 1960 and drew distinctions between inter-territorial parties, territorial parties, regional-ethnic parties and dwarf parties. Thomas was invited to Ghana for the celebrations marking the opening of the University of Ghana but decided not to go, commenting on 14 November in a letter to Dossie that he did not feel like celebrating at the moment and wanted to stay at home for a while once this round of travel was complete. Dossie was writing that day to tell him that David Carmichael had sent to Oxford an official letter from the University of Ghana offering Thomas the post of director of the Institute of African Studies at 3,000 a year with housing and numerous fringe benefits, including a term a year away from Ghana, passages home for a spouse and up to five children most years, a study travel allowance, childrens allowances, housing, excess baggage allowances for him and his family. The University asked for an urgent reply to their London office. Thomas carried on with commitments to Cranford Pratt the first principal of the University College of Dar-es-Salaam where he went on 16 November. He managed on 18 December to squeeze in a day in Zanzibar (arranged by the American Consul ??? Stuart P. Lillico whom he met on the flight from Nairobi to Entebbe and who introduced himself as having heard Thomas lecture in Ghana in 1958). Julius Nyerere came to dinner on 19 November and Thomas left on 20 November. The first copies of Thomass Penguin book African Political Parties were circulating and were enthusiastically received by his peers. Thomas was consulting widely among colleagues and friends on his response to the Ghana offer. Cantwell Smith wrote from McGill on 22 November urging him to reconsider Montreal rather than Accra, on the grounds that he might do more with relations with all of Africa than he could from the Ghana situation in the short term. Coleman wrote from California on 25 November wishing that Thomas would be spending time there, but pointing to two sets of interests of Thomas and of Ghana that were neither necessarily incompatible or coincident: Given the trend of events in Ghana, it seems to me that to have your leadership in an important segment of the intellectual life of the university is of transcendental importance for Ghana and for the maintenance of some sort of continuous link between the University of Ghana and the world of

scholarship. He saw Thomas as a special case: you more than any other European known to me have the capacity for establishing and maintaining that rapport and confidence requisite for success in the delicate circumstances now prevailing in Ghana .and concluded that duty and opportunity made an overwhelming argument for acceptance of the offer. Basil Davidson wrote from London on 27 November urging him to give serious consideration to the Ghana appointment in the hope that Nkrumah would overcome the confusion in Ghana. Independently of Coleman he pointed to Thomass unusual qualities: you are probably the only person of any nationality who combines the authority, experience, broadmindedness, enlightenment and enthusiasm to drive this Institute into constructive paths and keep it there. Thomas posed the question to other friends such as Gervase Mathew he could see in Oxford and London. By early December he felt that he was being propelled towards Ghana almost despite his own views. John Fage who had been away in Senegal wrote from London on 22 December pointing to the complexities of any decision. His acquaintances who had attended the university inauguration were depressed at the trend of things. Conversely he had in recent days been in close touch with Ivor Wilks and the musicologist Kwabena. Nketia and gained the impression that the prospects for the Institute might be more promising than for the university as a whole. He saw Nketia as a potential director but concluded that Thomas with wide experience and reputation would be a powerful force for good in the early years of the Institute and should take up the job for two or three years. By the time Thomas and his family had spent the end of 1961 together at Crab Mill he had made up his mind to take up the Ghana task in the new year with an absence in February to keep previous lecture engagements in the US and Canada. It was a calculated risk to weigh against the work room that had now been arranged for him at Queen Elizabeth House in Oxford. Thomass repeated absences from Oxford were a disappointment to Jim Spiegler who had struggled against an Oxford establishment to be under his supervision and who had moved to Oxford for the 1961 academic year. Thomas planned to fly to Ghana on 15 January 1962, but had to postpone departure when he was admitted instead to the Tropical Diseases Hospital in London with a suspected amoeba and where the doctors found him well except for lungs that were damaged by whooping cough in childhood and other ailments and by smoking in adult life: Your lungs are much older than you are, one doctor told him: he was advised to give up smoking. After this delay he arrived in Accra on 26 January and was issued with a two year residence permit - Dossie accompanied Thomas for the first week and helped him settle into a university house at 33 Little Legon. She reached England on 7 February: Thomas was on the move again on 10 February leaving Accra for a fleeting visit to Oxford and to the US on 14 February to go to Swarthmore in Pennsylvania for a promised lecture on self-government for developing nations. He visited Nkrumahs old university Lincoln on 15 February - in response to an unexpected request to give a talk on the study of African history - and delivered his main lecture on 18 February. He was juggling ties and obligations on the west and east coasts. He went to Los Angeles on 21 February to see James Coleman and found himself expected to give a seminar on Islam and Pan-Africanism, and encouraged by the presence of students from half a dozen different African countries. He had to give a lecture to a

larger audience on 22 February and re-used his Swarthmore presentation. He was invited to lunch on 23 February by his step-third-cousin-once removed Ned Munger now responsible for African studies at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena through a discipline of political geography. Thomas gave a seminar on developments in African historiography: a broad audience included a doctoral student in theoretical physics Norman Dombey who had taken his first degree at Oxford and been a friend of Lukes and a visitor to Luke and Anna at the cottage in the Hodgkin garden. Thomas visited or met several of Dossies scientist friends as well including the Trueblood and Pauling families. (David Apter now at the University of California heard later indirectly of Thomass visit to the west coast and was hurt at what he interpreted as a curtain of silence). Thomas flew east to Boston and Harvard: Ruth Schachter and Martin Kilson both wanted Thomas to look through their respective book drafts and Thomas was scheduled to speak to a Harvard freshmens seminar on 26 February. He had an imperfect sense of American geography and was embroiled in a travel plan to New York and to Columbus Ohio and on to Canada for Montreal and Ottawa. In New York he saw Bob July and others at the Rockefeller Foundation for a discussion about university prospects in Ghana and US interest in supporting a medical school, and attended a Columbia seminar where he was in the hands of Immanuel Wallerstein. After an arduous journey to Columbus Thomas made a dinner speech to Ohio State University history students and drew again on the Swarthmore material. He flew to Montreal on 1 March and spent a weekend with Dillys family in Ottawa. Thomas in the US was hearing suggestions of possible vice-chancellors for Legon. Nkrumahs choice had fallen on the Irish diplomat Conor Cruise OBrien who had recently been playing a controversial role in the attempted settlement of the Congo crisis and incurred British displeasure. OBrien reluctant to take on a problematic Ghana situation was invited with his newly married second wife Maire MacEntee to visit Accra and to consider the university appointment. Dossie on Thomass behalf was encouraged when she read in The Observer on 4 March that OBrien had accepted the job. Thomas was mindful of his lingering obligation to Spiegler and encouraging him to follow to Ghana. Jim and his future wife Madeleine Meyer due to marry in March decided to go to Ghana after Jim had completed his first year in Oxford and Mado had completed research on materials in Paris. Thomas travelled back to Accra on 6 March on an overnight direct flight. The talk of the OBriens and Ireland turned his mind to BJ and he wrote her a letter marking her fiftieth birthday on 2 March. Thomas was pleased to find that Ben Affia from Calabar in Nigera, who was cook at 33 Little Legon, had installed his wife and four children in the quarters and there was a temporary guest the Ghanaian scholar Willie Abraham. Abraham was being offered an associate professorship in the philosophy department. Dossie for her visit in the following term was to be an honorary visiting professor. The faculty of arts and social studies board meeting on 7 March gave approval in principle for MA degree proposals and a blueprint for a diploma in African music devised by Thomass colleague Kwabena Nketia. Thomas and Willie on 11 March entertained to supper Polly Humphreys currently looking at the cassava trade and wanting to join the Institute of African Studies. Thomas left on 14 March for the Easter vacation in Britain during which

his houseguest left for a university flat in Legon Hall after his associate professorship became effective from 1 April. Thomas and Dossie returned to Legon on 15 April for Thomas continue establishing the Institute and Dossie continuing her own work within the chemistry department. Thomas somewhat enfeebled by a bout of sinusitis and a suspected tape worm. Ruth Schachter wrote from Boston that on 9 May she would add Morgenthau to her name by marrying an educational television programme maker Henry Morgenthau (from a distinguished family: father US Secretary of the Treasury; grandfather US Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 196 and active opponent of the Armenian massacres). They planned to take Nigerian Perspectives on their honeymoon, and for Ruth to resume her Mali work by late May. Liz in Cambridge dined in hall in Newnham on 18 May where a fellow student Jan Penney, with whom Liz was planning to live out in the same house in the next year, had brought as guest a London visitor Polly Gaster Jack and BJs younger daughter. Thomas was in Nigeria from 23 to 28 May looking at historical material collected by colleagues and Dossie returned to her Oxford and international scientific work. Thomas, lonely in the separation after several weeks with Dossie at Legon, spent several evenings with Polly Hill lonely after her husband Kenneth Humphreys had left her to bring up their daughter Susannah alone: they consoled each other for their sense of loss. Thomas was also cheered and distracted by university tasks. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, born in 1868 and a founding personality in the history of Pan-Africanism, visited the Hodgkins in Oxford in 1960 and on 7 October in that year had appealed to Thomas and fourteen other scholars for support for a long-held dream of an Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois since 1961 was living in Nkrumahs Ghana to pursue this quest with financial support under the aegis of the Ghana Academy of Learning. Thomas on 2 June 1962 gave a lunch party at 33 Little Legon for Du Bois and his wife Shirley Graham to discuss with dons how they might help. The guests included Adu Boahen, Nana Nketsia, Kwabena Nketia, Jock De Graft Johnson, Ivor Wilks and Dennis Austen who was staying with Thomas and as Thomas confessed in writing to Dossie, did much of the organising. When Burghardt Du Bois withdrew to a bedroom for a rest the conversation moved on to a dictionary of African biography and which forebears of the Ghanaian discussants might be included or omitted. Nana invited Thomas to call on 15 June to talk to Hastings Banda, visiting from Nyasaland with Kanyama Chiume, and contemplating sending students to the university: Thomass contact with Banda dated back to the Elfinsward conference of October 1950. Liz had accepted an invitation to use part of her Cambridge vacation for some weeks of tutoring on a course at Tsito (recruited through Thomass friend and colleague Stephen Andoh) and arrived in Accra on 17 June. Thomas was leaving Accra for a five day expedition to Yendi and Kete Krachi in the north of Ghana to seek out Arabic or Hausa manuscripts as sources of history accompanying Boahen and Wilks and Al-Hajj Osman Eshaka Boyo, a devout elderly man from Kintampo who would help with making contacts and translation, and a driver Kwaku Acquah. The argument put to the imams and ulama was that in the past the history of Ghana had been written incorrectly by colonial minded historians who largely ignored Islam. The travellers hoped to copy documents that would allow the history to be rewritten with proper attention to the importance of Islam. Documents were shown and promised in response to this appeal.

Meanwhile in a context of controversial French nuclear tests in the Sahara Nkrumah had called an International Disarmament Assembly in Accra that opened on 21 June with several friends of Thomas and Dossie among the participants. Thomas on 24 June took Bernal to see Du Bois in poor health and on 25 June was persuaded by Nana to come to the Ghana Academy of Sciences reception hosted by Nkrumah for the disarmament delegates, diplomats and the like. Nana with Willie Abraham collected Thomas who had planned to take Bernal from the reception to dinner with Sudans gregarious ambassador Abdullahi al-Hassan (Bernal wanted a party on his last night in Accra). Thomas was almost more intrigued by the location of the reception than the event since it was held in the Black Star Arch on Accras new ceremonial square. He found within the arch a series of rooms served by a lift and an array of expected and unexpected friends and acquaintances including the Ghanaian judge Nii Ollennu (who had been one of the Ghana possibles for the vice-chancellorship until Nkrumah decided to look abroad and found OBrien), Michael Dei-Anang, the Somali poet William Syad with whom Thomas had recently spent much of his time in Mogadisciu, a leading Hungarian Africanist Endre Sik and somewhat to Thomass surprise the prominent Senegalese Tijani leader Sheikh Ibrahma Niass from Kaolack where Thomas had journeyed to see him in 1959. As Nkrumah was making his way through the crowd Abraham teased Thomas whether he was going to worship at the Holy Grail: to which Thomas riposted that he was not Sir Galahad. However the diplomatist Nana pushed Bernal and Thomas forward for what became a serious conversation with Nkrumah. Nkrumah initiated a discussion with Thomas on African studies, expressed approval of what the Institute people were doing but commented that they had not made enough publicity for themselves. Dossie in Oxford heard on 27 June that Liz had taken a 2.1 in the first part of her tripos and wrote to Thomas with these tidings and of an invitation from the Gasters to Lucys wedding to John Syson on 14 July. Thomas was coming to a close of the more pressing of his immediate tasks in Legon; on 29 June he went to Tsito to collect Liz and he left Accra for Britain on 4 July. The Hull sociologist Peter Worsley had organised the third annual conference of the Past and Present Society around the theme of colonial nationalism in the perspective that similar phenomena existed in Afro-Asia and Europe under parallel conditions of liberation from alien domination. Thomas had agreed to speak at the session in London on 9 July. He attended Lucys wedding party and was in London again on 24 July to lunch with Basil Davidson and he went to University College Hospital to see Du Bois recovering from an operation and receiving blood transfusions. Thomas finding that raspberries were what Du Bois really enjoyed eating immediately made a plan to pick some up from his mothers garden at Crab Mill on the following weekend and deliver them to the hospital when he drove on 29 July with Dossie to Dover for the Channel crossing at the start of their summer holiday at the Villa Lincolnia at San Remo. During this holiday in Italy the situation in Ghana worsened after Nkrumah on a road journey on 1 August from a presidential meeting in Upper Volta came under a hand grenade attack at the Ghana border village of Kulungugu. Blame more political than forensic was put on Tawia Adamafio, on a founding figure of Ghana politics Ebenezer Ako Adjei who had been in Manchester with Nkrumah in 1945 and on the CPP executive secretary Cofie Crabbe among others. They were arrested at the end of August, held under detention orders of 3 September and criticised in a parliamentary debate on 6

September for allegedly isolating themselves from Nkrumah on this journey and riding hundreds of yards away from the president. Security was tightened and routine parliamentary business was disrupted. When Thomas returned to Legon on 25 September he found an evening and night curfew in effect, police searches in the streets and a delay in parliamentary approval of the Institute grant for the academic year from 1 October. Nana telephoned shortly after Thomas arrived to say that Nkrumah was anxious to know what to reply to Africanists from Humboldt University proposing to visit in November to discuss cooperation Thomas thought the inquiry a nice comment on the state of affairs in the country. Thomas was meeting Conor Cruise OBrien who had fully taken up the vicechancellorship, seeing him formally for a one and a half hour discussion on 28 September and informally with Maire at supper on 30 September. Thomas heard that Conor had seen quite a bit of Nkrumah and was advising on Ghanas Congo policy and the general situation and not only about university affairs. Thomas was favourably drawn to Conor and found him supportive in the scramble to prepare the Institute premises taken over from the architecture department for the first intake of MA students starting a new term on 11 October and various stratagems to find housing for new staff and students. Almost his first research student was Jim Spiegler catching up on an understanding forged over two years (Mado who arrived a few days after her husband taught French to social scientists and political scientists). Thomas celebrated the Institute with a midday party at 33 Little Legon on 13 October students, researchers, staff, friends and sympathisers some sixty or so people regaled with eight cases of beer, two of white wine, two of soft drinks, sandwiches, pies, cocktail sausages and biscuits. Thomas had also to give the first in a series of lectures on African studies given to all first year students under a recommendation of the university commission he had served with Nana as secretary. Thomas, with Conor in the chair and Nana showing support, faced on 16 October some six hundred students and admitted that he liked teaching students one or two at a time and was not happy to lecture to a mass audience. He fell back on a view derived from the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset that had been his mainstay in adult education in the 1940s: the tendency for us to become so absorbed in learning to be efficient doctors, lawyers, chemists, physicists, economists, etc., that we had no opportunity to grasp great historical movements that lay behind us or problems of the society, world and age in which we lived. Conor was anxious that the university should play a constructive part in the first International Congress of Africanists due to be held in Accra in December and gave a lunch on 26 October for several of the Institute circle. Thomas fitted this in between his morning seminar on the history of the Western Sudan and an evening seminar by the historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo visiting from Upper Volta and speaking in French on social and political thought in French-speaking Africa (Spiegler interpreted). Conor, Nana and Thomas on 29 October saw Nkrumah to press for definitive release of Ghanaian MA students to the Institute from other official duties. Thomas confessed to Nkrumah that he himself had been wrong in pressing for a Ghanaian vice-chancellor. Nkrumah was pleased at the way the university was going, but also preoccupied at the international situation and the Cuban missile crisis he said the Soviet leader Khrushchev had taken his advice. Thomas who was not following world news closely had this as the first intimation that the peril of US-Soviet nuclear war had been averted.

Thomass attention was on his immediate departure on another rapid Africa tour he had to make for a day of lectures in Kampala and a few days in Sudan to recruit an Arabist in Khartoum for the Institute in Ghana. Thomas in Omdurman from 4 November stayed with Yusuf Bedri and secured the help of Mohamed Omer Beshir in identifying a suitable Arabist... The candidate accepted by Thomas was Salah Ahmed Ibrahim, although Yusuf had reservations about his leftist inclinations: Salah had lost favour with the Khartoum establishment by writing militant poetry on the death of Patrice Lumumba. Yusuf on 7 November again invited Sadiq Al-Mahdi to lunch with Thomas and Thomas left in the early hours of 8 November to return to Ghana to meet Dossie joining him on 9 November for the latter part of term. He took her to lunch next day at the vicechancellors home to meet Conor and Maire OBrien: Dossie formed a favourable impression of both. Dossie followed the frantic work of the Institute and went with Thomas to Kumasi on 14 November when he inaugurated the African studies lectures for first year students there they overflowed the hall and crowded the verandahs. He lectured for Nana on 16 November to students at a new Institute of Public Education. On 21 November Thomas supported the Legon history department with two lectures on the Almoravids. He was helping Ivor Wilks and Al-Hajj Osman (since October formally recruited to the Institute as a research assistant) with a presentation on some two hundred Arabic and Hausa documents they had gathered. Ivor was to explain this work on Islamic learning in Ghana to a conference of the Historical Society of Nigeria being held at Ibadan from 14 December. The term came to an end with a flourish of Thomas on 7 December lecturing in the morning at Cape Coast, translating from a Ki-Zerbo seminar in French in the afternoon and lecturing in Achimota in the evening. Thomas was also entertaining friends arriving early for the International Congress of Africanists to open in Accra on 12 December including the USSRs Ivan Potekhin and the USs Bill Brown and David Apter. The Institutes work, based on a living Islamic tradition little known to many historians in the European tradition, was timely. The International Congress Africanists considered proposals for a centre of Arabic documentation that would record how some of the peoples in sub-Saharan Africa had for centuries relied on Arabic or on African languages in Arabic script for written intercourse. During the congress Thomas and Dossie celebrated their silver wedding anniversary on 16 December, then returned to Britain for a family Christmas. Thomas and Dossie in the new year of 1963 began another brief separation when Thomas on 16 January returned to Legon. Thomas was by now routinely using the VIP channel and was greeted in the VIP room by a succession of Polly Hill and Susannah, Ivor Wilks, Stephen Andoh taking on Institute administration and Salah who on arrival from Sudan was staying temporarily in Thomass house at 33 Little Legon where there was a stream of visitors. Al-Hajj Osman and his young son arrived at the house with luggage on 19 January but at Maire OBriens suggestion were decanted to guest rooms at the vicechancellors house, previously offered to Thomas who had a stomach upset and was instructed by the university doctor to stay quiet. Thomas spent much of 20 January with the OBriens beginning with a lunch party including Polly Hill and Susannah and Geoffrey Bing with an adoptive Ghanaian son Adotey. Thomas and Salah returned to the

OBriens in the evening for a farewell supper party to the professor of physics and provice-chancellor Ray Wright and his wife who were leaving within a week. At an appointments board on 21 January Thomas secured validation for his peremptory recruitment of Salah as a research associate. After the board Conor took Thomas aside to explain that a row had blown up over accommodation in the all-women Volta Hall of residence where an Englishwoman Jenny Dobbin had been staying along with a British male lecturer Kenith Trodd both had worked in Nigeria and he was a recent Oxford graduate known to the Hodgkin family. Thomas offered his own bedroom as a sanctuary until better arrangements could be made and after a couple of days they moved in to 33 Little Legon and Thomas went to a next-door neighbour while the university maintenance department expanded the capacity of his two-bedroom university by equipping the study with an air-conditioner and a bed as an overflow third bedroom to which Thomas returned on 26 January. His teaching and administration work load within and beyond the Institute continued to increase. At the end of January he was lecturing on Africa to first year students, twice at Legon and twice at Kumasi, and had taken on a small tutorial group on French-speaking West Africa. Nkrumah was contemplating closer relations between Ghana and Togo: Bing on his behalf brought Thomas a request for a factual background paper (Thomas shared the research task with a historian Janice Austen who was working as his secretary in the Institute). Thomas went to Flagstaff House on 4 February to discuss the Togo information paper with Michael Dei-Anang. On leaving the precinct he heard exclamations behind time and turned to find Nkrumah in an unbuttoned Mao Tse-Tung style jacket shouting at him to stop. Nkrumah said it was a long time since they had met and walked up and down a grassy enclosure discussing the International Congress of Africanists and the Institutes role in Arabic studies. He had recently been reading about and taking a particular interest in the history of Arab medicine and its advance on European medicine, and thinking that the university must have a professor of Arabic studies, possibly from a secular rather than a religious perspective. Nkrumah asked why Dossie was not in Ghana and Thomas replied that his own pressure on Dossie to move about the world risked distracting her from work of fundamental importance. Thomas added that Dossie had come close to being awarded a Nobel Prize and that it would mean something to Ghana also if she were actually to win. Thomas was looking forward to the Easter vacation and on 5 February arranged with Conor and Maire OBrien that he and Dossie should borrow the OBrien house on the edge of the sea in Dublin as a holiday base for the first weeks of April. Liz was doing a history project on participants in the Easter Rising of 1916 and Conor would arrange introductions to Maires father Sean MacEntee and other survivors. On the domestic front Salah moved from Thomass to an Achimota house on 8 February. Thomas was encouraged when he and Boahen had on 11 February a two-hour conversation on history with Danquah who promised to allow the Institute to copy his collection of historical material. He was discouraged by some trends on the academic board where Conor enlisted Thomass support in the fine balance between competing trends within the university, and the relationship between Nkrumahs aspirations as chancellor and staff and student aspirations and expectations. The academic board met on 16 February and after a long session was adjourned to resume on 18 February. Board members, including several of the Ghanaian scholars, were pressing to abolish the

common course for first year students (Thomas with his past involvement in the creation of the experimental Keele University in Britain was against over-specialisation at undergraduate level) and return to more conservative one-subject courses. Thomas forewarned Conor that he would speak against the proposal and he found minority support in the debate, but not from the Ghanaian speakers and a majority of the board supported the proposal. In the academic board resumed discussion on 18 February Conor was concerned to win support for Nkrumahs proposal to give honorary doctorates to Burghardt Du Bois, Sir Aku Korsah and the radical educationist Kofi Konuah at a degree ceremony that same week. Conor carried the day by beginning with the eminent Du Bois and putting Thomas up to urge his eminence and influence and his advanced age and frailty (he would be 95 on the day of Convocation). Thomas recovered the comfort of his own bedroom when Jenny and Ken moved out to the respective university houses they had been allocated. Thomas was looking for someone to work in the Institute on contemporary African problems to complement the historical work and Trodd confirmed the qualities of Roger Murray another Oxford contemporary known to Luke and Anna . For Convocation on 23 February an improvised doctoral gown was flown from England and adapted to the African context: almost to the last moment helpers in the registrars officer were sewing pieces of the intricate Ghanaian Kente cloth to the facings of the gown. Du Bois as a father of Pan-Africanism had been made a Ghanaian. Thomas attended a formal celebration dinner next day given in the grounds of Flagstaff House by Nkrumah and his wife Fathia for all degree participants. Nkrumah gave an after-dinner speech on the crucial importance of academic freedom and the universitys obligations to the community, from a draft provided by Conor at Nkrumahs request. Conor left on 27 February for a visit to Britain; Polly Hill on 1 March joined the Institute. Thomas with a fortnight in hand before he went for his one-month of vacation in Britain managed another manuscript collection expedition to the north of Ghana from 4 March with Polly Hill and Ivor Wilks accompanied by the Institutes new driver Francis Arthur and joining forces with Al-Hajj Osman and his son. Thomas left Ghana on 14 March and by 28 March was at the OBrien home Whitewater in Howth with its commanding view on Dublin Bay. Dossie joined Thomas, Liz and Toby on 31 March from science meetings in the US in late March. Maire OBriens mother Margaret MacEntee took the Hodgkin family on 2 April to Phoenix Park for a meeting with Irelands President Eamon de Valera whom Thomas found very willing to talk about Irelands past (Liz was accorded an additional meeting along with fellow Cambridge students to look at 1916 and Anglo-Irish negotiations in detail). Thomas on 4 April had lunch with his close friend of undergraduate years George White who had not left Ireland since staying at Crab Mill as a godfather for Lukes christening in April 1939 now married with two sons. Thomas pursued another connection through Conors Irish milieu: Conor had first been married to Christine Foster whose mother Annie Lynd was a sister of BJs father Robert Lynd. The Hodgkins went to a party on 5 April to meet Christine (recently married to George Hetherington of the Irish Times) and other members of the Lynd family. Luke in Oxford was helping Annas family on 6 April celebrate the marriage of her younger sister Brigid Davin to a Corpus Christi College undergraduate Andrew Sandford Smith.

After the Ireland holiday Thomas spent Easter Sunday 14 April with his mother at Crab Mill then returned to Accra on 19 April. The ground work of the Institutes preparatory work of the previous year was paying off and was bringing to Legon a quartet of leading and specialist visiting scholars. Gervase Mathew had moved into Thomass spare room (in preference to VIP accommodation available to him). Thomas flew north almost immediately to Tamale where for old times sake he was attending the extra-mural annual Easter school. He was helped by a resident tutor Jeff Holden whom he had scarcely met before and who was coming to the end of his assignment in the north and moving south. Thomas on 21 April lectured on the idea of progress in African politics to some two hundred participants and was keenly questioned on such matters as whether socialism or capitalist-democracy was better suited to the needs of Ghana. The VIP accommodation at Legon was filling up with the arrival of anthropologist Audrey Richards, philosopher Ernest Gellner, African historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo, and Maghrib historian Jamil Abun-Nasr. Thomas was asked to join a political committee to prepare the Ghana delegation position for a forthcoming Addis Ababa conference on African unity and on 25 April began a series of meetings at Flagstaff House with several of Nkrumahs close advisers and chaired by Kojo Botsio. Thomas on 28 April was putting finishing touches to his draft of the Mali chapter and entertaining colleagues and their families to lunch with Audrey Richards. Dossie joined Thomas for May and they went from 9 to 15 May to Nigeria to give lectures at Ibadan. Thomas on return to Legon was lobbying for academic recognition of his closest Institute collaborators. The academic board met on 1 June and approved the appointments of Ivor Wilks and Kwabena Nketia to full research professorships. Wilfred Cantwell Smith wrote from Montreal on 1 June that he had resigned from the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill and would spend a year in India before taking up as post at Harvard as professor of world religions. Dossie on 5 June left for Oxford. Thomas, Wilks and Salah were working on building up a check list of the Arabic manuscripts they had garnered, and Thomas was planning the Institutes work for the next academic year. Gwen Carter came to supper on 12 June en route from the US to South Africa and told Thomas that she had been appointed to succeed Herskovits as director of the Africa program at Northwestern. Thomas went next day to a cocktail party given for Gwen by the US Ambassador William P. Mahoney uncharacteristically but to bring Polly Hill together with Gwen as they wanted to meet. Ghanas defence minister Kofi Baako - whose children were at school with the Mahoney children - was there and engaged in a spirited dialogue with Adu Boahen whether traditional African societies were egalitarian as he believed or not as Boahen argued: Gwen Carter became a moderator and catalyst of the controversy. Baako spontaneously asked Thomas and Polly to go back home with him and they discussed the British and American education systems, early days of the CPP and lectures Baako had once given on African Socialism. Thomas on 16 June joined another expedition to Kete Krachi that made a good haul of manuscripts of special interest before their return on 19 June, when Thomas found a telegram announcing that Liz had taken a 2.1 in the second part of her tripos. Thomas with conflicting calls of events in and around Oxford (including Thomass mother hosting a Smith family party on 30 June that Dossie was keen for him to attend) and scores of tasks to complete in Legon decided to take a brief break in Britain at the end of June and to return to Ghana for a further work session in mid-July.

He went on 22 June to a large cocktail party on Legon Hill given by Alex Kwapong and on to a small party in a flat given by Conors ebullient secretary Ilsa Yardley. She had been married in August 1959 and in 1961 to 1962 worked in London for the editors of History Today. Now she was living in central Accra with her husband Maurice Yardley who was in the Kenneth Scott Associates architectural practice and a keen player at the polo club. Thomas through his participation in the first year African studies lectures was faced with working almost through the nights to mark batches of more than two hundred examination scripts. He interrupted his stint on 24 June to go out to dinner with a neighbour Alan Nunn May and the law professor William Burnett Harvey. Nunn May some years after imprisonment in Britain for sharing atom secrets with the Soviet Union had been invited to Ghana by Nkrumah on an Osagyefo professorship. In the wake of Ray Wrights departure Kwapong had become pro-vice-chancellor and Nunn May had now been appointed as the university professor of physics an endorsement by his peers that gave him great pleasure. Thomas left on 28 June for Oxford where Annas third child Mick was born on 30 June. Thomas on 17 July returned to the Institute and with Stephen Andoh sifted additional admission requests to the Institute MA from Ghanaians and from overseas. He went on 18 July to see Alan Nunn May and his wife Hilde to discuss bright Oxford students at Balliol who wanted to come to Ghana to continue their studies: a South African Rhodes scholar Martin Legassick graduating in physics and Peter Murray-Rust a Balliol scholar graduating in chemistry and encouraged by Dossie in his wish to do crystallography research in the chemistry department. The department was willing to recommend Murray-Rust to a lectureship: with Conor, Kwapong and the registrar Kofi Edzii together in London for a few days appointments could be made through the Ghana University London office. Thomas in Roger Murray had another candidate he wanted to recruit for the Institute staff. Thomas was again in Oxford on 27 July and took up family concerns. Toby had been studying family history with occasional support from Thomas and in August they plumbed the stock of documents at Crab Mill and searched for parish records in the Cotswolds for links to their seventeenth century ancestor Thomas Hodgkin of Shutford. He and Dossie were at Geldeston on 24 August for a Crowfoot family wedding of Joans daughter Nicolete Payne. Dossie and Thomas with Toby crossed the Channel to Ostend on 26 August and on by road for three days of holiday at Baska off the Dalmatia coast of Yugoslavia and then to Italy on 31 August where Dossie had a conference in Rome. In Accra Du Bois had died on 27 August and was buried on 29 August with military honours near the wall of Nkrumahs residence at The Castle. Nkrumahs broadcast tribute recalled that Du Bois had been secretary of the first Pan-African Congress held in London in 1900 and had chaired the fifth Pan-African Congress held in Manchester in 1945. In Oxford on 17 September Thomass mother had lunch with Luke and Anna to say goodbye on their penultimate day before they sailed with the three children to the US for Luke to spend a year on mathematics research at Princeton. Thomas and Dossie went on from Rome to Bratislava and to Prague where Dossie visited laboratories and Thomas had a congenial companion in the Arabist Africanist historian Ivan Hrbek. They reached home on 28 September and Thomas on 7 October returned to Ghana, delegating part of his publication revision tasks to Liz who was studying in the education department of Leeds University. Thomas on arrival at 33 Little Legon took to

his study-bedroom since the main bedroom temporarily had been ceded to a new arrivals an Israeli scholar Nehemiah Levtzion and his wife. Thomas quickly found him an efficient and hard-working contributor especially to the compilation on Arabic documents. Thomas faced an urgent task of drafting a speech for Nkrumah who was ready to speak at a formal opening of the Institute on 25 October: Dossie readily agreed to Thomass urging that she come for the event. Preparation for the opening had to keep pace with the university calendar, lectures and visitors. Thomas and Polly Hill dined with the OBriens on 10 October to meet the Cuban Ambassador along with Michael Dei-Anang and his wife and the West Africa editor of Drum Cameron Duodu and his wife Beryl Karikari. Thomas gave lunch on 11 October to the visiting veteran British social anthropologist Meyer Fortes and his wife Doris and Institute colleagues. On the morning of 12 October Du Boiss widow Shirley Graham called in for a long talk, making Thomas late in leaving for Sekondi for a weekend school at the Workers College two days and two lectures on politics in French-speaking West Africa. He was at Accra airport on 15 October to welcome Roger Murray joining the Institute. Dossie joined Thomas on 23 October, finding Murray as a house guest awaiting housing and the Levtzions in a house of their own. Thomas had envisaged a modest opening event for Institute with its some forty students and under a score of staff plus personalities associated with the Institutes work. Security officials wanted an upper limit of a crowd of five hundred and then on 23 October the Cabinet office gave a directive for all the university dons and students to be invited, but this was only partly implemented. Thomas and Dossie went early on 25 October for Thomas to have a haircut and then for a private talk with Nkrumah about the speech he would make at the Institute opening later in the day on The African Genius. Nkrumah arrived for the ceremony shortly after four in the afternoon. Nana Nketsia and Thomas made brief opening remarks and Nkrumah made the principal speech. He used Thomass draft with additions; including capping Thomass suggested reference to post-graduate students from countries as diverse as Poland, the US, Nigeria and Japan with We hope soon to have students and fellows from China and the Soviet Union which Thomas deemed a very proper addition. Nkrumah, paying tribute to the Institutes work in revealing a little known tradition of scholarship in Ghana, urged that teaching in other faculties should be based as soon as possible on African material He gave as example the faculty of law whose students must be taught to appreciate the intimate link between law and social values: It is therefore important that the Law Faculty should be staffed by Africans, There is no dearth of men and women among us qualified to teach in the Law Faculty. Conor thanked Nkrumah, who went into the Institute to see the manuscript collection, archaeological exhibits and the like and to meet staff and students. Thomas commented in a letter of 27 October to Liz in Leeds that Nkrumah said all the things I wanted him to say about African studies with a number of points of his own including some admonitions to the University about the need for intellectual decolonisation, friendly relations between teachers and students, unity of Town and Gown, and suchlike. Thomas and Dossie went to supper for Nkrumah at the OBriens on 1 November and Dossie on 4 November left for Oxford. On arrival on 5 November she sent a letter to the Tropical Diseases Hospital so that Thomas could be examined when he

was next in Britain (he was offered an appointment for 13 December with a leading practitioner in clinical tropical medicine Professor Alan Woodruff). Thomas was faced with a new presidential chore when he was asked on 7 November to provide information on outstanding African journalists over the past two or three centuries needed for Nkrumah to address an All-African Conference of Journalists that was to open the following week. Thomas with Salahs help managed to send in a list on 8 November and was invited to attend the opening ceremony where Nkrumah would speak on 11 November Salah was the only Sudanese journalist able to attend the conference. Thomas took Roger Murray to the opening at the School of Law, but drove him back home when Murray felt unwell. Their neighbour Hilde Nunn May was an Austrian born doctor: before her marriage to Alan (as Dr Broda from her first marriage) she had been a medical officer for the city of Cambridge and in Ghana she continued medical work as a childrens doctor at the Korle Bu Hospital. Hilde as a neighbourly kindness came in to see Murray on 12 November and advised him to stay quiet. Thomas dropped in on Maire OBrien who persuaded him to stay to supper with Conor and her, since Conor was suffering an eczema attack Hilde was there treating him. Thomas and Conor talked about the university and amused themselves playing a sketch of Conor as an Ulster ultra-Protestant chairing a talk by Thomas as an English blimp. Thomas on 13 November went to a party at State House given by Nkrumah for the journalists conference where he was glad to meet delegates including from Sierra Leone the veteran journalist and trade unionist I.T.A. Wallace Johnson who had been active in the 1930s with C.L.R. James, Jomo Kenyatta and George Padmore. Nkrumah at the party teased Thomas over his self-identification as a wandering pseudo-journalist who had covered Nkrumahs visit to Liberia in January 1953 (Why are you here?, Because you were kind enough to invite me, Oh, I thought you were a journalist). Among Thomass callers on 14 November was an American MA student from Kalamazoo College LaRay Denzer who had borrowed money to study at the Institute and had been working on Du Bois and the origins of the Pan-African movement. Thomas regretted that she had arrived in Ghana after the death of Du Bois. Thomas on 15 November met Wallace Johnson again at a conference ball at the Star Hotel in Accra where Thomas had mainly gone to sit out and talk over a beer with Nana. Wallace Johnson reminisced about the West African Secretariat in London in the mid1940s, run on a shoestring and with Wallace fund raising by playing his clarinet outside London cinemas. Thomas on 18 November gave a general lecture on the African Revolution, in Accra rather than at Legon - since Conor (to gratify Nkrumah and to counter anti-university comment in the ideological Nkrumaist journal The Spark) was having the first year African studies lectures presented in the town. Wallace Johnson on 19 November visited the Institute and spoke to students for several hours about his political life and revolutionary struggles (in another room Roland Oliver was giving a colloquium on work in progress at SOAS in London). Thomas had been feeling unwell since the afternoon of 17 November at a moment of intense work pressure. By the evening of 19 November and in preference to waiting to be seen in the university clinic he called on Hilde with what looked like malaria symptoms. She treated him and sent him to bed but next day Thomas developed a rash and was suspected to have dengue fever. Maire OBrien (who had herself suffered from dengue

fever) with Hildes backing moved Thomas to the vice-chancellorial lodge on 23 November and installed him in the best spare bedroom and bathroom. This gave Thomas a close eye on Conors differences of view with the government on aspects of the university. Conors strategy of securing US support for a medical school within the university was at risk from a contrary expression of opinion in cabinet. Conor had a talk with Nkrumah on 22 November and seemed to Thomas more cheerful after a satisfactory interview (Conor would be looking for staff to teach a medical student intake in October 1964). Thomas felt almost spoiled amid solicitous hospitality where impromptu parties of friends gathered at his bed Ilsa and Maurice Yardley brought round champagne on 24 November and they shared it with the Nunn Mays as other friends were entertained below by the OBriens. Thomas was able to work on an overdue paper for Daryll Forde (on Islamic literary tradition) and on 26 November was recovered sufficiently to rise for lunch with Maire entertaining one of the MA students Martin Staniland, a Cambridge contemporary friend of Conors son Donal. Thomass return to duty was accelerated by the arrival in the guest bedroom on the morning of 27 November with news that Nkrumah wanted to see Conor, Thomas, Willie Abraham and Nana at Flagstaff House at 11.30 where they met Michael Dei-Anang and trooped into Nkrumahs office. They were seated and confronted with an imposing box of black morocco leather with gold trimmings. This turned out to be a gift from the African Institute of Karl Marx University delivered to Nkrumah by the German Democratic Republics vice-president and containing photographic copies of Brandenburg archive material of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries relating to the Gold Coast. Nkrumah wanted advice on cooperation with Leipzig and about celebrations of a philosopher on whom Willie had been working. Nkrumah lent Thomas the material for the Institute to make its own copies. After the interview the academics went back to Willies house for a friendly drink that Thomas thought might ease a recent tense relationship between Conor and Willie. Thomas on 28 November returned to 33 Little Legon, to the relative calm of a nineperson luncheon party on 1 December for Humboldt University linguists and Institute counterparts and a week or so of university tasks before he could take his Christmas break in England. Conor was going earlier to make a round from 9 December of universities and institutions in a trawl for medical teaching staff, taking in Oxford on 12 December and then Cambridge. This timetable was linked to Thomass own return to Oxford on 11 December. Conor stayed a night with the Hodgkins in Oxford and they discussed an unexpected apparent downturn in the Ghana political context. The legal process since the Kulungugu grenade attack of 1 August 1962 on Nkrumah had ground on for more than a year and included a trial of several accused by a special court of the chief justice Sir Aku Korsah and supreme court judges W.B. Van Lare and Edward Akufo Addo. The court in a judgment of 9 December 1963 acquitted three accused: Adamafio, Ako Adjei and Crabbe. Nkrumah on 11 December dismissed Korsah from the post of chief justice. Conor and Thomas discussed the news from Ghana, with Conor feeling his dismissal might be next and Thomas thinking that Nkrumah recognised that he needed Conor. Thomas told Conor that if Conor found he had to go Thomas would go too, Thomas

privately was quite willing to retire but felt he must otherwise remain till the summer of 1965 out of personal obligation to the early intake of MA students. Thomas kept his appointment on 13 December at the Tropical Diseases Hospital and had a wedding anniversary lunch with Dossie at the Little Acropolis restaurant in Soho. The hospital wanted Thomas to return for admission the following week for further tests. He was back by 16 December and the initial physical examinations detected no tropical disease. He was reminded to keep off cigarettes, but told that pipe smoking was relatively harmless. He had to remain for the results of laboratory tests and from the hospital ward continued his academic and family pursuits. Liz on 18 December came to visit: Thomas was tackling a problem for his Nunn May neighbours in their son Johnny who had learning and behavioural difficulties that had led to his withdrawal from schools in England. The Nunn Mays wanted someone to help so that Johnny could live full-time with them in Ghana while the parents continued their demanding jobs. Liz who knew through her Cambridge friend Jan Penney that BJs younger daughter was at a loose end suggested that Polly take on the job. BJ and Polly came to see Thomas for evening visiting on 18 December to discuss the possibility. Polly was willing to go to Ghana if wanted: BJ was willing to let her go with the proximity of the Hodgkins two doors away for some of the time at least. Thomas on 19 December telephoned Hildes son by her first marriage Paul Broda who turned out to be leaving for Accra with Johnny that day and put the plan to Paul to discuss with the Nunn Mays in Accra. Thomas wrote to Hilde to tell her about Polly Gaster. Broda telephoned the Gasters to see if Polly and Johnny might meet briefly before the journey but the time available was too short. Basil Davidson came to the hospital for a couple of hours with Thomas outside visiting hours and they talked in a waiting room. Thomas was allowed out of hospital on 21 December and went to Oxford. Although the hospital staff were reasonably sure he was free of tropical disease his general condition raised concerns of a year earlier. In a chilly Oxford on 22 December Thomas strolled with Liz along the High Street and had acute symptoms of breath catching. He was at Crab Mill for Christmas, and returned to Africa on 2 January 1964 pausing en route to Accra for the fifth International African Seminar at Ahamadu Bello University at Zaria. Thomas knew many of the participants but thought that for the theme of Islam in tropical Africa there were too few serious Islamists, too few Africans, too many anthropologists. Thomass contribution went into detail on the Islamic literary tradition in Ghana that was being recovered from the manuscripts in Arabic script gathered by the Institute of African Studies. Thomas was distressed by news from Ghana of an assassination attempt on Nkrumah at Flagstaff House on 2 January when a police constable Seth Ametewee on guard duty had shot at Nkrumah and then killed a security guard Corporal Salifu Dagarti (whom Thomas knew a little as he came from Kintampo and was a friend of AlHajj Osman). Thomas returned to 33 Little Legon on 9 January to find Ruth Schachter Morgenthau had turned up for her visiting seminars and lectures while he was in Zaria, and his stream of callers was supplemented by hers until Thomas had to give temporary accommodation to another colleague (historian Kwame Arhin) and Ruth was later given another university house down the road. Nana on 12 January urged Thomas to write to Nkrumah seeking a talk about the university situation and Thomas added a suggestion that Chou En-Lai on an official visit be asked to see the Institute. Thomas on 13 January discussed with Paul

Broda the future plans for Johnny Nunn May since the Nunn Mays had not yet decided on the suggestion of Polly Gaster. He had a preliminary talk with Kwabena Nketia about the possibility of his taking over the directorship of the Institute with Wilks and Andoh as deputies. Thomass thought about Chou En-Lai had come too late in the programme, but on 15 January Thomas took Ruth to a dance display at Nanas cultural centre where a cluster of political figures came in after a state banquet. They were people in the Nkrumah sphere including Kofi Baako, newspaper editors Eric Heyman and Kofi Batsa and the British Guianan Ras T. Makonnen (formerly Griffiths) Ruth was introduced to them. Thomas thought that none of them looked particularly worried or on unfriendly terms with one another though the press had been carrying Jacobin attacks on those supposed to be of doubtful loyalty to Nkrumah and a referendum had been called to confirm presidential powers and move constitutionally to a one-party state. Thomas with his theologian colleague Christian Baeta were meeting on the morning of 17 January in Nanas office to discuss a proposal by Daryll Forde to hold a seminar on the impact of Christian missions on Africa. Okoh rang through from the Cabinet Office to say that universities were to be closed for the referendum. Thomas in the afternoon was summoned with all heads of departments to an emergency meeting of the academic boards executive committee where Conor announced that he had been informed by Okoh at eleven in the morning that universities were to be closed for seventeen days with immediate effect to enable students and staff to participate in the referendum. There had been a radio announcement and Conor had considered whether this was a directive that had to be resisted as it threatened the universitys position, or whether it had to be obeyed. He had decided for obedience though it was open to others to think otherwise. The meeting generally supported Conors view that it was essential to take a calm and moderate attitude, and encourage the students to do likewise. A seemingly unrelated complication was that special branch police had come to the campus, searched the houses of a British physicist Dennis Osborne and the Ghanaian Jock de Graft Johnson and had taken them away for questioning. Thomas wanting to discuss next steps with Conor and Maire called on them in the evening and they talked for an hour late at night after the OBriens returned from seeing a film. Thomas wanted to write to Nkrumah about the situation as it affected the Institute and the university and Conor seemed to think this a good idea. Thomas went home and in the early hours drafted a letter that he showed to Institute colleagues at a scheduled staff meeting at nine on the morning of 18 January. He pleaded for a dispensation from closure of the Institute since there were seminars and classes whose abandonment in the next fortnight would have a serious effect on the work of the MA students, and there were visiting professors from the US who could remain in Ghana only for the coming days. Two thirds of the graduate students came from countries other than Ghana and had nowhere to live outside the university. Thomas urged the value of a good relationship of consultation between the vicechancellor and the president, and Conors qualities: No better, more vigorous, or more devoted person could have been found to guide the University during this transitional period. Nana did secure a meeting between Conor and Baako on the morning of 18 November. Conor then addressed an open air meeting of students and urged them to return quietly to their homes. Thomas was giving a lunch party for Ruth and other

colleagues and visitors: Kofi Baako turned up from seeing Nkrumah and told Thomas that Nkrumah had agreed that Institute students stay in residence and continue with their studies. Thomas relayed this to Conor who approved and did not think this was an unfair privilege. Lunch was further delayed by the arrival of a deputation of Institute students wanting to know their situation, whether they might be regarded as blacklegs, or have trouble with the police about staying up and for the Ghanaians time off to vote. Thomas called on the OBriens on 19 January, finding Conor cheerful but worried, and went to supper with Paul Broda and the Nunn Mays who had given a definite answer that Polly Gaster should come to them to help with Johnny. Thomas gained another house guest on 20 January with the arrival of a senior research fellow and Islamic historian Brad Martin. Ruth on 21 January continued her seminars with a good attendance including Nana. Nana and Thomas discussed how they might assist a rapprochement between Conor and Nkrumah. Conor and Nkrumah had a friendly talk for nearly an hour on 24 January in which according to Thomass understanding the principle of mutual consultation was entirely accepted. Thomas that evening yielded his study to Tobys friend Nicholas Lampert who had come for a spell of teaching at a Ghana school and needed a bed. Conor reported to colleagues on 25 January including the outstanding issue of the medical school and that Osborne had been released - Conor, Alan Nunn May and Thomas subsequently discussed that Dossie who was due to travel out to Thomas for 8 February could help by talking to Nkrumah about recruitment aspects. Thomas gave a farewell party on 25 January for Ruth who was leaving early next morning. Thomas was persuaded Abdullahi Al-Hassan (arriving late because of Ramadan) to go out to dinner at the Ambassador Hotel, with his two house guests. He managed to reach home by midnight, but was awoken in the early hours by Nana bringing the Oxford anthropologist and friend Godfrey Lienhardt who had flown in and found his assigned room could not be opened. Godfrey was also found a bed at 33 Little Legon, and this brought talk till four in the morning and the briefest of respites before Thomas had to go to the airport with Ruth early on 26 January. Lienhardt had arrived and Basil Davidson was due on 1 February. Thomas was now at a point of exhaustion and taken into hospital with severe bronchitis. He telephoned on 29 January to tell Dossie that he was in hospital and to ask her to bring her journey forward. She booked the next available flight. A fellow patient in the hospital was the professor of law Burnett Harvey who was much more seriously ill than Thomas. The university crisis took a further downward turn on 30 January when Conor was informed that four foreign members of the university staff were engaged in subversion. It emerged over the next day or so that they faced deportation. Two of the four were well known US lawyers Harvey and a senior lecturer Bob Seidman who acted as head of the law school in Harveys absence and Conor was at pains to defend them, in writing to Nkrumah. Thomas in hospital wrote on 1 February to Nkrumah that Harvey and Seidman were people whom he knew and respected Seidman had the kind of progressive record it took a great deal of integrity and courage to acquire in the USA: I cannot therefore bring myself to believe that these two people have really been guilty of treasonable or subversive activities. If they are to be expelled in this way I would feel the position of members of the staff of the Institute of African Studies, for whom I am responsible, insecure also.

Thomas predicted the break-up of the group of Africanists who had collected in the Institute and there were other immediate factors. Basil Davidson was arriving that day to spend time on the preparation of an introduction of African history for secondary schools and training colleges in Ghana in which Nkrumah had been interested. Thomas begged Nkrumah to see OBrien, Nunn May and him to talk the matter over before it was too late. He added that his wife was expected to arrive from England on that nights flight and would welcome an opportunity of meeting and talking with Nkrumah as soon as this could be arranged. Dossie did arrive about six in the evening on 1 February and saw a host of familiar faces who for various reasons were at the terminal. They included Alex Kwapong, Hilde and Alan Nunn May, Godfrey Lienhardt, Polly Hill, Ivor Wilks and Francis Arthur. Francis took Dossie to the hospital where Thomas, being treated for bronchitis and coughing with antibiotics and sedatives, said that this prevented him from worrying about the serious local crisis. Dossie went on to spend the night with the OBriens who recounted the events of the previous month. She returned to the hospital on 2 February since Thomas was being allowed out to rest quietly at home - and they returned via the OBriens to 33 Little Legon. Davidson and the Hodgkins as Thomas had foreseen were able to add their voices to the various pleas to Nkrumah and were particularly concerned for Seidman whose wife the economist Ann Seidman would be remaining at Legon with five school-age children. They talked to Nkrumah on the morning of 4 February, although Thomas in fits of coughing could scarcely speak. Nkrumah non-committal on the deportation issue was concerned for Thomass health and said his doctors ordered him large doses of Vitamin A. A police car came to the campus in the afternoon and the driver delivered to Thomas a bottle of Vitamin A tablets and a hand-written note from Nkrumah Dear Prof. Hodgkin Heres a bottle of the Vitamin A I spoke to you about. I hope it will do you some good. K.N. 4/2/64. The deportations, though delayed from 1 February to 8 February, were in the main sustained and came within a broader framework of conflict between Conor and Nkrumah on university administration and appointments. Workers and party activists held a contrived demonstration and occupied the campus for a few hours on 8 February, causing minor damage including to a room occupied by Murray-Rust whom Dossie had encouraged to go to Ghana. Lienhardt and Davidson, who were sharing VIP accommodation, mingled with the crowds and brought accounts of what they had seen (They were within a few days of arrival and when they said this to protesters carrying Go home posters were given a more characteristically Ghanaian welcome). The students back from the referendum break accepted OBriens guidance and stayed quiet. Dossie persuaded Thomas to leave Legon on 9 February with her for three nights of recuperation in an old-fashioned government rest house high up at Amedzofe in the eastern Volta region (driven the hundred and forty miles by Francis Arthur and left in peace and quiet). Thomas sat on a verandah on the afternoon of 10 February reflecting on a month of illness and stress and wrote to Luke and Anna in Princeton: We have been living through the end of an epoch at the University. What might be called the Girondist phase, perhaps dominated by the Nkrumah-Hodgkin reforms of three years ago and are moving into a phase of Jacobinism. So, though both Conor and I would like to stay

long enough to be able to help in a quiet way to usher in this Jacobin phase, itll be others obviously who will have to stay and construct the new kind of University thats wanted. They returned to Legon and on the morning of 15 February had a telephone call asking them to meet Nkrumah at the Castle at noon. This led to a more relaxed discussion on whether the students were being won for Socialism (as Nkrumah wanted) and Nkrumah suggested that he did want to restore relations with then university and with Conor particularly and as Dossie saw it to right wrongs as far as possible. Polly, who had met Paul Broda in London, left on 18 February to take up her companion-tutor role with Johnny Nunn May. The Hodgkins helped her settle to Ghana by encouraging her and Johnny to join a wedding party that was being held at the Institute (for a Pole and a Chilean). Basil Davidson was finalising a synopsis of a proposed Peoples History of Africa on which he would be editor and consultant to the Institute. He went to see Nkrumah on 27 February about the progress of this project before leaving on 29 February. Dossie realised that her mid-February impression of Nkrumah seeking an improved relationship with Conor was optimistic. The conflict was deepening; the advice Thomas and she were giving was not heeded on either side; disaster could not long be delayed. Meanwhile in comparison with some other parts of the university the Institute and the chemistry department seemed havens of peace. The Hodgkins and OBriens were in close contact, but there were several divergences in their perceptions of the context and causes of the crisis. Dossie thought the security people jumpy in the wake of the assassination attempt. A political philosopher Szymon Chodak spoke to the Hodgkins of concerns over the forthcoming arrival of Henry L. Bretton from the US as professor of political science. Nkrumah wanted a Ghanaian candidate William Cornelius Ekow Daniels to head the law faculty and Yaw Manu in political science. Conor had already notified Bretton of his appointment and saw Daniels as overly ambitious and counting on the presidents power to cover a lack of merit. The Hodgkins perceived some of the law school conflict as stemming from different teaching methods between the US and English styles of giving lecturers notes or referring students to the reading of case law (Daniels had been trained in England). Conor, with staff backing, was resisting Nkrumah insisting on appointments that by-passed the academic formalities. Thomas and Dossie on 14 March attended a degree ceremony where speeches from Nana and Conor revealed very different attitudes to the universitys situation. Thomas on grounds of exhaustion with administration and university politics wanted to withdraw from the fray. He and Dossie went on 18 March for a long talk with Nkrumah about the history book project and about Thomass own plans. Thomas proposed retiring from the Institute directorship at the end of the academic year (autumn of 1964) while retaining an association as a visiting professor and consultant if this was desired. He hoped the absence of administrative responsibilities would allow him to spend the greater part of his time on writing with only occasional teaching. Nkrumah was sympathetic and they discussed Thomas doing one term a year in Ghana. Nkrumah sent a police officer round next day with two copies of his new book Consciencism on philosophy for decolonisation due to be published by Heinemann in London on 31 March. They began reading them, though Thomas boggled at a final mathematical chapter that used set theory to prove the necessity of a union of

independent African states and detected an influence of Willie Abraham. Some of the atmosphere of the 94 Woodstock Road household was transferred to 33 Little Legon with the arrival of Liz for Easter and then on 31 March after the Aldermaston March of Joan Paynes daughters Sue and Vicky, filling the spare rooms - and Toby in a corridor on a camp bed borrowed from the Nunn Mays. They celebrated Thomass birthday on 3 April with a lunch party (of turkey and a large iced birthday cake) that was joined by neighbours Ivor and Grace Wilks with their family and Polly Gaster the Wilks children much taken with crme de menthe. The Hodgkins and Paynes made various sorties including a road journey to Wa and on 18 April Thomas and Dossie took Liz and Toby to see Nkrumah who asked about their plans and whether Luke might be persuaded to teach topology in the university of Ghana (Luke was expecting to join the new University of Warwick but to teach in Algiers in the preparatory year before Warwicks mathematics department had a student intake). The family dispersed by 20 April with Thomas remaining until 23 April to mark some three hundred examination scripts he had set the second most popular question in the first year African studies paper. Liz and then Thomas contacted BJ to give her new of Polly and her teaching progress with Johnny. Thomas presented what BJ termed a rather wild scheme for BJ to visit Polly in Ghana. She was in mid-May seeking an opportunity to raise the possibility with Alan Hill at Heinemann Nkrumahs publisher where she worked, but anxious not to impinge on Pollys independence. Meanwhile she was taking a lively interest in the university, met the registrar Edzii and had Bob Seidman staying with her in Hampstead as he prepared to rejoin his family at Legon (Hodgkin lobbying helped open the way for his return). She took Bob to the airport on 17 May. Edzii telephoned BJ in the evening to see whether Seidman had gone and hoped that he would go lightly on Daniels (Edzii recalling Conors refusal to make Daniels professor as a cause of the difficulties between Nkrumah and Conor). Immigration at Accra waved Bob through without a visa on the strength of a telegram from Conor. Bob wrote to Thomas and Dossie after a few days that all seemed much better at the university than when he left and Conor seemed far more hopeful and selfconfident than when they had met in London a month earlier. BJ heard from Paul Broda that Bob has an offer of a post from Nigeria and she and Edzii on 28 May had another telephone conversation when Edzii advised that Kwapong thought there would be no difficulty about a visiting professorship for Bob at Legon. Thomas with examinations looming from 8 June left Oxford on 31 May and found at Accra airport various friends: Shirley Graham Du Bois, Seidmans, Nunn Mays and Johnny, Polly Gaster, Stephen Andoh, Francis Arthur and the Freeman-Grevilles. Maurice Yardley was also there, but coincidentally to see architect colleagues on their way from Kumasi to London: Ilsa Yardley had taken a companionable interest in Polly Gaster since her arrival. Thomas on a course of antibiotics was feeling well, despite finding recurrent administrative burdens at the Institute: Too many people want to talk at too great length about too many problems, he said in a letter to Dossie of 4 June. Bob Seidman remained unwilling to work with Daniels: Thomas was apprehensive that Ann might go with Bob to Lagos. She was playing a key part in a research group in the economics department, under Professor Jan Drewnowski, that had prepared a virtually

book-length background paper on the economics of African political unity for the Organisation of African Unity heads of state meeting to convene in Cairo in July. The young philosopher Raghavan Iyer, who had been an Indian Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, was now at Legon as a visiting professor and saw Nkrumah for a lively talk on 4 June. Iyer on 5 June told Thomas of their discussion ranging over the university, India after the death of Pandit Nehru in May, Asian-African relations and Indian and Akan varieties of mysticism in which there had been much understanding. Conor on 4 June was seeing Nkrumah face to face for the first time since February and on 6 June recounted the event to Thomas. It had not been a very successful interview: the issue of Daniels was unresolved and of Yaw Manu not entirely settled. Thomas believed a solution of the law faculty problem was a precondition for any general dtente. He felt with regret that in this situation it would be difficult to make the kind of partial break with the Institute and Ghana that he had intended when he spoke to Nkrumah and Conor in March. He had a lively lunch on 10 June with Ilsa and then dined with the OBriens where he met an acting dean of the law school George Ofosu Amah, but this inhibited Thomas from raising the Daniels matter. Institute visitors included the social anthropologists - Jack Goody with his wife Esther; and Peter Gutkind - and a political scientist - Aristide Zolberg with his wife. Thomas and Institute colleagues on 12 June looked at some ninety applications for MA studentships for the next year (when Ivor might be on sabbatical leave) of which more than a third seemed acceptable and included a score of Ghanaians. Thomas gave a Sunday lunch party on 14 June that collected almost accidentally for the Zolbergs, several university members, Nicholas Lampert staying for the weekend and Polly Gaster. BJ on 15 June tentatively broached with Alan Hill the possibility of her going to Ghana for Heinemann, but so tentatively that he apparently did not notice that she was asking a question and consequently Hill did not answer. She was convinced by Thomass view that Polly was in favour of a visit and would try to find a way forward. Goody in an informal conversation on 17 June and with his Cambridge experience advised Thomas and other examiners to set standards according to the capabilities of the students and not what they would like them to be. Thomas began next day to draft a guidance note for an examiners meeting on 22 June. External examiners who had arrived from Ibadan were the historian Jacob Ajayi and Arabist John Hunwick. Interspersed amid various obligatory entertainments (as host or guest) Thomas was finding moments to work on the Davidson history project, to help Salah translate an Arabic poetic text, to think about articles on African unity requested by the new editor of the Ghanaian Times Kofi Badu, and to prepare a talk on Stalin and the national and colonial question for the local Marxist Forum on 23 June. The examination process ran to 27 June and represented an emotional strain for examinees and their examiners. With the first graduations in a new degree Thomas felt that the teachers and the whole MA course were under examination and not only the students. The examinations scripts he thought rather depressing and the theses rather better: of seven candidates four were passed without serious difficulty, two were referred in their papers and one in his thesis. Thomas broke away to make a fleeting visit from 29 June to Britain to a conference in Cambridge but more as a chance to see family. Liz and Dossie met Thomas at the airport and they drove together for the first days of the conference. The conference

brought together at Kings College a few specialists to discuss a paper on West African politics by the economist Arthur Lewis (UN economic adviser to Nkrumah in the first phase of Ghana independence) that Thomas found full of errors and misinterpretations demanding he felt some kind of counterblast. Thomas grasped rather belatedly that the event was under the aegis of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, but found the content less altogether reactionary than he had imagined. He followed up with a long weekend in Oxford (where he and Liz worked on an additional chapter for a new edition of African Political Parties) and at Crab Mill. Thomas was due to leave on 6 July for an Institute staff meeting early on 7 July, but wondered whether he should wait when he read in the morning newspapers that Nkrumah was coming to the London meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. In London he telephoned Basil who said he would not be trying to see Nkrumah but would like to see Thomas, and decided to continue. He was with BJ she was buying strawberries to send to Polly - and they drove to London airport for what turned out to be a prolonged journey. An Alitalia flight was cancelled because of a pilots one-day strike, and Thomas went to Rome with Sudan Airways and on to Accra in the early hours of 7 July. Thomas and BJ talked about their respective children and Thomas about his grandchildren. BJ was moved by Thomass kindness to Polly and felt that she was forgiven for what she now regarded as her horrible treatment of Thomas at San Vigilio in August 1933 their holiday meeting in Italy as Thomas returned to England from his archaeology venture in Palestine. Thomas plunged straight into a busy schedule: staff meeting, student social gathering, discussion with Jack and Esther Goody, a supper party given by the Seidmans on day one and a comparable sequence on day two ending with dinner at the OBriens for John Fulton copious drinking and reading till late hours of Shakespeares King Lear and Macbeth. A feature series on African unity was now running in the Ghanaian Times to herald the Cairo summit and Thomas had to write his own and to polish colleagues contributions Kofi Badu sometimes edited further to match the CPP line. Though Thomass coughing had lessened he was soon being pressed by Hilde Nunn May, Polly Gaster and Polly Hill to go to the hospital where on 11 July he saw Dr Margaret Cormack: she advised him to continue a course of antibiotics and to stay in warm climates. Thomas in-mid July noted a general atmosphere of departure on campus. Polly Gaster on 14 July came to supper with Thomas for Nicholas Lamperts last night, along with Jenny Dobbin now married to an MA student Peter Knauss - they were leaving for the US by way of Jennys parents in Cambridgeshire. Ann Seidman looked in to say goodbye since she was going to Cairo for the OAU meeting. The OBriens were on a visit to Uganda. Ilsa and Polly were in the university buttery on 16 July buying delicacies for a meal Ilsa was giving that evening: Thomas went with Alan Nunn May and found Abdullahi and a Hungarian town planner and spouse. Ilsa came to lunch with Thomas on 17 July and drove him out to visit a Ga fishing village off the Winneba road. He worked at home on 18 July and had on 19 July another gregarious Sunday. He took Polly to Ilsas for a huge birthday breakfast for Maurice laced with champagne and brandy. Thomas then gave a lunch party to introduce a recent arrival from Indiana the African art historian Roy Sieber and on to a colleagues supper party.

Conor and Maires return on 21 July was motive for a long and boozy lunch party with Donal, Ilsa, Martin Staniland and Thomas. Conor put on his Yank television programme turn with mock support for a gallant, middle-of-the-road moderate Republican, dedicated, honest-to-God American Barry Goldwater and shouted down the other guests. Since the lunch lasted till late afternoon Thomas found it had a disruptive effect on work. He was however glad they were back though they and he would be travelling again within a few days. He wrote on 24 July to Weybright that he hoped to deliver the long outstanding history book within the year and left on 27 July for a vacation with other writing tasks in mind that could be continued in England. He was with some of the Hodgkin, Payne and Crowfoot families at Geldeston for the first few days and working with Liz on the African political parties material, but sleeping a great deal in the daytimes since he had left his Benzedrine stock in Ghana. Liz wanted to follow up her education study in Leeds by going to Africa and had tried through Britains Department of Technical Cooperation for Tanganyika but was turned down (when asked at interview whom she knew she said no-one since she was unwilling to avail herself of what she considered undue influence by citing Cranfield Pratt or David Kimble or Julius Nyerere). Basil Davidson hearing of this then wrote on her behalf direct to Kenneth Kaunda to see if he could have her taken on in what was about to be independent Zambia under his presidency. The DTC gave Liz another interview and on 28 July she heard that she was accepted for the new Zambia. Members of the family drank her health at the Wherry in Geldeston although the publican was puzzled that her prospect of travelling so far away should be cause for celebration. After the Nunn Mays sailed away from Ghana for a vacation Ilsa on 5 August took Polly to stay in Accra. In growing fond camaraderie they were discussing and planning BJs visit for late September. The Hodgkin family returned to Oxford to prepare for the arrival of Luke and Anna and their children from the US for a few weeks before they went to Algiers. Thomas on 10 August had a Little Acropolis lunch on the pavement in Charlotte Street with BJ when they continued the theme of mutual forgiveness: Ilsa on 11 August wrote to Thomas suggesting that Pollys mother stay with the Yardleys for a week before the Nunn Mays came back (Polly is a blessing to us both, an absolute honey, and I cant imagine how we ever managed without her.). BJ in late August went on holiday in Ireland and on her way home in early September she went to meet the Nunn Mays and Johnny and worked out dates for her Ghana visit that would fit in with the Nunn Mays. Alan was going in early October and Hilde following a few days later via Vienna. BJ would travel on 27 September and was accepting Ilsas invitation for the first days since builders were due in the Nunn May house and Hilde was worrying that covers would not be on the cushions. BJ might accept an invitation from Thomas for the days between Alan and Hildes arrival. For work reasons BJ could stay only four weeks in all. Thomas sent her a letter for the Ghana High Commissioner in London Kwesi Armah to assist on entry. Dossie and Thomas on 22 September went on their holiday to Austen Harrisons house at Limni in Euboea with Thomas en route to Ghana and Dossie returning to England for 5 October. Meanwhile BJ arrived in Accra and was ensconced with Polly under the care of Ilsa whom she found as angelic as Polly and Thomas had promised. The Hodgkin family who in mid-August had been briefly under the same roof were more widely scattered than ever. Liz on 9 September had left for Northern Rhodesia under its

last weeks of British administration and was assigned to teach at the girls secondary school at Kasama in the north. Luke and Anna on 6 October left with their children for Algiers. Toby between school and university was travelling via Turkey and Iran to Pakistan and India. Thomas returned to Legon met by BJ and Polly among others - to find a telegram urging him to go to Ibadan on 7 October to examine a doctoral thesis by Murray Last on nineteenth century Sokoto. He had to defer the date to allow himself time to go through what turned out to be an excellent work enjoyable to read, and because BJ had moved into 33 Little Legon on 6 October and Thomas did not want to abandon her as soon as she had arrived. He gave her the main bedroom and took the study. They spent much time in somewhat sentimental talk about times past, or reading favourite literature (Shakespeare, Middlemarch and Yeats) from a rapid stock bought at the campus bookshop. Polly was occupied with Johnny and Nana came in for much of the morning of 7 October talking of Ghanas history and hoping that Thomas would stay on a long while in the country. Thomas went in the afternoon to a beach with BJ, Polly and Johnny accompanied by an Ewe student Magnus Hayfordson who had turned up for lunch and to whose school fees Thomas was contributing they were rowed in a canoe through huge waves and had supper with Alan. Ann Seidman on 8 October turned up from Lagos to see her children at Achimota School and was joined by Thomas, BJ and Johnny. Thomas, BJ and Polly on 9 October went to a long dinner party with the OBriens, where Conor did American and Irish impressions the latter for BJ (she remembered Conor coming to her fathers funeral in Belfast in 1949 accompanying the Irish Republics Minister for External Affairs Sean MacBride). They read the first part of Macbeth with Conor insisting on the title role and Thomas reading the role of porter. Thomas went on 10 October to Ibadan for the thesis examination meeting staying with John Hunwick. Thomas and his fellow external examiner Charles Smith from Zaire were so interested in the thesis that the discussion went on for over two hours. Thomas who had recently held off from smoking smoked two cigarettes during the viva and had a night of coughing. He was due back on 12 October, but Hunwick arranged for his return on Sunday evening 11 October in time to join a supper gathering to welcome Hilde arriving that evening with the Nunn Mays, Ann Seidman, Polly and BJ with Hildes return Ann moved to 33 Little Legon for a couple of nights before she went off to Lagos. Thomas found it strange and beautiful to be going around with BJ. They went early on the morning of 13 October for bird watching in the Botanical Gardens with field glasses borrowed for BJ and an enthusiast a physicist sent by Nunn May to guide them. Thomas gave a supper party for BJ in the evening with colleagues and visitors including Roy Sieber, Martin and Marion Kilson now with two small children, the Nunn Mays, Johnny and Polly. Maurice Yardley could not be there since he had suffered a broken shoulder and a hair-crack skull fracture in a polo accident with much distress and anxiety for Ilsa who had time off from work to care for him as he was immobilised at home. BJ was having trouble sleeping and slept late on 14 October after taking a powerful sleeping pill given by Dr Cormack. Nana and his wife Cecile took BJ and Thomas to visit Koforidua where Nana was organising the building of a national theatre with communal labour he said some three thousand builders took part at times. They were entertained to

lunch by the regional commissioner and had drinks with the chief. Dossie was due to come to Legon the following Tuesday and Thomas sent on to her an urgent request from Stephen Andoh to bring up to sixty sets of cutlery for a canteen the Institute wanted to open. Thomas and BJ on 15 October made an early start since they were being taken on another bird watching expedition on salt flats this time. A general election was taking place in Britain that day: Sir Alec Douglas-Home who had become Conservative Prime Minister on the resignation of Harold Macmillan in October 1963 was challenged by Harold Wilson who had become Labour Party leader in February 1963 after the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Thomas and BJ went out to listen to results as they were being announced from mid-evening and within an hour or so the trend pointed toward a Labour government. Thomas and BJ walked back towards the house and Thomas took BJ in his arms. She more hesitant than he wanted time to decide. The election was a close call with an overall Labour majority of four seats: Douglas-Home on 16 October went to Buckingham Palace to resign and was followed by Wilson accepting office as Prime Minister. Thomas communicated to BJ his belief that being happily married was not incompatible with making love to others and that BJ was for him essentially the same person as he had loved in their youthful engagement. BJ was convinced that if - as she had done memorably in the past - she said No the situation would still be undecided. She accepted Thomas not knowing where it might lead in the future and knowing that there were only three days before Dossie arrived at 33 Little Legon. Thomas and BJ lived these days in the past and the present, with Thomas affected by a suspected recurrence of malaria, given medical advice by Hilde who sent Polly to add to the company over the weekend. Dossie arrived at Accra on the evening of 20 October and was met by Thomas, BJ and Polly and by Stephen Andoh who dealt with formalities as Dossie talked to the others she had brought the cutlery Andoh had requested. The Hodgkins and Gasters shared the next few days. BJ had come to Ghana to see Polly and in the context of Heinemanns publishing interest in Africa. Thomas secured a meeting for them all with Nkrumah on the morning of 23 October for BJ to ask Nkrumah about his next book and for Thomas to talk of his Ghana plans. The four had a sightseeing weekend taking also Johnny and a young friend of his. BJ was shy and tearful on 26 October when she left (fearing it might be a final farewell) and Thomas was anxious to comfort and reassure her with a letter and a poem he wrote. BJ left laden with gifts for all her close family - including yam and instructions from Ben Affia on how to prepare it and in the aircraft had an empty seat beside her to spread her belongings. She sat writing to Thomas with tears dripping off her chin: But the chief thing that I want to say you know already: that I love you and have had twenty days of unbelievable happiness. On the envelope she added that she would soon write a proper Collins thank you letter. In the social world when Thomas and BJ had first known each other the sending of a Collins was an inescapable obligation in return for hospitality (and the bourgeois colloquialism a reference to the young clergyman William Collins in Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice writing fulsomely to Mr Bennet). BJ on 29 October was about to write her Collins when history intervened. The Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm announced that Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was the sole winner of the chemistry prize

for 1964 and Jack Gaster telephoned BJ with the news and she was sending first their immense congratulations. The Stockholm news broke on wire services in time for the afternoon papers and BJ gathered the London cuttings to send with a reminder that if Dossie or Thomas ever missed a last train to Oxford or needed to be in London overnight there was always a bed at the Gasters. When the award news broke in the newsroom of the Oxford Mail reporters quickly found that Dossie was in Ghana with Thomas. Thomas in Accra was the first to hear the news when he was telephoned in the afternoon by an Associated Press correspondent who had been asked to file 300 words on Dossie. Thomas followed by reporters came to the chemistry department library to find Dossie (who was asked how she would spend the prize) with a Nigerian research student Samuel Adeoyi Adjei Bekoe the chemistry senior lecturer was in a college meeting. Dossie and Thomas took Samuel to 33 Little Legon and telephoned to invite friends for an impromptu celebration: Conor and Maire, Polly, Hilde and Alan Nunn May and Stephen Andoh. Thomas went in search of drinks but it was after four oclock and the campus store was shut. The OBriens brought two bottles of champagne and Stephen managed to find four more. The award was broadcast on the six oclock news so more friends such as Alex Kwapong heard it and came round to give their congratulations. The evening continued with a late supper for Samuel and for Magnus Hayfordson (who had been waiting all afternoon to talk to Thomas about schooling and money) and two guests who were already invited before the excitement: the Afro-American novelist Julian Mayfield from Nkrumahs private office and his Puerto Rican doctor wife Anna Livia Cordero. Thomas telephoned BJ and went on with letters and poems. Jack on 4 November went to Edinburgh on the night train to Scotland, as solicitor for Christopher Grieve Communist and Scottish nationalist poet Hugh MacDiarmid in a case over his election contest with Douglas-Home in the Kinross and West Perthshire constituency. Letters and telegrams of congratulation flowed in to Dossie direct or forwarded by the Payne family, though media pressure was less than if she had been in Oxford. The Times put together a package of items for 30 October. Dossie wanted to invite her far-flung children to Stockholm. She wrote with characteristic modesty to Luke and Anna on 1 November: We wonder if you have heard about my being awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for 1964 very easy to miss in an Algerian newspaper, if indeed an Algerian newspaper would print it. Luke and Anna had seen the news in a corner of the newspaper daily Alger Republicain. They were tempted by the invitation to Stockholm, but had spent a difficult fortnight with the three children in a hotel on arrival and had just settled into a flat, so it seemed better for the children to take the option of Christmas at Crab Mill during university and school vacation. Toby was making his way towards Delhi and spending a few days in Karachi with family friends when eh read of the prize in the local Karachi English language paper quite by chance. The announcement had reached the Lusaka papers by 31 October, but these took time to reach Kasama and it was early on 3 November when Lizs teaching colleagues drew her attention to the report. The journalist Walter Schwarz came from Lagos to interview Dossie and Thomas; Christian Gbagbo took photographs of them at 33 Little Legon and in the university - for the Observer Magazine: Teddy Hodgkins friend John Brunner on the newspaper in London enlisted help from Teddy as the magazine added a pictorial family tree, mainly of

the Hodgkin connections although from a genetic perspective the Crowfoot lineage was more relevant. After the first day impromptu party Ghana saluted Dossies award with a presidential command performance on 11 November of Ghanaian dances by music and drama students at the Institute attended by Kwame and Fathia Nkrumah, the Institutes friends and other dons, well-wishers and diplomats. Abdullahi al Hassan brought tidings of Sudans October Revolution to restore civilian rule. Dossie speaking under the stars at this enormous party commented that never before was a Nobel Prize celebrated in this way. Nkrumah saw Dossie and Thomas again on 27 November on the eve of Dossies departure for Britain. Thomas wanting to give his Monday seminar and complete work tasks followed on 3 December and was met by BJ on arrival. Thomas and BJ met in London again on 7 December and they went on corresponding while Thomas and Dossie were in Sweden. Dossie and Thomas arrived in Stockholm on 8 December to find Liz on the tarmac and waving since she had landed only a few minutes earlier. The Payne and Crowfoot contingent arrived next day with Toby had come from the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi sightseeing before going to Madras in the south for three months work. Dossie on 10 December spoke at the Nobel Banquet and to a gathering of university students. Thomass mother had turned down an invitation to Stockholm but watched the television news avidly and was impressed to see Dossie curtseying elegantly to the Swedish royal family. BJ in Hampstead was likewise impressed by the television pictures. Dossie gave her Nobel lecture on 11 December Thomas too was elegant but uncomfortable as he donned for a royal dinner party full dress clothes something he could not recall doing since he was a Balliol undergraduate. Toby led off the ball with a princess. BJ saw The Observer magazine on 13 December with its picture story on The amazing Mrs Hodgkin and was moved to tears by an image of Thomas leaning against a familiar tree at Legon and looking much younger than his years. Then Thomas telephoned her with what she deemed beautiful, extravagant talk. Thomas on 17 December left Sweden where Dossie was remaining for another three days of events. BJ had arranged an invitation from Sigle and Peter Wheeler for supper on the evening of 17 December. BJ went to the airport again with Thomas to greet the arrival of Luke and Anna with their children and help them on their way to the Davins in Oxford and to Christmas with Thomass mother at Crab Mill. BJ had her guests to entertain, with two African lobbyists from Rhodesia on Christmas day and the Wheelers on Boxing day. Chapter 20 Alma Mater By the new year of 1965 the lives of Thomas and BJ were taking on a diverse but shared duality. Each was taking a prominent albeit short of primary place in the others thoughts and plans. Thomas was transparent to Dossie and his immediate family about renewed contacts with BJ. BJ chose semi-concealment especially from Jack whom she thought unprepared to condone her renewal of interest in Thomas. Thomas and BJ talked by telephone on new years day about Thomass car damaged in a minor accident and to be retrieved by BJ - and about Thomass return to Ghana due later in the month. Dossie and Thomas, who were returning by train on 3 January from Dossies family in Beccles, had supper that evening with BJ and Jack at the Gaster home in Hampstead before taking

the damaged car back to Oxford. BJ and Thomas walked together in St James Park on a chill afternoon and met again on 7 January when BJ was tearful as she drove home with the thought of Thomass departure. Thomas had a recurrence of troublesome coughing in the days before he was to fly back to Ghana. Dossie and he gave a party in Somerville on 8 January. Thomas flew on 10 January arriving in Legon in time to call on Alan and Hilda Nunn May and to have supper with Ivor and Grace Wilks. Polly Gaster came round next day to collect BJs gifts and Maire OBrien invited Thomas to supper that evening. BJ wrote to Thomas on 13 January and for secrecys sake tried an experiment of writing a letter in her bath. Thomas on 17 January invited to Sunday lunch with Polly an impecunious young Cameroonian freedom fighter Lazare Nzokou in poor health. Thomas and Polly went next day to a Monday afternoon seminar organised by a Cuban ethnologist Angelier Leon, where unexpectedly there turned up Cubas Minister of Industries Ernesto Che Guevara who had arrived in Ghana from Algeria on an African tour. Guevara, accompanied by Cubas Ambassador to Algeria Jorge Serguera, sat through the seminar then spoke at the end (in Spanish with impromptu interpretation by a Cuban) on the necessity for political liberation to be reinforced by economic liberation. Thomas with Polly again went to a party next day given by the Cubans for Guevara and after the official event Guevara and many of the Cuban party and others came round to Thomas for drinks an impromptu range of Mexican tequila given by a visiting professor and linguist Mauricio Swadesh, Polish vodka given by the Polish Ambassador and a timely bottle of whisky provided by Ivor. Thomas was writing frequently to BJ and on 19 January she raised a note of alarm in a letter to Thomas reporting that Jack had said rather grimly: Theres a letter from Polly & another from your soul-mate. She suggested that Thomas ration himself to one letter a week unless he could discover which posts produced afternoon deliveries in Hampstead. Thomas wrote back to BJ but addressed the letter to her office at Heinemann. Dossie joined Thomas in Legon on 24 January bringing the news pleasing to Thomas that his Balliol contemporary and long-standing friend Christopher Hill was to become Master of Balliol. Thomas from 3 February took to his bed with an illness that was construed as a mixture of influenza and malaria leading to bronchitis. BJ in Hampstead read in the newspapers of 26 February that Peter Howard, who had led Moral Rearmament since the death in 1961 of Dr Frank Buchman had died in Peru on what she described in her letter to Thomas as some horrid Buchmanite jaunt. She found herself weeping at the memory of Howards involvement in bringing misery into the young lives of Thomas and herself. Thomas on 26 and 27 February had a small conference about collecting of Arabic manuscripts then - with Dossie - went to Nigeria on 1 March to visit universities in Ibadan and Zaria. Thomas was remaining in Africa for most of the month with fellow historians including Charles Smith and Murray Last: His aim was be back in England on 29 March and to keep the day and night of Thursday 1 April free for London and then to spend his birthday weekend with his mother and Dossie at Crab Mill. Dossie leaving on 11 March via Rome and Zurich for London was met on arrival at the airport by her sister Joan Payne and niece Sue Payne with a very large envelope from the Queen offering her the Order of Merit which in consultation with Thomas she was ready to accept (in Thomass view: That is an altogether all right and desirable kind of honour to have. Indeed I suppose its really the only one).

In the telephone and letter exchanges over Dossies signal honour Thomas was also concerned with the detail of his own return. He was taking a Ghana Airways flight that came in at tea time on 29 March in which case BJ might meet me at the airport if shes free, and well enough (shes been having flu poor thing but I hope not still) and Id come home by train after supper. Dossie replied on 21 March that if there were any difficulty over BJ meeting Thomass flight she would drive over with her nephew Sebastian Payne. BJ wrote on 22 March that she would come to London airport and will joyfully dine with you and take you to a train. . Dossies award of the OM was officially announced on 23 March. After Nigeria Thomas had four fairly strenuous days in Ghana arriving in the middle of another Conor moment of crisis with Conors threat to resign averted by a massive vote in Congregation in favour of his staying. Behind the scenes Alan Nunn May and Ann Seidman on a Conor rescue mission had a long talk to the Minister of Education and Chairman of Council Kwaku Boateng and to Conor. Conor agreed to see his term out to the end of the academic year, and late in the night in the company of friends read the scene from Shakespeares Richard II in which Richard agrees to accept the crown after persuasion from Buckingham and other supporters Conor casting himself as Richard and Thomas as Buckingham. Thomas on 27 March had a conversation with Nkrumah mainly about Thomass own plan for retirement from directorship of the Institute of African Studies at the end of the acdademic year. Thomas as planned spent the day and night of 1 April in London then he, Teddy and his daughter Joanna met Dossie off a morning train from Oxford on 2 April for a stroll in St James Park before Dossie went to Buckingham Palace where she was due to arrive at 12.20 in the afternoon to receive her OM from the Queen. By convention Dossie went in alone without relatives and the police tried to move Thomas and Joanna on until they explained why they were hanging about and they met up again for a celebratory lunch. Thomas and Dossie went to Crab for Thomass birthday on 3 April. They flew on 10 April from London airport to Algiers for a fortnight visit to Luke and Anna and three grandchildren (fares paid by the British Council in return for a lecture by Dossie). At the same time BJ and Jack were at the airport to welcome Polly back from Ghana. Jack went to the observation roof to see Pollys aircraft arrive and Polly step down from it. BJ was unable to tell him of her wish to go to another part of the terminal in the hope of catching a glimpse of Thomas. In Algiers the Hodgkin families went from 12 to 14 April on a fraught visit to a New Zealand friend of the Davins Wendy Campbell-Purdie who was planting trees on the edge of the Sahara desert at Bou Saada. Thomas wrote in her visitors book a piece of cod verse with atrocious rhymes including the lines. I write this poem in your honour, Wendy; A simple English bourgeois, or effendi [in Arabic in original, In all my wanderings from distant Yendi (in northern Ghana) to Sudan's fair Shendi Seldom, if ever, have I found such splendi d Kindness and hospitality: a friend i ndeed - Blest art thou, helper of the mendi cant, widow, orphan, wanderer, CND.

Thomas and Dossie returned to England on 27 April and Thomas stayed to share Dossies birthday on 12 May before reluctantly setting off again for Ghana on 13 May. Thomas was immediately swept up in the university social round compounded by the presence in Accra of delegates to the Afro-Asian-solidarity conference, though he was saddened to learn of the death on 9 May in a car accident of the veteran Sierra Leonean trade unionist and pan-Africanist Isaac Wallace-Johnson. Thomas and the Nunn Mays went to Maires to welcome Conor on his return from the United States and from his son Donals wedding in Ireland to Rita [??]. The early evening welcome turned into a supper and a late night that saw Thomas tottering home to bed at about midnight. At a subsequent lunch with the OBriens fellow guests included the scholar Preston King, in exile from the United States as a high-profile draft dodger protesting racial discrimination, with his wife Hazel Stern who turned out to have spent her early years at Bamburgh evacuated to one of the Armstrong Cottages. Among people dropping in on Thomas were the American scholar St Clair Drake, a Heinemann visitor Keith Sambrook, and Julia Wright Herve (daughter of the novelist Richard Wright) with her husband they worked with LEtincelle, the Frenchlanguage edition of the Nkrumahist newspaper The Spark. Thomas on 20 May went to a symposium on Pan-Africanism organised by a leading sociologist from Columbia University Immanuel Wallerstein who had invited as speaker John Tettegah, the secretary-general of the All African Trade Union Federation. They were briefly joined by a former Achimota pupil D.K. Jawara, now the Prime Minister of The Gambia, who was supporting the holding of the forthcoming September OAU Conference in Accra against the urging of some Africa leaders to boycott or transfer it to another country. Thomas saw these Ghana days as living a very quiet life with enough distraction however to prevent him settling down seriously to work on long-term writing projects such as the Africa history book long promised to Victor Weybright or the Nkrumahist project for a collective peoples history of Africa edited by Basil Davidson. He was resisting an invitation from David Kimble to go to Dar-es-Salaam in the summer to do a fortnights lecturing to East African diplomats, though it might have beeen combined with a visit to Liz in Zambia. The writing he thought must be the priority. Oxford University unexpectedly entered the lists on 31 May when the Vice-Chancellor Kenneth Wheare telephoned Dossie to say that an electing committee had just met to consider an appointment to a newly created lectureship in the government of African States and had decided unanimously to offer the job to Thomas. Wheare hesitantly asked Dossie whether there was any chance of Thomas accepting and was it really worth his while writing. Dossie responded that he should write: it could do no harm, since Thomas planned to be back in Oxford much of the next academic year to write and some academic connection might be agreeable. Thomas, seeing the letter on 2 June, was intrigued by the Oxford proposal but unsure whether one should let oneself be deflected in this way or indeed whether it is a deflection. And since he would have to balance residual commitments in Ghana he decided that he should find out more from Wheare or others concerned once he was back in Oxford later in the month. The University Registrar wrote on 1 June that the appointment to the Lectureship in the Government of New States would be for five years in the first instance at the end of which Thomas would be eligible for re-appointment until retirement age at 67. The duties would be: to engage in advanced study or research;

and to give, under the direction of the Committee for Commonwealth Studies, not less than thirty-six lectures or classes in each academic year, spread over not less than twelve weeks of two terms of the year. Thomas in Ghana was reminded on 5 June by a telegram from Charles Smith that he must be at Zaria for examiners meetings from 19 to 21 June he had only half remembered that he had committed himself to being a history external examiner at Ahmadu Bello University. Thomas had arranged to be met again by BJ for a late night return on 9 June, despite the likely disapproval of Jack compounded by the anxiety of Polly at home again in London where she had just been offered a job at Penguin Books (Polly had a close friend Bambi Ballard keeping her company on a long stay). Dossie would be making a brief visit to Munich and would be flying back to London on 10 June when Thomas would meet her. BJ wrote on 4 June that she was sure her airport meeting would be all right and that she was determined to do it: the ostensible purpose of Thomass timing was to enable him to travel to Oxford with Dossie on Thursday. In the event BJ was in the kitchen at Aintrim Road making tea for the late arrival when Jack who had been asleep came down to look for BJ and was displeased. BJ was for days too worried to write to Thomas but resumed on 14 June with an admission of wanting to be with Thomas even more. They spent 16 and 17 June wandering on Hampstead Heath, having a picnic in the Aintrim Road garden and visiting BJs elder daughter Lucy Syson in hospital where she was having a protracted labour. Thomas flew on 18 June with Dossie to Kano for Zaria and the weekend of examiners meetings. In London on 19 June Lucy gave birth to a baby boy to be named Luke - and in Algeria where Thomass elder son Luke was living with his family the defence minister Houari Boumedienne led a coup to overthrow the presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella. Thomas heard of the Algeria news from his old friend Modje Dowuona, now registrar at Zaria. Luke and Anna with the children were spending the weekend at Bou Saada with Wendy Campbell Purdie where they heard of the Boumedienne coup and at Wendys insistence began to think of their return to Oxford. Thomas and Dossie went on to Ghana to clear up their home at 33 Little Legon taken on by a Ghanaian librarian and on 27 June Thomas wrote to the Oxford University registry accepting the lectureship appointment. Thomas was also discussing the collective history of Africa for which Basil Davidson had been a driving force (he had in 1964 written preliminary drafts of several chapters) but which remained a responsibility of the Institute of African Studies at Legon and its director. By July 1965 eight of the proposed 25 chapters were in draft five were Basils. Thomas and Basil conferred on 10 July on how to finish the book and to secure drafts of all chapters by 1 November. Their detailed proposals were put to a wider gathering at the Institute on 12 July with Thomas and Basil plus Kwabena Nketia, Ivor Wilks and Stephen Andoh. New contributors were suggested and agreed and Thomas accepted responsibility for seven chapters or approaching Hrbek to write two of them on North Africa. Basil and Thomas were variously to approach the Trinidad Prime Minister Eric Williams to write a chapter on the Trans-Atlantic Diaspora. The prospective publisher Longmans had queried the original title, and the meeting chose a new provisional title of Africa in History. The goal was for Basil to have an edited fair copy of the complete text by 31 December 1965. Polly was settling into her job at Penguin and on 20July she was lunching opposite a colleague Nicholas Nick Jacobs who not only admired her Ghanaian earrings but also

turned out to be a Marxist. The upshot was an offer of a permanent lift from Hampstead towards her work which would ease a difficult journey. After Ghana and a fleeting spell in England Thomas and Dossie went to Puerto Rico for the first days of August where Dossie was attending the Latin American Chemical Congress Thomas was slightly overwhelmed by the best suite in a plush beachside hotel but pleased to spend the evening of 3 August with the Cordero parents of Anna Livia who was with her husband Julian Mayfield in Ghana (they had been among supper guest of the Hodgkins at Legon on the day the news of Dossies Nobel Prize had broken). They went on to Mexico and Thomas continuing for a few days in Cuba visited the Instituto de Etnologia y Folklore. Basil Davidson wrote on 8 September that Eric Williams was willing to write the chapter proposed to him and hoped to find the time. At the Ghana end the project was being carried forward through the Institute by an assistant Audrey Bishop and a researcher Alfred Kofi Quarcoo. As Thomas was settling back into an Oxford life Dossie under her aura as a Nobel laureate was becoming even more of a world traveller. In mid-September she went on a British Council sponsored visit to Japan coupled with a journey to China at her own wish to see scientific progress there. Thomas continued his regular visits to BJ in London. He met her from her work at Heinemann on 21 September and stayed over in London this time at a Hammersmith riverside house on loan to Alexander Cockburn, recent Oxford graduates who had been neighbours and friends of Luke and Anna Hodgkin in Woodstock Road. Thomas was in London again the following week and on 23 September went with his younger son Toby to see the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinkas play The Road in production at the Theatre Royal, Stratford (Toby staying over at his uncle Teddys flat). Thomas and Toby with BJ and Polly went next day to Terry Bishops film Hamile, a version of Shakespeares Hamlet set in Ghana with Ghanaian actors. The showing brought accidental encounters with several acquaintances and friends including the historian Adu Boahen on study leave, Willie Abraham Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Legon, Thomass cousin Elizabeth Cairns and her husband David Nussbaum. After the film Thomas, Toby, BJ, Lucy and Polly had supper at the Little Akropolis. Thomas had a lunch gathering on 25 September at Bertorellis for Toby and Polly and Legon connections Stephen Andoh and Roger Murray. Toby returned to Oxford and Thomas remained for another night in London staying again with Alexander Cockburn. Thomas and BJ were together for much of the following week, going to Mozarts Cosi fan Tutte on 30 September. Thomas was back in Oxford harness with the new lectureship from 1 October. He and BJ were together again in London on 8 October when BJs pleasure was marred by hearing for the first time in their year together what in her letter to him next day she expressed as Thomass unmanageable cough - for which Thomas was seeking medical treatment. BJ on 22 October went with some nervousness to Oxford and stayed at the Hodgkin house at 94 Woodstock Road, meeting Dossies sister Joan and some of her children. Next morning Thomas and BJ snatched a fleeting walk at Cumnor where they had walked together in the autumn of 1930 and Thomas had proposed then BJ drove back to Hampstead. Basil on 11 October and on the eve of a ten-day visit to Moscows Africa Institute wrote a reminder letter to Thomas on contributors to Africa in History. Thomas in turn wrote reminder or follow-up letters on 27 October to South African Senator H.M. Basner in

Ghana, Hrbek in Czechoslovakia and Williams in Trinidad. Thomas and Basil had lunch together in London next day to review the project and the need to revise the timetable since it was clear that all drafts were not available by the target date of 1 November Thomas had a draft chapter on Eastern Sudan and Ethiopia not quite ready for typing. BJ wrote on 1 November how much she would miss Thomas when he went away he was due to spend some time in Ghana and how lucky they had been to see each other almost every week, especially their times at Abinger. When time and season allowed they had begun driving on their Thursday outings to the Surrey village of Abinger Hammer near Dorking where they could have a drink and lunch at the Abinger Arms or take a picnic and walk up the steep lane to Lord Farrers Abinger Hall estate and enjoy bluebells or rhododendrons and the birdlife. When time was more constrained they walked among the birches on Hampstead Heath or ate biscuits by the Serpentine in Hyde Park but by November it was becoming rather cold for this and the Gaster house full of election work for a parliamentary by-election on 4 November was unsuitable as an alternative. Thomas in Oxford was receiving stream of academic visitors and friends colleagues and increasingly students and facing new requests for yet more writing on Africa. Jacob Ajayi, professor of history at Ibadan, wrote on 3 November to ask if Thomas would be interested and available to come as a visiting professor in 1966-67 and whether Thomas would contribute a chapter on post-war West African history to a book that he and Michael Crowder editing on a commission from Longmans. Thomas on 8 November responded encouragingly to Franois Maspero who (prompted by Basil Davidson) had written from Paris about a series of commentaries and texts he proposed to publish on revolutionaries and asking if Thomas would contribute on the Mahdi of Sudan or on a personality of Thomass own choice. Thomas replied that he was interested in principle in writing on the Mahdi but was extremely busy and could not promise an early delivery. Thomas on 11 November read in the evening newspapers of the illegal unilateral declaration of independence by the white regime in Rhodesia as he made his way to a Ghanaian launch party at the London Hilton for Kwame Nkrumahs book Neocolonialism. After several speeches Thomas slipped away and went with Sudans ambassador Jamal Mohamed Ahmed to the ambassadors residence in Willesden where they watched on television senior British politicians commenting on the events in Rhodesia. He took the train back to Oxford and next morning received a letter from Christopher Hill that the Balliol College meeting on 10 November had resolved to elect Thomas to a Senior Research Fellowship no emoluments, but a right to free dinners and lunches. To the formal notification Christopher had added in ink Whoopee. Thomas writing to Dossie on a visit to Canada and the United States doubted if any previous Master would have used such a word. Thomas writing on 15 November to Christopher to accept pointed out that he would be leaving for Ghana on 19 November and not returning to England until early January, so deferred formalities until the college meeting before the beginning of the next Oxford term. Dossie returned from north America on 17 November in time to ensure that Thomas had a new suit. Thomas at Legon was accommodated in one of the university flats for visiting professors where his friend Hrbek had previously stayed. Thomas was holding seminars for postgraduate students at the Institute of African Studies and even some writing but as usual giving help to other scholars: for Ann Seidman in revision of her book on African economics, references for Brad Martin, sources on the Almoravids for a promising young

researcher from Bahia in Brazil Paulo de Moraes Farias, discussion with Basner on his chapter for Africa in History. He wrote for The Economic Bulletin of Ghana a somewhat scathing review of Dennis Austins Politics in Ghana 1946-60. But on this Ghana occasion Dossie who arrived on 5 December was centre stage. At a University of Ghana Special Congregation on 7 December she was awarded an honorary degree and then gave the first in a series of talks for that years Aggrey-Fraser-Guggisberg Memorial Lectures when she spoke on chemistry in space from Pasteur to the present day. From Ibadan Ajayi wrote on 14 December that the board of studies of the faculty of arts had agreed unanimously to invite him to be the Nuffield Professor for the next session. Dossie and Thomas went to Lagos on 18 December en route to a Christmas visit to Liz in northern Zambia. BJ - after exchanges of scores of letters with Thomas and several telephone calls from him in Ghana wrote from Christmas eve and throughout Christmas week a serial letter against Thomass return at the new year and recounted the many incidents that evoked memories of encounters with Thomas through decades until the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to anyone. She gave him the Housmans International Peace Diary for 1966 which he carried through the year. Thomas was mentor and referee for post-graduate students from Legon and from Oxford and others attracted by his reputation in African studies. He wrote on 14 January to R.O. Garber the Registrar at Fourah Bay College Sierra Leone in support of an appointment for LaRay Denzer to a part-time lectureship in the department of history and political science with a part-time research assistantship in the Institute of African Studies for Michael Crowder. Thomas on 19 January wrote a reference for his cook-steward Ben Affia who had worked for the Hodgkins at Legon from February 1962 until July 1965 and had later returned to Nigeria. Thomas turned down the Ajayi and Crowder request for a book chapter but sounded Crowder out on possibilities of an appointment for Martin Staniland and on 26 January supported Staniland in a bid for a Leverhulme Research Award. A Gambian research student in politics at Edinburgh University Jabez Ayo Langley who was looking at the growth of nationalist thought in West Africa wrote on 28 January seeking guidance on what method, or methods can I adopt in studying West African nationalist ideology? Arthur Crook wrote from The Times Literary Supplement asking for a three thousand word piece on Africa for a special number marking the jubilee of the Historical Association. The author Naomi Haldane kin through her marriage to the Labour politician G.R. Dick Mitchison - asked Thomas to look at a history of Africa she was writing. BJs dissembling to Jack about her frequent meetings with Thomas had worn very thin. In a letter to Thomas on 30 January she recounted several pointed comments by Jack during a single weekend. When Douglas Jay telephoned twice to BJ to go for a walk and BJ said she was driving Jack into town Jack said later: I dont want to prevent you from seeing your old loves except one, who has become too obtrusive lately. In the same vein he said: I expect you saw that I was going to borrow your bag to take my jacket to the tailors, but, when I emptied it & saw its contents I decided against. (BJ kept manuscripts on which she was working and some of Thomass letters in the bag). In a subsequent conversation when BJ said she enjoyed talking over the past with Thomas, Jack said: As long as he doesnt make you unhappy, either by making you regret the past that youve missed or by trying to relive the past, which never works.

Thomas was asked to serve as an external examiner at the Institute of African Studies and in his correspondence with Legon raised the instance of a very able B.Phil. student, Christopher Allen at Nuffield College who was studying African trade unions, and was interested in coming to Ghana to collect material for his thesis. Allen was a participant in Thomass Oxford seminars and taking the paper for the B.Phil. in Thomass specialist subject the government of new African states. Naomi Mitchison sent her manuscript on 14 February. For BJ and Thomas the United States involvement in Vietnam was a matter of keen political concern. Nkrumah in February was absent from Ghana on a peacemaking mission in Vietnam and his own administration was overthrown on 24 February by a military coup in Ghana. Thomas late next day read a hostile leader in The Times that seemed to him simply a statement of the oppositions case against Nkrumah, and he wrote privately to Teddy: It is really terribly misleading and misinformed. If (as I gather) it was written by Roy Lewis I am disturbed that anyone who writes Times leaders on African subjects should show such a lack of understanding. Quite apart from points of interpretation about which there is room for disagreement it isnt correct in regard to elementary facts e.g. He had abolished free speech the judiciary. What rubbish. Thomas over the ensuing days wrote a formal rejoinder to the editor of Times for publication with a conclusion: Of course Dr. Nkrumahs Government can be criticised on various grounds. It is a pity though that so little attention has been paid to its positive achievements. Even Cromwell did not ask to be painted only warts. Ghana during the past fifteen years became a society in which rapid and exciting advances were made in education and other fields; in which there was a real effort to canalise peoples energies to achieve social change; and in which it was possible (as in few other counties) to have rational intercourse between people of widely differing political standpoints. This was certainly something. Thomas also appeared on the BBC television current affairs programme Twenty-four hours on 1 March and on 2 March whern he sought to keep Nkrumahs role in perspective and point to the benefits to the Ghanaian people in their town and villages against a critical view by Dr Kobina Taylor representing the opposition United Party. The live television appearances were sandwiched into a busy calendar of other engagements. After the first television programme he went to Ilsas and found Donal OBrien and his wife Rita who stayed talking till late. Next day he took an early train to Leeds to speak to a Left Lunch Club, met Ghanaians and Kenyans including the novelist James Ngugi, went then to a meeting of the Asian-African Society before a flight to London on a ticket provided by the BBC for a second television programme followed by a return to Ilsas where he found Ghanaian diplomats Fred Arkhurst and Henry Sekyi on their way from Peking to Ghana. Thomas went next day to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to talk to the local UN Association of which his son Toby was a member and Thomas returned south by a night train. Palme-Dutt who saw a broadcast wrote on 3 March asking if Thomas would write for the April issue of Labour Monthly an article on the coup, its background and outcome. Charles Smith wrote on 4 March from Zaria asking if Thomas would consider taking a chair of sociology even if only for two years. Thomass letter to The Times was published on 5 March and drew several approving letters to him from old colleagues. The British Foreign Office diplomat Martin Le Quesne wrote that Thomas had been right about the positive side of Nkrumaism but weakened his

case by light-hearted disregard of the other side of the medal: He proposed that Thomas should have a meal in London to talk about recent convolutions in Africa. Dossie was away in the Netherlands from 7 March and BJ came to Oxford for a nostalgic visit including a walk up Cumnor Hill to the tree by which Thomas had proposed marriage, tea on 10 March with Isaiah Berlin and dinner given in the Principals Lodgings at St Hildas College by Mary Fisher (now Mrs Bennett) for BJ and Thomas with other old friends Maurice Bowra and Tony Andrewes. In Ghana many academics rushed to dissociate themselves from the Nkrumah past in which they had shared and rising figures signed a collective letter of 14 March for The Times to counter Thomass letter sympathetic to Nkrumah. Thomas they alleged was away from Ghana so often that it is not strange he never really got to know the people of this country, apart from Nkrumah himself (whom he often visited) and the politicians and party officials whom he considered it important to know. The collection of a score of names meant that the letter reached the newspaper too late to be included in the correspondence. The lead signatory of the unpublished letter was an associate professor K.A.B. Soas Jones-Quartey designated as the chairman of a Legon Committee on National Reconstruction, and the second was the Institute secretary Stephen Andoh signing as chairman of the Political Sub-Committee. Thomas writing on 15 March to accept Le Quesnes invitation to a meal commented that his letter to The Times was not meant as an apologia for Nkrumah but to correct the more obviously incorrect and misleading statements in The Times leader. JonesQuartey, recognising that the collective letter would reach The times when the subject was no longer topical, wrote privately to Thomas on 16 March that before Thomass letter appeared some of us Legonites had begun to organise themselves into an instrument of reform and reconstruction for our country, or at least into a source of advice and assistance to the Interim Government. They had seen Thomass letter as one of the first challenges to their self-respect and sense of duty. Thomas replied on 24 March (before seeing the text of the collective letter) regretting that he had caused distress: But you will surely see that one could not simply remain silent when a great deal of sheer nonsense was being published in the press here about the old regime in Ghana. I think even you, had you been here, would have wished to correct some of the misstatements which have appeared. In the same letter dictation session (in Oxford Thomas had secretarial support) he wrote to Charles Smith declining the proposed chair in sociology on the grounds that he did not have the appropriate knowledge of sociology or social anthropology and was reluctant to embark again on university administration such as he had done in Ghana: I should limit myself to a modest amount of teaching, and trying to some of the writing that I have neglected for too long in such years as may remain. And it was the turn of Cambridge graduate Donal Cruise OBrien to have a recommendation from Thomas for a research fellowship in politics with reference to West Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London: He seems to me one of the most intelligent and perceptive among the younger (or for that matter the older) students of West African politics whom I have come across. Thomas went on to speak at Chatham House in London on Ghana and its critics and to supper with Le Quesne at the Reform Club. Thomas on 31 March wrote to Stephen Andoh after seeing a copy of the collective letter saying that he did not wish to continue as external examiner for the Legon MA in African

studies or in political science, and would not be coming to Ghana for that purpose but had a continuing interest in Paolo Farias and would be willing to read his thesis and comment without being the external examiner. The Hodgkin household was joined on 3 April (Thomass birthday) by a young political refugee from Rhodesia Wilson Katiyo who had been staying in Zambia with Liz Hodgkin at Kasama where the wardrobe he had rebuilt after escaping with almost nothing from police harassment in Rhodesia had been stolen in a break-in on 17 March. Wilson was helped by Liz and her friends to travel to Britain to resume his education, was met on arrival at London airport by Toby Hodgkin and taken to Oxford. From Ghana on 5 April Lazare wrote (to Dear Father from your adopted son) that his study of biology and chemistry, physics and mathematics had been interrupted by the coup. He and others had been arrested and then released but were required to find a ticket to leave the country. Several of Thomass Legon friends were leaving: Ann and Bob Seidman to Wisconsin, Ivor Wilks to Manchester for a Simon Fellowship prior to taking up a professorship at Northwestern in the United States. The Times Literary Supplement on 7 April in its special number on New Ways In History carried Thomass essay on new openings in Africa in which he recalled how the historians had to reject the Hegelian myth that African history before European contact was neither intelligible, significant or interesting, and pointed that one of the most difficult problems facing histories pre-occupied with oral tradition was to fit significant recorded events into a reasonable framework. Wilson Katiyo quickly benefited from the Oxford networks of the Hodgkin and Davin families and their connections in London. Even before Wilson reached Britain Thomas had raised Wilsons education prospects with John Syson who since February had been at the Ariel Foundation in London. Wilson had supper on 15 April with the Gasters in Hampstead, was given books and an offer from Polly of coaching in English. Wilson spent some of his early days with a Rhodesian friend Phanuel Maramba in West Norwood but on 20 April wrote to Thomas broaching if he might live at 94 Woodstock Road while preparing for the seven O level examination subjects for which he had registered to sit in the summer. Wilson came from Oxford to London on 9 May with a large sum of money from Dossie to replace his twice-depleted wardrobe and at a Davin family request was met by Michael Wolfers (on the staff of The Times newspaper as assistant letters editor). Wilson chose to begin his search for clothes at the rather unOxford Italianate store Cecil Gee. Michael Wolfers had planned to spend the following weekend in Oxford and on the afternoon of 14 May was invited for tea at 94 Woodstock Road to see how Wilson was faring. Wolfers already knew Thomass sons but was meeting Thomas and Dossie for the first time and he was readily persuaded to stay for supper before he went as planned to a party given by Thomas Urquhart, an undergraduate son of Britains leading United Nations secretariat official Brian Urquhart. With the effects of the Ghana coup continuing to reverberate Thomas sought a lobby to the press or the Ghana authorities for the release of Willie Abraham from protective custody. He asked Isaiah Berlin to be one of the signatories to a letter. Berlin was willing to support Abrahams release but in a letter of 15 May demurred at Thomass representation of a former colleague as a friend: I do not think that he addressed more than one remark to me while he was at All Souls, although I made repeated efforts to get on some sort of terms with him; nor could I conscientiously interest myself in the fate of

the University of Ghana, or say that I thought it was bad for that University to be deprived of his services. My real reason for signing this apart from vaguely Hegelian feelings about belonging to the concrete universal called All Souls, is that I am prepared to support any move to remove any political prisoners from gaol anywhere this is perhaps too absolute I do not think I would sign a petition asking for the liberation of let us say Goering . Lazare self-appointed adoptive son - wrote from Ghana on 24 May that he had secured authority to leave Ghana for Algiers at the end of May. Thomas was to speak on Ghana at a meeting on 4 June at Westminster Hall. The event was prominently advertised in the Daily Worker of 2 June. Jack Gaster, who read the paper for libel, brought the issue home on the eve of publication and asked BJ is she would be going to the event, and when she looked vague Jack admonished her not to pretend that she did not know about it. BJ felt it best not to attend though she confessed in writing to Thomas on 3 June of a very great longing to go, the sort of longing that one used to have for a particularly beautiful doll in a shop-window. Wilson, writing on 4 June from Capo di Monte the Hampstead home of publisher John Howard - and addressing his Hodgkin letter to Mum and Dad was as he perceived one of the very few people who have had the best teaching ever. He was now receiving invaluable help in English from Mrs Howardthe writer and lexicographer Marghanita Laski, whose mother was one of Jack Gasters dozen siblings. Ilsa Yardley, re-established in London with her husband Maurice Yardley in a flat in Mortimer Street and working for publisher Andre Deutsch, gave a party for Conor and Maire Cruise OBrien on 8 June, and invited Thomas and Polly, but thought it tactful not to invite Jack and BJ. The latter had another awkward moment when Lucy visiting on 12 June remarked on a short article on Nkrumahs fall that Thomas had contributed to a Ghana issue of the Fabian Society monthly journal Venture. BJ responded that she did not know it was in the house and Jack saw this as duplicity. Thomas set off on 16 June for a few days in Zaria as external examiner in a northern Nigeria disturbed by interethnic riots at the end of May and found that some of the student examination scripts he was reviewing had been written on the principal day of the riots. Examiners were asked to take this into account in the marking of the student papers. He left Kano on 24 June for a brief return to Oxford and to walks with BJ at Abinger. He wrote in support of Naomi Mitchisons Africa history manuscript to Prudence Smith at Longmans who on 14 July sent the discouraging reply that it was turned down by Longmans as irredeemable. Thomas had planned to travel with Dossie in early July to Moscow where she was attending a crystallography congress. In the event he was delayed by a fever thought to be a recurrent bout of malaria: on 15 July BJ came to visit in Oxford again. Thomas joined Dossie for the latter part of a journey by flights to Samarkand, Bukhara, Sochi and Yalta and a sailing to Istanbul which would take them into August. Jack and BJ were to spend a holiday cruising on the Black Sea with members of the British Peace Committee. BJ, finding that Jack believed the coincidence was planned rather than fortuitous, wrote to Thomas on 2 and 3 August that if they should chance to meet in Odessa (I cant force myself to wish that we dont meet) they should avoid doing so in Istanbul: What a ridiculous situation to find ourselves in. It makes me sad and worried about the future.

In the event there was a fleeting and awkward meeting in Odessa where the two couples were on adjacent boats. BJ and Jack were first to arrive and BJ saw sailing in the boat carrying Thomas and Dossie. BJ saw Thomas up on deck, hung back to wave and when challenged said she was waving to a peace supporter on the dock. BJ thought she and her travelling companions would be away looking at Odessa before the other boats passengers had completed landing formalities and were allowed to disembark. Suddenly Thomas appeared, BJ passed a quick warning message and avoided a substantive meeting. Jack later scolded BJ in their cabin since he was convinced that the encounter was planned (and that Thomas planned to share BJs holiday). BJ argued that these were the last circumstances in which she and Thomas would plan to meet and she told Jack that she would hide in their cabin until Thomass boat had gone. BJ did not dare tell Jack that there was a further overlap in Istanbul on 14 August and there she wore a bright pink dress so that if Thomas saw her in the distance he could turn tail: What melodrama miserable and absurd she commented to Thomas in a letter of 20 August as she returned via Hungary to England. Thomas had just returned to an accumulation of requests for help. Bill Johnson had raised the case of a South African exile Ronnie Kasrils who had fled his country because of political activity in the national liberation movement and with his wife Eleanor had much later gained asylum in Britain. Kasrils wanted to study African history and was looking to Thomas for advice and introductions. The Nigerian Vincent Bakpetu Thompson wanted to meet Thomas to show a manuscript on Pan-Africanism. The Congolese Thomas Kanza wanted assistance in entering St Antonys College or London University. Martin Kilson sought a copy of Thomass Nkrumah article in Venture and wanted Thomas to look at the book he was writing on local political change in Ghana. Naomi Mitchison was seeking return of her African history manuscript. Philip Mason of the Institute of Race Relations wanted Thomas to join a group of people trying to frame proposals on trends and possible developments in research concerned with race relations in the future in Britain. Thomas on 1 October was a platform speaker for a Marxism Today seminar in London on African liberation. He resumed the Oxford teaching and supervision, agreed to give university lectures and seminars at Keele, Sussex and Bradford and sent off to the journal Comparative Education an article on African universities and the state requested by his friend since undergraduate days Alec Peterson. Thomass Oxford University appointment allowed some margin for travel. He accepted an approach from Professor Jura Medaric, director of the Africa Research Institute in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, to meet institute staff and give a public lecture on 14 November. Since Thomas had agreed to be Nuffield Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Ibadan for part of Hilary term in 1967 he wrote on 26 October to the Oxford University registrar seeking leave of absence. The assistant registrar pointed out than not permission was required since Thomass duties were to give 36 lectures during two terms of the academic year only and no condition to spend the third term in Oxford. From Thomass teaching perspective an absence of two months would not demand special arrangements for the post-graduate students he was supervising. The Nuffield professorship covered the cost of passages for the holder and spouse, but Thomas alerted Ibadan that it was unlikely that Dossie would be with him at the start as she had to spend part of January and February in India, but might come in the latter part

of his stay. Jack and BJ on 20 December were en route to a concert performance of Berlioz Les Troyens at the Royal Festival Hall and went for an early dinner at Bertorellis. As they were passing the Little Akropolis Jack asked BJ When did you last see your boy-friend? and she replied that she had lunch with him a couple of weeks earlier, or three perhaps. After some badinage BJ said that Thomas would be going off to Africa again soon which she expected would earn him a good mark from Jack: Yes it will, he replied. In the new year of 1967 the director of the Sudan unit at the University of Khartoum wrote on 2 January to ask Thomas for advice and help and participation in a prospective international conference on the place of the Sudan in Africa. Bill Johnson, with a reference from Thomas, was offered and accepted an assistant lectureship in political sociology at the University of East Anglia (a competitor for the post was another of Thomass student protgs Gavin Williams). Thomas and Dossie travelled on 12 January to Nigeria and India respectively. BJ went to see Thomas off and later in the day told Jack in a passing mention that she had done so, and turned quickly to an account of having fallen over and bruised her back. Ibadan seemed much as usual to Thomas despite the ethnic upheavals in Nigeria an Ibo driver at the airport a familiar Ibo steward at the Nuffield Lodge but some Ibo dons and students had left for the east. Roger Murray wrote on 15 January from Dar es Salaam hesitantly enquiring if Thomas might be interested in taking over the chair of politics at the university college that David Kimble was vacating, but noting that when Liz had passed through the previous month she had said she doubted that Thomas would come out to Africa again in any full-time capacity. Thomas in Ibadan had a recurrence of a troublesome cough and began a course of Penbritin. He found that he was working quite hard preparing his series of lectures and seminars. An old friend Adenekan Ademola, who had been at the Elfinsward conference and was now a prosperous lawyer, called in on 26 January, drank some beer and talked Nigerian politics: he believed the Nigerian Federation would survive through pressure of the minorities. Thomas lunched on 29 January with an even older friend Ayo Ogunsheye, but was further troubled in the afternoon and the night by the coughing malady and put himself back on Penbritin as he continued preparation for four lectures on his chosen theme Islam and the radical tradition in Africa and two Saturday seminars on related Islamic themes. In his first Nuffield lecture on 7 February and addressing mediaeval Islam he offered a definition of the radical tradition: What I think I have particularly in mind is the tradition that emphasises the rights of the common people against the claims of their rulers; that takes a levelling egalitarian attitude to differences of rank, status, wealth, lineage, sex etc., and the privileges based upon these; that is concerned with changing institutions as a precondition of changing human beings, and opening up new possibilities for their development; that attaches importance to the widest possible diffusion of knowledge and education; that has the idea men belong (in some sense) to an international community, whose claims transcend those of a particular state, region, or ethnic or linguistic group. Ann Seidman wrote from Madison, Wisconsin, on 28 February that she heard from Robert Hutchison of Penguin Books that they were interested in publishing the manuscript on the economics of African unity she had written with Reg Green, economic adviser to the Treasury in Tanzania. Hutchison would ask Thomas to write a forward and

she hoped he would take this opportunity to put the whole business in proper historical perspective which I know you would do better than anyone. Another errant manuscript found a home as Naomi Mitchison described in a letter of 20 March from Botswana about her history of Africa: I was getting into the plane at Dar with the thing in my bag. In got a slightly drunken young man who introduced himself as Anthony Blond, said that he was determined to break into the African market and what he really wanted was a history of Africa. So I took it out of my bag and he went on drinking and reading till Ndola and then said Will you sign a contract?. She was extremely surprised and referred him to her agent, but he had telephoned again in Lusaka and appeared to be quite serious. Thomas had returned to Oxford for a summer of students and seminars on the theme of s, and Tobys marriage to a fellow Newcastle student Judith Wright. Requests from potential authors on Africa continued. A South African exile in London Ruth First wrote on 25 May - after Thomas had agreed to meet her about her project for writing on armies and coups in selected African states: Now look whats happening, coups thick and fast in so many states the subject is unmanageable, certainly impossible to research in depth in more than two or three countries and, even then, can one get at the material, enough to develop a general theory of army interventions related to crises in the evolution of political power groups? A Nigerian economist Kalu Ezera - alerted to the current Hodgkin address by Michael Wolfers on a reporting visit to Nigeria for The Times - wrote from the Biafra University of Nsukka on 8 June about a manuscript on the verge of completion with a colleague . Raymond Ofoegbu and delineating a collapse of the Federation of Nigeria and the birth of a new nation Biafra. Thomas met Ruth First on 12 June and on 17 June Naomi Mitchison wrote confirming that Blond was taking on her African history. Meanwhile Thomas and Basil Davidson met on 16 June at Le Matelot and discussed the counter-revolution in Africa. Thomas travelled next day to Nigeria as external examiner for Zaria and Dossie cabled him the news that all three of Thomass students had passed their Oxford B.Phil. examinations those three ewelambs Thomas called them in his letter of thanks to Dossie on 20 June. He lost an old friend the writer Randall Swingler who on 19 June died of a heart attack outside the York Minster public house in Soho on his way to lunch with his son-in-law. Thomas on 27 June left Nigeria for Oxford in time to see Dossie off to the United States from London on 2 July. He then settled in the airport over coffee and a pack of ginger biscuits to prepare remarks on Ghana and counter-revolution for an afternoon meeting at Mahatma Gandhi Hall in Fitzroy Square Thomass mother had decided to move from Crab Mill to the smaller Grey House along Grump Street in Ilmington so that Thomas and Dossie could take full possession of Crab Mill. Thomas at his mothers bidding telephoned the removal company Archer Cowley to arrange for the moving on 21 July of some of their Oxford possessions to Ilmington though 94 Woodstock Road would remain as an Oxford home for a while. The house removal almost coincided with a brief stay by Thomas at the Acland Home in Oxford for the removal of tonsils intended to ease the recurrent bouts of infection he had been suffering. BJ came on 27 July to visit him at the Acland. They continued to meet discreetly, though Thomas in London on overnight stays would now go to Ilsa Yardleys and not to Aintrim Road, and Thomas and BJ avoided meeting at public events. They were separately guests on 29 September at an embassy reception to mark the eighteenth anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China although they very nearly

crossed paths in the embassy hall: BJ contemplated a poem in the metaphysical mode on missing orbits. When the Oxford term resumed in October Thomas sought to establish a routine of spending the week in Oxford and the weekends in Ilmington, though the weekend began after a Friday seminar he had at Queen Elizabeth House at five in the afternoon. He went to East Berlin from 22 to 26 October for a conference marking the Oriental Institutes twentieth anniversary and met BJ before departure and on return. In November he was writing up the material he had used for his Ibadan lectures, invitation and agreeing to requests from Cambridge and from SOAS to give seminars on related themes, but beginning to weary of the academic round, writing on 2 November to Ivor Wilks at Northwestern University: I am coming more and more to the conclusion that Oxford is a waste of time and am planning to retire again shortly. Dennis Austin was appointed to the chair of politics at the University of Manchester, and Ken Post wrote from the University of the West Indies in Kingston Jamaica asking Thomas to act as referee for Denniss old job at the London Institute due for appointment for October in the next year. Thomas had a hankering for more writing and was pleased when Alex Cockburn wrote on 14 November for the New Statesman offering for review three books on imperialism and suggesting that these with other books he had sent Thomas would provide matter for a Books in General piece about the foundation of imperialism. Thomas replied on 16 November accepting the proposal and asking Alex to stay at Ilmington sometime around Christmas when Liz would be back from Zambia. Basil with his wife Marion came to Oxford on 25 November to see Thomas and Dossie and Gervase Matthew. The Christmas vacation for Thomas and Dossie was shared with all their children Luke and Anna with the three grandchildren, Liz, and Toby recently married to Judith Wright and their son Simon. Thomas had a jolting reminder from the New American Library about the long promised but neglected Africa history book, when the NAL secretary Michael Cohn wrote I see by our file that we have not communicated with you for about four years on your book about Africa and asking for some word about progress. Thomas wrote back on 10 January 1968 that the matter was on his conscience but his plans had changed since his discussions with Weybright and he was working on a plan for a book on The Radical Tradition in African Politics, based partly on the lectures he had given at the University of Ibadan and would be giving in Oxford. He thought too many general books on African history had been written in recent years and offered the new subject for consideration by NAL as an alternative. Thomas was on the verge of another house move in Oxford that took place on 16 January from 94 Woodstock Road to the uppermost flat 20C Bradmore Road within the house that Thomass parents had leased after the first world war as their family home and where after conversion into flats Dossie and Luke had lived during the second world war when Thomas was working in North Staffordshire and his parents were in the Provosts Lodging at Queens. Thomas now found the flat small though agreeably warm and nearer to Oxford work places for himself and Dossie the Woodstock Road house was to be sold when Joan Payne had found herself an alternative home. Thomas travelled to Khartoum for a conference organised by the universitys Sudan Research Unit in the second week of February. Thomas on the eve of departure for Sudan wrote reluctantly yielding to urging by Charles Smith that he go again to Zaria as external examiner in June though Thomas insisted that this should definitely be regarded as his last year. Thomas

in Khartoum was surrounded by friends spending the first half of the week with Norman Daniel of the British Council and the second half with Yusuf Babiker Bedri in Omdurman at Ahfad University College for Women. Thomas spent the evening of 5 February with the inner core of his Sudanese friends including Salah Ahmed Ibrahim nostalgic talks about Nkrumah and Mohamed Omer Beshir. The university was offering Liz a teaching post in the history department on a three year contract MOB said it would have been a five year contract if she had not been Thomass daughter! Thomas in Oxford renewed acquaintance with Eduardo Mondlane who was the principal speaker at a national student conference on 9 March on the theme of revolution in southern Africa. Thomas chaired an afternoon session on the feasibility of an armed struggle. Sally Chilver, as principal of Bedford College in the University of London, wrote on 22 April asking if Thomas would give the 1968 Fawcett Lecture endowed in memory of the suffragist Dame Millicent Fawcett and intended to address changes in the position of women since 1830. BJ was staying with Diana Hopkinson in Cornwall at the Hubback familys Trethias Cottage on Treyarnon Bay and Thomas joined them for a few days (Dossie was on a visit to Australia), though as BJ had not fully confided in Diana, BJ was in an upstairs bedroom and Thomas in a downstairs room. BJ contented herself with marvellous happiness, little walks and sits and reads in old and new places, sea-pink, gargle-blue water, and the delight of simple cooking and washings-up together. Thomas on 27 April was at Nottingham University to speak in a symposium held by the Biafra Union of Great Britain and Ireland. OUP were expecting new material from Thomas by the end of 1968 for a second edition of Nigerian Perspectives and John Bell wrote on 2 May from the publishers London office suggesting a discussion on extending the original volume. Thomas on 8 May wrote to Michael Cohn at NAL accepting that the contract should be cancelled since they were not taking up the subject of the radical tradition in African politics: This seems likely to be the only book on African history that I shall ever write. Sally Chilver, writing on 9 May, was extremely attracted by Thomass idea for the Fawcett Lecture of examining whether revolutionaries have revolutionary ideas about love and she proposed calling it Love and the revolutionaries. Thomas on 22 May went to dinner and an overnight stay with Ruth First and her husband Joe Slovo at their London home in Lyme Street, Camden Town, with another guest who wanted to see Thomas again. This was a Nigerian Ibo intellectual Sam Goomsu Ikoku who as a prominent Nkrumahist had been deported back to Nigeria after the Ghana coup. Ruth First came to Oxford on 27 May for a seminar convened by Thomas where Ron Bellamy asked how socialist was Ghana under the CPP? Thomass guest speaker on 3 June was Nathan Shamuyarira speaking on the failure of international pressures against Rhodesia. Thomas invited him to spend the preceding Sunday and overnight at Ilmington where he also invited members of the Cruise OBrien family Conor and Maire, Donal and Rita: Thomas wrote to Rita that he had been feeling the lack of Conor as another serious Shakespeare-reading comrade. Thomas and NAL had agreed to terminate their contract for an African history book, but for Weidenfeld & Nicolson Nicolas Thompson wrote on 4 June expressing interest in hearing more about his alternative proposal of a book on The Radical Tradition in African Politics. Yusuf Fadl Hassan wanted Thomas to revise and expand for book publication the paper he had given at the Sudan in Africa conference in Khartoum.

Thomas on 17 June was again in Northern Nigeria for examining at Zaria and Kano and on 26 June he returned to England. On 19 July he was a lunch guest of James Bell and Richard Brain of OUP to discuss a second edition of Nigerian Perspectives with a new introduction and material for delivery by the end of 1968. Basil Davidson on 13 August sent Thomas a typescript to read of what Basil saw as his last book of the kind a sort of envoi to these Africanist years. Basil was now enthused by the contemporary aspect of the liberation movements in Africa. He was just back from the first Frelimo congress inside Mozambique with five days of discussion on strategy and structure, and an evening he had spent with Agostinho Neto to hear of MPLA progress in the central and eastern grasslands of Angola. The house at 94 Woodstock Road was up for sale, given close inspection in August by Ruskin College - turned down as requiring too much adaptation for their vision of broader student recruitment - then taken in September by St Antonys College. Thomas was reading widely in preparation for his Millicent Fawcett lecture and drawing on his friends and students for inspiration about Marxs household and Marxist champions. Thomas was exploring the ideas of European revolutionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries grouped in the circles of Shellley and Godwin, Marx and Engels, William Morris and Eleanor Marx Aveling, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin - and the crux was to explain a revolutionary attitude to love. He drew a conclusion that bourgeois marriage involved the subordination of love to considerations of property, but through the perfect union of the lover with the beloved both can achieve a new being. Privately Thomas and BJ saw this exploration in the light of their shared relationship. On the eve of the lecture BJ tried to sleep early in order to look her best at the Bedford College presentation on 26 November. She attended and blushingly noted several literary references to romantic texts they shared as favourites. When BJ and Jacks son Nicolas was married on 20 December Thomass wedding cheque was the largest of all the monetary gifts and BJ lovingly saw this generosity as offered for her sake. In the new year 1969 a Balliol College meeting held on 3 January re-elected Thomas to his senior research fellowship from 14 January to 30 September 1972. Thomas had told OUP that he had been unable to complete the material for the new edition of Nigerian Perspectives and on 8 January OUP accepted his suggestion of a new delivery date of 20 April. BJ was helping to entertain Janet Mondlane on a visit to London and took her to London airport on 2 February for her return to Tanzania only to learn next day that Eduardo Mondlane was killed by a parcel bomb. Thomas lost another friend in the death on 19 February of Stephen Swingler from heart attack following pneumonia. Thomas on 21 February was in London for Swinglers funeral at Golders Green Crematorium and went on to Anne Swinglers flat in Belsize Park the kind of wake which I wouldnt mind having myself, with lots of red wine and hot soup and bread and cheese, as he described it in a letter to Liz in Khartoum. He carried on to Cambridge where he made a brief oration in honour of Mondlane at memorial ceremonies organised by Ivor Wilks and Phyllis Ferguson. Thomass Balliol fellowship was without emoluments and he wrote in early March a report on his work as university lecturer from October 1965. He had conducted lectures and seminars and supervised at various times between three and six research students, and tutored two or three students taking the Politics of New States (Africa) paper in their B. Phil. and supervised thesis preparation. The University Registry on 14 March

advised that the board of electors to the lectureship in the government of new states that Thomas held on a five year appointment had agreed to re-elect him to hold office until he reached retiring age. In late April Thomas had to tell OUP that despite working on the Nigerian Perspectives material he could not meet the 20 April date and did not expect to do much further work until the long vacation. OUPs John Bell wrote on 22 April that he was considering a reprint o a small quantity of the existing edition to fill the gap until the new edition. With Dossie attending an insulin conference in Indianapolis Thomas spent part of May Day with BJ she telling Jack that she was with Diana Hopkinson. Later in the year Thomas invited BJ to go with him to a Shakespeare Theatre Company production on 7 August (The Merry Wives of Windsor). BJ on 6 August broke the plan to Jack who at first assumed this was to be at the Stratford companys London venue the Aldwych Theatre and then grasped that the play was at Stratford and BJ would return a day later. Thomas and BJ stayed at Crab Mill in Ilmington where Thomass mother cut roses for BJ. Dossie was much occupied with her scientific work since she and her collaborators had just solved the structure of insulin on which she had been working since before her marriage. She went to the United States for the International of Crystallography Conference at Stony Brook, New York where the new findings were presented. BJ with Jack and Thomas with Dossie went on separate summer holidays: the Gasters from mid-August to a mill in Somerset borrowed from Jacks relative the writer Marghanita Laski and the Hodgkins in late August to a rented house North Rawe in Bamburgh and on to Ross and Cromarty in Scotland to see Toby and Judith and grandchildren. Thomas on return to Ilmington was at work on overdue writing but distracted from Nigerian Perspectives by a paper on African theories of imperialism he had agreed to contribute to a seminar planned for the next academic year by St Antonys College Fellow Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe. Thomas despite the renewals of his Balliol fellowship and university lectureship was conscious that Oxford duties took too much from his writing and was contemplating early retirement: he wrote on 22 September to Jeff Holden: I am hoping to retire in the summer of 1970 and devote myself to a life of quiet writing for such remaining years as I may happen to have. Thomas on 30 September wrote more extensively on his thinking to Christopher Hill as Master of Balliol: I really do want to spend my declining years (if any) writing all sorts of nonacademic things rather than going on pretending to be an academic. He avowed that he did not love Oxford at all but did love Balliol a good deal somewhat sentimentally in fact. Thomas then went to Leipzig for the German historian Walter Markovs sixtieth birthday symposium that meant further postponement in his Nigeria writing. By the following month Thomas acknowledged that work on Nigerian Perspectives would be deferred until after term ended on 10 December, and on 27 November he belatedly notified the universitys secretary of faculties that he would in the following term conduct a Monday evening seminar at Queen Elizabeth House on Class and Class-consciousness in African Politics and on Tuesday afternoons at Balliol College with Chris Allen a graduate class on Sociology of the Third World. Thomass students in under a theoretical veil of secrecy from Thomas were already deep in planning for Thomass own sixtieth birthday. Bill Johnson on 16 December wrote to Christopher Hill about a plan with Chris Allen at Nuffield for a festschrift book already more than a year in the making. Manuscripts had

been sent to press at the beginning of December and the editors proposed holding a party for Thomas on 3 April to which contributors or would-be contributors would be invited. Thomas in the new year of 1970 reaffirmed his decision to retire. He wrote to the ViceChancellor Alan Bullock on his decision to leave the university lectureship and on 4 January to Christopher Hill that he would also resign his college fellowship that had accompanied the university appointment: I feel bad, as one of your most faithful vassals, leaving you in this way. But it seems unavoidable - I must get some writing done at last. Thomas had a broader aim than his scheduled writing on Africa. On 5 January he wrote to Pauline Gregg at publisher George Harrap declining a request for a book on African history for a world history series. He was candid: I have, in the past, made some efforts to write a general book of the kind you have in mind, but they have never in fact come off, and I am now trying to move away from the African field and write about quite other things. Bullock, who was on the point of leaving Oxford on a brief visit to Africa, sent Thomas a handwritten note on 6 January on the sadness that Thomass resignation would bring to many in Oxford and overseas: You have contributed more than anyone to make Oxford a centre for the study of African affairs and I hope you will not take it as presumption on my part to offer you the Universitys thanks for all you have done. Thomas was trying to make headway on the revised edition of Nigerian Perspectives but distracted and preoccupied at the same time by the breaking news of the collapse of the Biafra project in Nigeria. He was trying to bring more order into the demands on his time, rejecting on 22 January an invitation to write for the journal Round Table and on 29 January accepting in principle a British Council invitation to visit the University of Warsaw but deferring the probable date from spring to October or November. He and Dossie were planning to go to the Sudan for a fortnight in mid-March where they would visit Liz teaching in the history faculty and each give lectures in their respective disciplines. The secret of special birthday celebrations for Thomas in April was wearing thin as rumours leaked through to him. Bill Johnson wrote to Thomas from Magdalen College on 10 February confirming in part what he and Chris Allen had been attempting surreptitiously to arrange: a small and informal birthday party for Thomass sixtieth birthday for a number of people who had worked with and under him They had booked the Magdalen Senior Common Room and would invite people for four oclock. Bill wrote more candidly to Dossie on 20 February saying that he was telling guests that Thomas was aware of the party but not of the festschrift. Bill took note of Thomass information that Dossie was thinking of giving a dinner in Somerville to follow on from the Magdalen event, and sought Dossies advice on the wine for Magdalen after a hint from Dossie that Thomas did not like champagne. The Magdalen session was essentially for academics and the Somerville session that had turned into a buffet supper was to include the Magdalen guests and a broader selection of Thomass friends and admirers. BJ received her invitation to the supper on 21 February but was thinking that she should not turn up a half stranger from the past, a ghost grieving on the periphery, though her daughter Polly would come. Meanwhile Thomas and Dossie arrived in Khartoum on 12 March to see Liz waving as they walked out from the aircraft. The Times diary on 3 April carried an item about Thomass impending retirement in September not through age but because he wanted to write novels historical novel, possibly for children, around themes from Asian and

African history. At the Magdalen gathering he was presented with several fat volumes of typescripts of essays from Africanist and Islamist scholars from around the world, with a select bibliography of Thomass own works to date. The roll call on a two-part volume of historical and theoretical perspectives was: Jamal M. Ahmed; Jack Goody and B.G. Martin; John O. Hunwick; Donal Cruise OBrien; Jean Suret-Canal; Ivor Wilks and Phyllis Ferguson; David E. Apter; Mohamed O. Beshir; Sholto Cross; J.J. Holden; Walter Markov; Ken Post; R.B. Sutcliffe; and Immanuel Wallerstein. Contributors to a two-part volume of case studies in the politics, economics and law of Africa were: Christopher Allen; Basil Davidson; Yash P. Ghai; Reginald Green; Bill Johnson; Martin Kilson; Ann Seidman; Robert B. Seidman; Martin Staniland; and Gavin Williams. Many of the authors were in Oxford for the days events and at the Somerville supper party Thomas in a bashful speech likened himself to A.A. Milnes Winnie-the-Pooh in whose honour Christopher Robin gave a party (A party for Me? thought Pooh to himself. How grand!) The diary item in The Times was followed by letters to Thomas from friends and strangers on the potential of stories and themes. Greville Freeman-Grenville pointed to the garrulous story-teller Ibn Battuta and several expressions of interest from would-be literary agents and editors. In the last week of April Dossie was lecturing in the U.S. and Thomas slipped discreetly away to the Hopkinson holiday home Trethias Cottage at Treyarnon Bay in Cornwall to be with BJ. Thomas on this occasion had on 6 April signed a formal contract offered by Rachel Hubback on 16 March to rent the cottage from 25 April to 2 May. The Hopkinson presence was a fiction that BJ presented to her own household and she dissembled Thomass presence even from her daughter Polly who was to visit Crab Mill in the second week of May. The Oxford trinity term was ending on 20 June and Thomas took his last formal seminar and his last cigarette. Then he with his daughter Liz left Oxford and drove across England and France through the great Burgundy and Alsace vineyards to meet Dossie on 26 June at Basel airport in Switzerland - to take her on to Lindau in Germany where Dossie attended a conference and gave a lecture. With Liz returning to her teaching post in Sudan Thomas was taking a keen interest in the shifts of policy that had occurred since the change of government in 1969 and the significant role his friends were playing in trying to heal the north-south divide. Joseph Garang as a minister was a key proponent of the new policy and Mohamed Omer Beshir had moved out of academia into an appointment in the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deal with liberation movements and relations between African countries. British and Sudanese in London sympathetic with the policy trend were forming a support committee, with Manuela Sykes as honorary secretary who had been prompted towards this action on one visit to the Sudan. The embryo committee with encouragement from Sudan and Britain asked Thomas to be honorary president (since he did have substantial background knowledge of the country than the other British involved) and Thomas in late July gave cautious assent. Thomas assented to a request sent on 3 August from the Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago for a brief new biographical entry on the Fulani revolutionary reformer Usman Dan Fodio influential in the spread of Islam in the early years of the nineteenth century in the Sokoto caliphate of what late became known as northern Nigeria.

Thomas with formal retirement approaching was trying to reshape his life. He wrote from Crab Mill on 23 August in a birthday letter to Teddy a reflection on his own prospects: I personally feel very content to spend any declining years I have writing as many as possible of the things I have failed to write over the past forty my main worries being simply my own slowness and the constant distractions and ones own terrible distractibility. But I hope to establish more of a regimen once it is clear that Im not in Oxford, not an Africanist, not a good person to write references, etc. He added the rider that the house was full of visitors including grandchildren so almost nothing gets done. Thomas had already taken the first steps to a principal new distraction: his perceived new role as novelist rather than academic. He experimented with planning and the first drafts for a work of fiction that had nothing to do with Asian and African history and in no way intended for a child readership. His subject was a transparent transposition of his early love for BJ and the rekindling of their relationship that had blazed in Ghana six years earlier. A tentative synopsis had a protagonist university professor Pierre waiting at a Muscobiya airport for a novelist Natasha to arrive from Tashkent where she had been attending a writers conference. Thomas shared these faltering steps with BJ and instalments of the novel as he crafted the book. The Russian names were quickly modified and protagonists Pericles and Thaiza were drawn from the classical world by way of Shakespeares Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The heroine Thaiza was also Theta by loose analogy with Moiras BJ nickname. The fictional chronology was shifted by two years from their actual experience so the events of 1934 to 1937 were fictionalised to 1936 to 1939. Oxford contemporaries were freely drawn upon and BJs older sister Sigle became the novels Xenocrate. Thomass distractibility continued to be fuelled in other ways. Though Thomas had resigned his Balliol fellowship he was asked if he would accept nomination as a supernumerary emeritus fellow although it was not entirely clear if he was eligible for election. Christopher Hill wrote on 12 October that a statute had been identified that provided eligibility and the college had elected Thomas. Thomas wrote to the Master on 17 October accepting with the wry comment that he had not supposed he had accumulated enough merit to become emeritus having led this rather bumming, dropout kind of life. From 2 November he was in Poland for the British Council lecture visit held over from the spring and to their Warsaw suggestion he had added Cracow to meet Professor Tadeusz Lewicki and to learn about his work in Islamic and African history. Thomas faced an exhausting schedule of seminars, lectures and official contacts albeit on recurrent themes of his recent teaching and writing: Islam and Marxism; Mahdism, Messianism and Marxism in an African setting; the radical tradition in Islam in West Africa; new approaches to the study of African history; some African and third-world theories of imperialism. Lewicki and his wife Lucy invited him for a weekend in Lodz that included a visit to a performance of Borodins opera Prince Igor in Polish translation that bemused Thomas as spectacular scenes of monks, bishops and boyars, With a lot of even more spectacular Mongol dancing. Nevertheless, Thomas wrote home lamenting the solitary hotel life and contemplated but resisted cutting short the tour. The Cambridge University Press were sending out advance, contributor and review copies of the festschrift for Thomas entitled African Perspectives for publication on 10 December. Christopher Allen and R.W. Johnson were joint editors of seventeen papers

selected from the essays presented to Thomas on 3 April (a third typescript volume had emerged from texts coming late to hand from: Ron Bellamy; Ruth S. Morgenthau; John A. Ballard; Charles C. Stewart; and Vladimir Iordanski). Bill Johnson in an introductory biographical note on Thomas commented that the Oxford lectureship he held for five years from 1965 was a post he accepted to the probable detriment of the work he wished to do, but to the enormous benefit of the numerous students he has taught since then, several of whom are represented in this selection of essays. Thomas was embroiled in writing his novel now several thousand words along a trajectory that was more recollection than invention, with strong encouragement from BJ who in professional life was an experienced publishers reader and editor. In this shared narrative Thomas recalled how two young people in the 1930s followed the code defined by their families and upbringing to defer sex until marriage and to defer marriage till the completion of education with the outcome that they had lost each other on the way and then made a rediscovery after thirty-three years. In the reality of the 1970s in which Thomas was writing the next generation had a different experience but had not escaped difficulties. Lucanna were becoming Luke and Anna again, with a move from Warwich to London and Luke establishing a new relationship with a literature scholar Jean Radford and Anna in a relationship with historian Raphael Samuel. BJs daughter Lucy was evincing doubts in her marriage to John Syson. Chapter 21 Novel ways The threads of these Hodgkin and Gaster households came together by chance on 2 January 1971. BJ was walking down Haverstock Hill near her home just as Anna was turning out of Haverstock Hill with her three children and the children of her friends Hannah Mitchell and Stanley Mitchell to go onto Hampstead Heath. Anna asked if her eldest Dominic could come and watch the television programme Doctor Who at the Gasters to which Moira agreed. When Anna came with her younger son Mick to collect Dominic, Jack was home and BJ found Jack and Anna conversing about Raphael Samuel with whom Jack had political interests in common and as a solicitor had handled the conveyance for Raphael to buy a house. Thomas in 1971 was returning to a concern he had articulated in 1965 in discussion with his daughter Liz. He was influenced partly by his experience in Ghana and the wider African context in which he deemed that agents of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (and some American political scientists in the CIA orbit) were intervening in African politics for reactionary purposes and to foment military coups. By the end of 1965 when he and Dossie were visiting Liz in Zambia, he had already sketched out ideas for a story whose hero would be Qwert Yuiop and whose villains would be CIA collaborators. Thomas on his return journey to Britain passed through Rhodesias Salisbury airport on a two-hour stop and left behind a folder with material for the Qwert story, notes for a revision of African Political Parties and a one-page sketch of his next terms lectures in Oxford. He had previously left behind and recuperated this folder at Kitwe airport and at the Zambia Airways office in Lusaka. Five years on Liz was in Sudan and on 21 February1971 was writing from Khartoum to her parents about the internal weakening of the Sudanese Communist party and a split within that party over a possible merger within a broad front supporting the government.

Guests at Crab Mill in the last weekend of February were Polly Gaster, Michael Wolfers, Nick Jacobs and a radical-minded Sudanese postgraduate student at Leeds University Abd El Mohsen Mustafa Salih and Sudan was a subject of keen interest. Thomas and BJ in their pattern of weekly meetings were together in London on 18 March. In the early evening Thomas in a Fleet Street telephone kiosk left behind more papers including a letter to BJ and poems for her. When Thomas realised his mistake he telephoned Michael Wolfers who lived (and worked) nearby and asked him to make a search. Thomas told BJ of this rescue plan, and she felt shy about the disclosures in the correspondence. The search, however, found nothing. Polly on 22 March dropped in for lunch with BJ unexpectedly when BJ knew that Thomas had been talking to Polly about the relationship. BJ brought to the kitchen that days letter she was writing to Thomas and left it in sight. In the ensuing conversation, BJ and Polly abandoned pretence of ignorance to each other, and Polly urged concealment to shield Jack. BJ further revealed that she and Thomas had been away in Cornwall together this understandably made her blink, but also made here anxious to be helpful, BJ recounted in a subsequent letter to Thomas. Meanwhile the papers mislaid in the telephone kiosk had already been found by someone - Joy Carter - who worked in the accounts department of the Daily Telegraph newspaper in Fleet Street ; she sent them on to Thomas with a graceful covering note. Basil Davidson was seeking Thomass advice on how to reply to an invitation from the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences inviting Basil to deliver the fifth in the series of the J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures in the following year. Basil had not been to Ghana since the coup against Nkrumah and was unwilling to go there as long as Thomas could not or would not. Roger Owen wanted Thomass formal approval for the inclusion of Thomass paper on Some African and third world theories of imperialism in the book Studies in the theory of imperialism Owen was editing with Bob Sutcliffe for Longman. Thomas wrote to Basil urging caution on Ghana while pointing out that the approach to Basil would be due to good radicals somewhere in the structure in Ghana. Basil decided that on balance that he should not speak in the series since Danquahs political opinions and assumptions about politics and the social order differed from his own. In his refusal letter of 13 April to the Ghana Academy he explained this and gave a second reason that the Government of Ghana appeared to be moving towards dialogue with the racist regime in South Africa - and this, he was convinced, would damage the African cause inside South Africa and outside. As Liz was on a home visit from Sudan in May Michael Wolfers decided to give a party in her honour at his house in London but this meant delicate selectivity about the guests. Lizs brother Luke was invited, but not Anna; BJs elder daughter Lucy was home for a spell from Botswana , and with a slight fiction that the party was also for her, she and Polly were invited with BJ, albeit without Jack, and Thomas was invited, albeit without Dossie. The Sudanese were from north and south. With the emphasis on Africa, Basil and Marion Davidson were among several with that interest, including Nick Jacobs, Pollys close friend Bambi Ballard and her suitor BBC journalist Robin Denselow. As it happened another of Pollys close friends Margaret Dickinson was on the afternoon of the date chosen for the party 23 May - her debut film on FRELIMOs struggle to liberate Mozambique from Portuguese rule Behind the Lines. This gave an additional

motive for celebration and additional guests. Several cases of claret and an array of spirits contributed to what BJ called fogginess in Thomas - and some other guests, meaning the effect of insufficient food to match the quantity of drink. Thomas as a writer was in productive mood. He had missed the latest 15 March deadline for delayed delivery for the new edition of Nigerian Perspectives but on 8 June delivered the manuscript of the revised edition to the OUP office in London, to the welcome surprise of his commissioning editor Richard Brain. It lacked only a brief preface for which the publishers were allowing four pages. Next day Thomas contemplated other literary projects and prospects he had before him he identified seven. He had first the Thaiza novel and a first draft of part of the story. He had second gone a little way on his intention to address Asian and African history for a young readership, and had an n idea for a Jihad novel aimed at a teenage readership, particularly in Africa and set in the Sokoto Caliphate and Bornu in the early nineteenth century. The protagonists would be a group of students and the historically important people would appear as subsidiary characters. He needed to develop the plot and gather research material on the cultural and social context. He had third most of a chapter-bychapter outline for the Qwert novel close to completion: the book remained to be written. He had fourth a possibility of rewriting his Love and the Revolutionaries lecture; fifth, some work on colonial studies; sixth, a possible expansion as a book of his writings on Islam and the radical tradition; and seventh a book drawing on Hodgkin family papers. Thomas chose to engage on the Qwert project and carried it with him through the summer months, with BJ visiting him at Crab Mill in early July, and a holiday with Dossie later in the month at La Croix in Valmer the French village where BJ and Sigle had once stayed and where Dossie and Thomas had spent their honeymoon. The Qwert novel was developing as a complex account of a week in the life of a polymath academic Qwert Yuiop being invited by the Fasolian ambassador to Britain Mustafa Murabit to go to the imaginary country of Fasolia to counter a coup in the making. Qwert has an Uzbek father and Cornish mother and has been educated in Samarkand, Prague and Kerala before coming up to Balliol to read Oriental Languages and History. A Tuareg airhostess of great beauty, the Tamasheq-speaking Rahmata Tamakkaka, rescues the hero Qwert from an assassination attempt. She is the principal of three heroines, and a Fasolian political activist Nancy Marengo and Berenice Domodossola, a buyer of artefacts for the Libertys store in London, succeed her. They are embroiled with scores of lesser figures such as a CIA trio of Galba Schatzkammer, Lully Lavender and Barny Basilio, and an anti-hero CIA renitent Ozymandias Scunthorpe who in the end weds Rahmata. The president of Fasolia David Buddu disappears from his capital and is ousted by a triumvirate, only to be restored within days through the assistance of Qwert and his friends, the Fasolian Workers Party and popular intervention. As Thomas returned from France to Crab Mill with his Fasolia scenario refined, events in Sudan seemed to mirror such a tale, albeit with a leftist movement thwarted by relatively rightist forces. Sudans president Major-General Jaafar al-Nimeiry was put under house arrest in a coup on 19 July led by Major Hashem al-Atta in Sudan and by two fellow officers Lieutenant-Colonel Babiker al-Nur and Major Farouk Osman Hamadallah, who were in London at the time. All three were core members of the Free Officers Organisation that had brought about Nimeirys own coup of 25 May 1969. Colonel al-

Nur, who had been in London since 7 July for a medical examination, was named as chairman of a Sudanese Revolutionary Council. In an interview he gave on 20 July to Michael Wolfers for The Times, he denied that he and his associates had been members of the Sudan Communist Party; they had what he called left wing sympathies. Liz, witnessing events in Khartoum, wrote to her parents early on 20 July that the coup was definitely a move to the left. Al-Nur and Hamadallah were returning by air to Sudan when Libyan fighters forced their aircraft down in Libya. The coup was reversed on 22 July with some military action and external intervention. Nimeiry on returning to power initiated a purge of Communists and sympathisers, including al-Nur and Hamadallah who were flown from Libya to Khartoum under military detention. The military leaders were executed along with leading civilian politicians the SCP secretarygeneral Abd al-Khalig Mahjub, the trade unionist al-Shafie Ahmed al-Sheikh and the Minister of Southern Affairs Joseph Garang. Thomas was appalled at the bloodshed, uncharacteristic of Sudanese politics. He spoke at a House of Commons meeting on 28 July, signed a letter of protest, and wrote obituaries in The Times for key victims of the repression. He contemplated going to Sudan, but with the Nimeiry vengeance coming swiftly and without proper trials, Liz persuaded Thomas that there was nothing he could do there. He gave support to a Solidarity Committee with the Sudanese People formed on 12 August with an Egyptian clinical psychologist Fawzeya Makhlouf-Norris and Nick Jacobs as joint secretaries, under the aegis of Liberation, the new incarnation of the Movement for Colonial Freedom. Thomas went on with Qwert with the spur of BJs enthusiasm as they read portions of the draft together. Thomas and Dossie left on 14 September for a visit to Hanoi arranged through the charg daffaires in London of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, Lai Van Ngoc, during which they would lecture in their respective fields of crystallography and Africa. Thomas at the Institute of History on 23 September recycled his Khartoum lecture of March 1970 on revolution and counter-revolution in Africa. He added the fresh evidence of events in Sudan on 19 July and 22 July. Thomas was soon back in Crab Mill trying to go on with Qwert but with diminished energy owing to recurrence of a troublesome cough. Dossie was in Canada and BJ came to Crab on 20 October. Thomas still troubled by the cough went with reluctance next day to speak at a London meeting held by the Sudan solidarity committee at Friends House. Thomas on 14 November discussed Qwert with Ruth First who suggested that he include a movement in the army to support the workers and the president. By December Thomas was well into his fourth chapter of the novel and Qwert had arrived in Africa by way of an emergency chute from his aircraft making an unexpected landing in the desert. In a discussion on 28 December with BJ, she suggested ways of adding definition to the character of Qwert and heightening the dangers to which he had been exposed. In the new year of 1972, it was the turn on 3 January for Luke and Jean to give their view on the novel. They found esoteric references that needed explanation and too many characters speaking in undifferentiated tone of voice; they questioned how far Qwerts relationship had gone with Rahmata, as they shared a long camel ride. Thomas had a sentimental project to celebrate BJs forthcoming sixtieth birthday on 2 March. He began in late January to send letters of invitation to a birthday lunch at Balliol on the years leap day. This would bring together old friends - particularly those shared

by BJ, Sigle and Thomas in their school and university days and spouses where work did not prevent them attending a mid-weekday event in Oxford. Thomas secured a score or so acceptances: Sigle (now married to Peter Wheeler); his brother Teddy; Dossie; Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh (retired as a Foreign Office mandarin and making clavichords); Diana Hubback and her educationist husband David Hopkinson; from the Ilbert cousinage Lesbia Cochrane (married to Sir John Winnifrith); Mary Fisher (married to John Bennett) head of the Oxford house St Hildas, and Joan Young (married to Robert Mathew); Alec Peterson (who had failed to win Joan Young, and was married to Lesbias younger sister Corinna Cochrane); Bickham Sweet-Escott; Christian Lucas and her husband Colin Hardie; Ann Sitwell (who was in a breaking marriage with architect James Cubitt); novelist J.B. Priestley and his archaeologist wife Jacquetta Hawkes; classical scholar Tony Andrewes; Sir Isaiah Berlin (now head of the Oxford house Wolfson; Christopher Hill, head of the Oxford house Balliol and his wife Bridget Sutton; and a more recent friend Ilsa Yardley (now a literary agent). Sir Christopher Cox, who had accepted the invitation, wrote on black-bordered mourning writing paper on the day after the birthday lunch that he had become confused over the leap year date and unintentionally missed it (the loss is quite crippling and deservedly mine). Teddy writing on 2 March to thank Thomas remarked how unfussy and unpompous everyone seemed though forty years on and in most cases successful This must be due to some innate good quality in all them, combined with the mellowing effect of duck, crme brule and booze. Thomas returned to Qwert and by the second week of March had finished the fifth chapter, with seven to come according to his plan. Thomass academic work on Africa continued to resonate. Peter Waterman wrote on 15 March from the School of Arabic Studies at Ahmadu Bello University that he and Peter Gutkind of McGill would like to consider for inclusion in a radical African reader Thomass 3M piece this was the essay on Mahdism, Messianism and Marxism in the African setting he had done for Yusuf Fadl Hassan. Basil Davidson in late March suggested that the Teachers Against Racism pressure group organised by Bridget Harris ask Thomas to speak in their lecture series and he agreed for later in the year. Sudans ambassador in London assigned after the abortive coup was Abdullahi El-Hassan who had been Sudans ambassador in Accra in Thomass happier Ghana days: Thomas attended a diplomatic reception the ambassador gave at the Dorchester Hotel on 11 April. Thomas found attractive an approach from an Italian publisher about the possibility of writing a study on the Sudanese Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. He put this on hold until he could have the collaboration of Liz with her Sudan experience and wrote on 16 April I should in any case warn you that I am a very slow worker and must finish a novel which I am at present engaged in writing before I attempt to write anything else At the same time, he was deferring a prospect of going to lecture in Cuba on African politics. Thomas and BJ had their Trethias Cottage stay in Cornwall in the third week of April brought forward because of Lucys imminent return with the children for another visit from Botswana. Thomas and Dossie on 27 April in Oxford were on their way home from a party in Worcester College to celebrate the award of an honorary degree to his historian aunt Rosalind (who had been married to Murray Wrong and then as a widow to the widower and former Nuffield College Warden Sir Henry Clay). They heard of the death of Kwame Nkrumah in a Rumanian hospital where he had gone for medical treatment from his exile

in Guinea. A long, hostile obituary in The Times with references to detested dictator and diabolic force exacerbated Thomass sadness He sat up late at night to write his own note and telephoned it to The Times where Teddy as an assistant editor was on duty. The Times eventually published Thomass tribute on 10 May, where he depicted Nkrumah as the most unstuffy head of government that I have met - the most intellectually alive, the most serious, the most responsive to new ideas. He concluded that Nkrumahs contributions to philosophy and politics were likely to outlive those of his severest critics. The Oxford University Africa Society invited Thomas to contribute to a symposium about Nkrumah at Rhodes House ion 10 June. He seized the opportunity to counter the fashionable criticism of Nkrumah from right and left since his fall in 1966. He cited the consistency of Nkrumahs objective of total African liberation, his political empiricism and his intellectual interests in African history. Nkrumahs preoccupation with neocolonialism had turned out to be correct. Basil Davidson wrote on 30 June asking Thomass help after Basil had agreed with a publisher to write a short biographical sort of a book about Nkrumah that would be an attempt to state Nkrumahs importance and place in history, without being a biography for that materials and time were lacking. Thomas was on a family holiday in France in early July and on return was in Hampstead to compere readings from Keats, Shelley and Leigh Hunt that BJ was organising for Camden CND though Thomass apparent difficulties with his breathing brought an anxious note to the day. He was in China with Dossie through most of August: Dossie went on to Kyoto, Japan, for the ninth International Congress of Crystallography that opened on 27 August. Thomas remained a day or so in Canton with a worsening cough and made a protracted return journey via Karachi, Teheran, Beirut, Athens, Frankfurt and London on 27 and 28 August. Thomas returned to Crab Mill in time for a late lunch with Luke and Jean who were preparing to leave for Algeria in the next week and to concentrate on Qwert. Thomas drove Luke into Oxford on 29 August as Thomas wanted to collect some earlier pages of the novel that had gone for typing, and they had lunch together again this time at the Turf Tavern. Luke and Jean went to London and on 30 August without word to the family married by special license in Finsbury. Later in a telephone call, Luke broke the news casually to Thomas giving the practical reason that he and Jean were going to a foreign country together. Basil by 30 August had written most of the first draft of his Nkrumah book and wanted Thomass view on many points. Martin Kilson was nearing completion of a book on grassroots politics in Ghana over the Nkrumah era and wrote that the book was being dedicated to Thomas. Thomas showed Basil his own writings on Nkrumah and on 19 October Basil wrote In the little book Ive done I have tried to meet Othellos appeal: Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice Thomas had been expecting the second edition of his Nigerian Perspectives to appear in 1972, but OUP advised in a letter of 24 October that with considerable stocks of the reprint in 1969 of the first edition they would delay the second edition as an Oxford paperback to autumn 1973 or the beginning of 1974. Thomas continued his preoccupation with Qwert, but for Presence Africaine wrote an article on Nkrumahs radicalism. In December Thomas and BJ were debating whether Qwert should kiss Nancy Marengo or not and Thomas agreed that he would go to northern Nigeria as

external examiner of a thesis by Muhammad al-Hajj expected by February of the new year. In this new year of 1973, Thomas continued to give priority to the writing of Qwert and to share each instalment with BJ. By late February, they were putting final changes to a complete text. Thomas signed off on a typescript of five hundred pages on 1 March to be shown on a friendly basis to Ilsa Yardley - with her professional knowledge of publishing and of literary agency before submission to Heinemann. Ilsa did not share BJs enthusiasm and BJ on 9 March relayed her initial response It really was a sad surprise to find Ilsa disagreeing with me so much about Qwert (preferring the beginning, when it is more like a thriller, whereas, as you know, I like it more and more as it goes along; feeling that she knows Qwert but not the other characters; thinking that its leisurely pace makes it old-fashioned, whereas its lovely to have something different from the slick novels that keep coming in. But she did enjoy the funny bits about the CIA. And of course shes right, as we both know about it being too long. BJ reflected on possible cuts and recommended that these be made before the manuscript went to Heinemann. Thomas in late April accompanied Dossie to Bulgaria where she was attending a Pugwash meeting of world scientists. Liz in June was exchanging Africa for Asia in a new post as a revise translator for the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Hanoi. In early July, Luke and Jean were driving back from Algiers to England; Dossie was on scientific travel in Denmark and Sweden. Thomas went on 9 July to Kano to examine the al-Hajj doctoral thesis. Throughout the summer visitors continued to stream into Crab Mill except for late August and early September when Thomas and Dossie and several of the younger generation gathered in Bamburgh. Thomas continued with revisions and cuts to Qwert and he felt ready again to take up such as book reviewing. The Times Literary Supplement on 19 September sent him for review the Tony Hopkins Economic History of West Africa and others. BJs health was now causing concern with problems of her pancreas and she was awaiting admission to the Middlesex Hospital in London. She set Thomas n a path for further amendments to Qwert and was admitted on 10 October, first for pre-operation x-rays and for surgery on 15 October that left her a scar with thirteen stitches like a wadi in the Sahara seen from the air, she wrote to Thomas on 25 October after the stitches were removed. A delicate matter of convalescence arose. BJ was going away initially to Diana Hopkinson, where Jack wanted her to spend as long as possible, and then to Thomas where BJ wanted to be. She told Jack that Dossie had suggested her convalescing with the Hodgkins, and Jack hoped this meant staying with Thomass mother in Ilmington and not in Oxford. Eileen Bernal, hearing of BJs illness from Thomas, telephoned Jack and learned that BJ would be home on 27 October and she could telephone on 28 October. After that weekend, BJ went on to Diana for a tactful couple of days and then moved on 1 November to Crab Mill for a fortnight with Thomas. Thomas carried trays, helped BJ with her special diet and gentle walks in the Crab Mill orchard, and for her departure on 14 November he cooked his speciality floating islands desert. They looked d together at further revision of the Qwert manuscript. Thomas was invited by the British Academy to serve on the committee appointed to coordinate the UK contribution to the Fontes Historiae Africanae international project of which John Hunwick was now director in succession to Ivan Hrbek. Two students supervised by Thomas for their doctoral theses were ready to submit: Richard Joseph on

radical nationalism in Cameroun and Sholto Cross on the Watch Tower movement in South Central Africa. The examiners seeing Cross on 14 November noted a thesis lucidly written and thoroughly documented, parts of which were publishable with only minor amendments. Cross on 19 November wrote to Thomas your leadership both in the intellectual and the wider sense has been the most important thing for me which I gained from Oxford Thomass review of African books, including the Hopkins title, appeared on 30 November in the TLS that under Arthur Crooks editorship retained strict anonymity for reviewers. Hopkins wrote to the editor next day thanking him for finding a reviewer who is evidently an expert in the field of West African history. and asking that the reviewer receive his thanks. Arthur Crook duly forwarded the Hopkins letter to Thomas. Thomas had a signed review in The Guardian of ??? of a book that had a very different response from the author. Thomas was considering Basil Davidsons Black Star published by Allen Lane on 5 November and subtitled A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah. Thomas noted that that Basil had written much and admirably on African history and politics but he was disappointed with the portrayal of Nkrumah: Will I buy this portrait of Kwame, gormless in Ghana, at the mill with slaves? Though it seems a truer, fairer portrait than most of its predecessors, I think not. First, I do not believe that this is the way to write biography, looking at your subject from outside, weighing his mistakes, rather than identifying yourself with him, seeking to understand his problems and choices from within. Second, the rich specificity of history, the complexity of events, is too often overlaid with a blanket of repetitions and generalities. Third, I miss here the Nkrumah I knew during those exciting years both his theory, which I take more seriously than Basil Davidson, and his practice . Basil returning from a visit to Canada and finding the review of a book other than the one he had intended to write was stung into a sad and angry riposte in a long letter to Thomas a letter of 14 December. Your views on how to write a biography may or may not be interesting, although they seem a very limping prescription for writing a political biography, but I was making no claim to write a biography and carefully explained the reasons why. Any sensible reading of this small book, I think, must show that it is by no means unsympathetic to him as a man who did important things Now its not enough to tell your readers that you take his theory more seriously than, for example, I do: thats more than a touch condescending. Basil developed his defence in substantive detail, though it was implicit that he was hurt less by the review and more that it should be from Thomas. He concluded that he hoped they would be together more in the next year as he and Marion were moving from London to a house in the middle of Hereford, and that he was turning away his attention to the planting and care of trees they hold still so much better than history does The examiners saw Richard Joseph on 27 December for a longish viva in which they found that the candidate performed capably and powerfully. They included Bill Johnson another former pupil of Thomas. Thomas in the new year of 1974 followed his daughter Lizs initiative in exchanging Africa for Asia. He travelled via Moscow and arrived in Hanoi on 19 January to spend three months in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a guest of the Institute of History. He would prepare to write a book but at this point was not sure what kind of book for content a possible emphasis on history or the contemporary situation, for form

a learned work, or a popular guide or a travel history. He wanted to explore how the Vietnamese revolution was possible and how the society or nation made the leap from colonial rule to socialism. He wanted to visit historically important sites and those connected to Ho Chi Minh and the liberated areas. He had much to learn about the workings of Vietnamese society. He could not expect to learn the Vietnamese language in the time, but hoped to learn enough to be able to pronounce properly, particularly names and places. He would work through interpreters and with materials translated into English or French. On the flight from Moscow he began to make friends with members of a Vietnamese womens delegation that had been visiting Arab countries. In Hanoi he had Liz and her friends and on 20 January, his first Sunday morning, he went to the market with its rich array of food, flowers and fruit for the lunar new year festival of Tet, in the company of Phan Gia Ben who was to be constant guide and companion through the process of discovery. He was then plunged into a great lunch party given by the Committee of Science and Technology and finding old friends from his previous visit to Hanoi in 1971. Thomas began the main task next day with a discussion at the Institute of History on the convergence of the Vietnamese nation and the relationship of Marxism to the Vietnamese revolutionary situation. He went on 22 January to the National Committee for Social Science to go deeper into the question of the Vietnamese nation with the committee president Nguyen Khanh Toan. Thomas was exposed to a perception of a history of Vietnamese nationhood measured in thousands of years rather than centuries and in no way a product of capitalism. After three weeks of a dozen meetings with Vietnamese scholars and some work in the Institute of History library with guidance from the librarian Nguyen Khac Dam, Thomas could see a book taking shape that would address four thousand years of Vietnamese history and the political context of the August 1945 Revolution, the abdication of the last Nguyen king Bao Dai, and Ho Chi Minhs declaration of independence. The working method was morning and afternoon sessions of several hours with Vietnamese historians drinking innumerable cups of tepid tea in a fairly cold and draughty room in the Institute of History or elsewhere as Thomas informed his mother in a letter of 10 February. Qwert was not forgotten: BJ was having the revised pages retyped (by her son Nicolass wife Cathy) and was copy-editing the text in which the original long chapters had been broken into shorter sections. BJ on 4 March put final touches to the revised manuscript writing in a complex mathematical formula devised by Luke Hodgkin and finished her readers report. In a favourable recommendation she noted Peripatetic novels are known to be favourites with readers, and the author here moves his characters rapidly from place to place. She included a modest declaration of interest The book is beautifully written, and I have helped the author to cut and tighten the story considerably. It now moves at a very good pace She submitted the book on 5 March for the consideration of colleagues at Heinemann who knew that she attached personal importance to this submission. She confessed in writing to Thomas in Hanoi that she had one reservation about an early passage in the book with a tandem bicycle ride and dialogue in Cornish. The weeks passed as the book went to several other readers and BJ could garner no sense of their reaction. By the end of March she dropped a hint that another publisher William Collins might be interested.

Thomas towards the end of his Vietnam stint went with Liz on a short expedition to Haiphong and Hu-Long in early April. He then held further intensive discussions with historians in Hanoi until the eve of his departure for England in mid-April. BJ came to Crab Mill later in the month and on 26 April they wandered through the garden looking at goldcrests and goldfinches and picking forge-me-nots and narcissus. Then she returned to what she called the flats of life in Hampstead. BJ found misery compounded as on 7 May she walked along Piccadilly cursing and feeling like crying after learning that Heinemann were rejecting Qwert. She was trying to fathom the reasons for the refusal: Thomas seemed not to have made up his mind what sort of novel it was going to be; not quite enough happened; it was rather long, although thought to be clever and full of fascinating stuff and lovely conversation. BJ suggested the Marxism had frightened Heinemann, though they denied this. Thomas in June sent a donation to the Institute of Race Relations that had been radicalised under the influence of the Sri Lankan intellectual Ambalavaner Sivanandan (Siva) and in April broken with a tradition that stemmed from a colonial welfare mentality. Siva on 27 June wrote inviting Thomas to go on the editorial working committee for the institute journal and to write something on the Vietnam visit for the journal. Siva had in mind the October issue and a copy deadline of mid-August. Crab Mill was receiving an unusually heavy stream of visitors in June and July to a degree that the hospitable Thomas was finding exhausting, even though he encouraged the visits. One of these visitors a friend Elspeth Stanford, who was working on Quaker history and looking through Hodgkin family papers, left a note on 12 July urging Thomas to have a chest examination and recommended a pulmonary specialist Charles Fletcher. Thomas and Dossie were at St Aidans in Bamburgh for another family gathering in the last week of July and then in Hungary. Dossie, when being admitted as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, told Fletcher that Thomas was having trouble with his chest. Thomass general practitioner wrote to Fletcher about Thomass case. Fletcher on 16 September wrote from the medical school at Hammersmith Hospital that he would be glad to hear from Thomas to arrange an appointment and would be delighted to see you again after so many years. This was the same Charles Fetcher who had been a neighbouring best friend for Thomas when from October 1917 Thomas had attended the Norland Place School in Holland Park Avenue: he would borrow books from the Fletcher family. Thomas in September received a cyclostyled flyer from the Centre of African Studies at the University advising that a two-day seminar would be held on 8 and 9 November convened by Christopher Fyfe Reader in African History. It would be to consider the changes that had taken place in African Studies since the end of the Second World War and to honour Basil Davidsons sixtieth birthday on 9 November. Papers were promised from distinguished Africanists working in academic disciplines, and in publishing and journalism, representing particularly the fields of interest with which Basil Davidson had been chiefly concerned. Although there had been a temporary rift with Basil over the Nkrumah book review the year before Basil had put out an olive branch when Thomas was in Hanoi. Thomas felt hurt that he was not playing a direct part in the celebrations around Basil and on 20 September wrote to Basil about his feelings. Basil, seeing Thomass letter a week later on return from a lecture tour of Finland and Sweden, wrote on 29 September that Edinburgh

University had told him early in the year of the intention to hold the seminar, would decide on the invitations but would like his ideas. He had replied with Thomass name at the top of the list of four or five people he would like to be asked my upset at that unlucky Guardian review arose, of course, from a sense of deprivation at not having won your approval as much as from what you actually said to indicate that. Basil concluded that he and Thomas had worked together for so long that it seemed only natural that Thomas should be there. Thomas wrote to Fyfe that he would have been glad to contribute a paper and Fyfe on 3 October replied that Thomas would have been an eminently suitable person to give a paper on the changes that have taken place in the study of African politics, but as Thomas was away in Vietnam Fyfe decided Ruth First, now teaching at Durham University. She agreed but eventually advised that she was over-committed in her new post and could not after all manage a paper. By then Fyfe had as many papers promised as could be conveniently fitted into a brief day and a half and had decided reluctantly to do without a paper on politics. Fyfe asked Thomas if he could be prevailed upon to write a paper for us, to be included in the published proceedings. Basil writing on 10 October was eager that Thomas should write a paper for the volume that Longman were proposing to publish. He was expecting that many contributions to the seminar would be from old friends who scarcely shared his own and Thomass views on the analysis of politics. He hoped that Thomas would be in the mood to write something that bore on the shift from orthodox studies to Marxist or at any rate unorthodox studies in the political field. Collins in early November turned down Qwert, and Adrian House pointed to the possibility of a happy ended. Thomas was writing a TLS review of a book on Henry Morton Stanley that was typed and sent off on 11 November. Since the TLS under the new editor John Gross had abandoned the anonymity rule Gross wrote on 12 November to say that he took it that Thomas would have no objection to the review appearing over his name. Richard Joseph on 15 November wrote from Khartoum that the OUP were accepting his Cameroun thesis for publication. Fortune for Qwert continued to fail. Roger Owens wife Ursula Owen wrote on 10 December that she had tried it out on a friend at Chattos and to Barrie & Jenkins where she was working. In both houses the response was much the same: Qwert was literary and full of interest, but they thought it would not find a very large audience There is no way of persuading a fiction editor in these times to take a book that he doesnt think will sell enough...., Ursula advised. Thomas and BJ pondered what to do next with Qwert and whether Thomas should write an alternative happy ending. Thomas was engaged with his Vietnam material. He was responding to Sivas request with an article for Race & Class on The Vietnamese Revolution and Some Lessons and dedicated this article to Basil Davidson on his sixtieth birthday. Thomas argued that the Vietnamese were the most historically-minded people in the world, and that for the Vietnamese all history was contemporary history: from every episode lessons could be learned that had an important bearing on the contemporary situation. BJ and Thomas shared an increasing concern over Thomass health and BJ accompanied him when he went on 19 December for a consultation at Hammersmith Hospital with Charles Fletcher and another distinguished practitioner Bill Cleland who had developed new techniques in surgery, especially cardiopulmonary bypass. After the examination BJ

was able to rejoin Thomas to hear the advice given by the two specialists about a shadow on Thomass lung that needed to be watched plus a need for regular daily walks. On the writing side Thomas was pursuing the idea of writing a biographical sketch of interests shared with Basil for the Longman seminar book, in line with Basils own wishes. Basil wrote on 30 December in response to a Christmas letter from Thomas: As you played a unique role in those early years, so you are uniquely placed to remember what seemed important then what was important then in contrast with what the zealous PhDresearchers of today may think or sense. In the new year of 1975 Thomas and BJ meeting on 10 January decided that they would try Qwert with Livia Gollancz who might appreciate its Leftish tinge. Thomas then gathered his Vietnam notebooks and notes and went off to Bamburgh to stay alone in Mary Cowans Rock Cottage to work on the new book - with his neighbour aunt Barbara (widow of the neurosurgeon Sir Hugh Cairns) keeping a watchful eye that he had proper meals. He already had a preliminary draft of an introductory chapter and had sent it to the historians in Hanoi for their comment and criticisms. He was now drafting the chapters of early history to the fourteenth century. A Qwert manuscript was still with Collins and he arranged for Adrian House to send it on to Gollancz. Thomas after three weeks and two days in Bamburgh had drafted the equivalent of a couple more chapters on Vietnam, some twenty thousand words, and was ready to return to Oxford and Crab Mill. He had done less than he would have wished in the time but felt he was out of a rut and would try to keep up his output in more usual surroundings. In late February Livia Gollancz turned down Qwert with what BJ saw as dotty but wounding comments. Annas father the novelist and publisher Dan Davin offered his help over the manuscript. He read Qwert with a highly professional eye and wrote on 1 April a thoughtful appraisal. He began with the gentle judgment that he considered it certainly publishable. He tempered this with cogent reasons why Thomas was having difficulty finding a publisher: What you seem to have intended and, if so, carried out successfully, is a romantic thriller, laced with comedy, which inverts one of the usual premises of the thriller: that the left are the wicked and the right the goodies. I've got nothing against that idea, think it a refreshing change, in fact; but it's going to give you trouble finding a publisher unless you find one who is prepared to take a chance on selling in the US a book that has the CIA for villains at the time when the Americans are coming round to that view themselves. Dan thought the book on the long side at about 100,000 words against the average thriller of 60,000 to 80,000 words. Thomas had sacrificed the speed essential in this kind of book, by indulging too much in long passages of unbroken monologue. The speeches with political content slowed down the action and induced discomfort Dan felt at virtuous effusions in a novel one has the feeling that one is being jerked too abruptly from a comic, ironic spirit to the spirit of the pulpit. African language expressions were given a gloss with the English equivalent, but Thomas used words like glauconically that were intelligible presumably only to people who remembered their Plato making the comedy caviar for any except a sort of in-group. Dan suspected that many readers would be distressed that the love-story did not have the conventional outcome expected in the genre. He offered however, if Thomas wished, to write to his own literary agent about the book.

Thomas on 15 May made a return visit to the Hammersmith Hospital for chest x-rays after increased problems of breathlessness, even sometimes when walking the long corridors at Crab Mill. OUP on May 20 advised that the first copies of the hardback Nigerian Perspectives had arrived for publication on 3 July. Thomas was rather gloomy about the books appearing four years after he had delivered to the publishers and wrote on 4 July to Ivan Hrbek: There is much that I would have liked to have done better if I had know how extremely slow they were going to be. He would like to have arranged new translations of some of the Arabic texts. He wrote about the Vietnam book he was doing with help from Liz who had just taken her first opportunity of visiting Saigon and the south after the events of 30 April and South Vietnams surrender to, or liberation by, northern forces. Thomas and BJ went for a Trethias Cottage week in Cornwall where he experienced some breathing and walking difficulties, especially at the end. He went for a further consultation at the Hammersmith Hospital on 30 July. He was making slow progress with his Vietnam chapters and relaying the drafts through Liz in Hanoi for comment from the Vietnamese scholars. He worked at Crab Mill for ten days in early August and then was in France for a fortnights holiday with Dossie staying with Christopher Hill and Bridget Hill in the Dordogne. Thomas and BJ went to the House of Commons on 21 October for a British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam report-back meeting when Labour MP Stan Newens reported on his recent visit to Hanoi and Saigon. Thomass friend Lai Van Ngoc was guest of honour and spoke seriously, but cheerfully. Liz was now preparing to leave Hanoi in late October, and for her post after a brief interregnum to be filled by Thomass cousin Mary Cowan. Liz was also trying to devise a route home via Peking and Moscow that would allow her to coincide with a visit to Moscow by Thomas and Dossie. Chapter 22 Chapter and verse: Decline and fall In the new year of 1975, Thomas and BJ meeting on 10 January decided that they would try Qwert with Livia Gollancz who might appreciate its Leftish tinge. Thomas then gathered his Vietnam notebooks and notes and on 13 January went off to Bamburgh to stay alone in Mary Cowans Rock Cottage to work on the new book - with his neighbour aunt Barbara (widow of the neurosurgeon Sir Hugh Cairns) keeping a watchful eye that he had proper meals. He already had a preliminary draft of an introductory chapter and had sent this to the historians in Hanoi for their comment and criticisms. He was now drafting the chapters of early history to the fourteenth century. A Qwert manuscript was still with Collins and he arranged for Adrian House to send it on to Gollancz. Thomas after three weeks and a half weeks s in Bamburgh had drafted the equivalent of a couple more chapters on Vietnam, some twenty thousand words, and was ready to return to Oxford and Crab Mill. He had done less than he would have wished in the time, but felt he was out of a rut and would try to keep up his output in more usual surroundings. In late February Livia Gollancz turned down Qwert with what BJ saw as dotty but wounding comments. Thomas continued with ideas for possible books and in the context of his links to the Institute of Race Relations formulated on 2 March the idea of a mass paperback on the lives and deaths of say, ten outstanding Third World people who

have been, in one way or another, victims of the imperialist counter-revolution. He would be willing to help on the Moroccan nationalist Mehdi Ben Barka, Sudans Joseph Garang and Nkrumah if he were included by writing or editing contributions from African writers. He had quite quickly by late March written the biographical and autobiographical sketch for the Longman tribute to Basil Davidson. Thomas, under the essay title Where the Paths Began, looked back about a quarter of century when they both started writing about African questions. Basil, on seeing the draft, wrote of his delight at the way Thomas had traced the parameters of their thinking: ... you have written one of your best pieces of writing. Annas father the novelist and publisher Dan Davin offered his help over the hapless Qwert. He read the novel with a highly professional eye and wrote on 1 April a thoughtful appraisal that began with the gentle judgment that he considered it certainly publishable. He tempered this with cogent reasons why Thomas was having difficulty finding a publisher: What you seem to have intended and, if so, carried out successfully, is a romantic thriller, laced with comedy, which inverts one of the usual premises of the thriller: that the left are the wicked and the right the goodies. I've got nothing against that idea, think it a refreshing change, in fact; but it's going to give you trouble finding a publisher unless you find one who is prepared to take a chance on selling in the US a book that has the CIA for villains at the time when the Americans are coming round to that view themselves. Dan thought the book on the long side at about 100,000 words against the average thriller of 60,000 to 80,000 words. Thomas had sacrificed the speed essential in this kind of book, by indulging too much in long passages of unbroken monologue. The speeches with political content slowed down the action and induced a discomfort Davin felt at virtuous effusions in a novel one has the feeling that one is being jerked too abruptly from a comic, ironic spirit to the spirit of the pulpit. African language expressions were given a gloss with the English equivalent, but Thomas used words like glauconically that were intelligible presumably only to people who remembered their Plato making the comedy caviar for any except a sort of in-group. Dan suspected that many readers would be distressed that the love-story did not have the conventional outcome expected in the genre. He offered however, if Thomas wished, to write to his own literary agent about the book. Thomas on 15 May made a return visit to the Hammersmith Hospital for chest x-rays after increased problems of breathlessness, even sometimes when walking the long corridors at Crab Mill. OUP on May 20 advised that the first copies of the hardback Nigerian Perspectives had arrived for publication on 3 July. Thomas was rather gloomy about the books appearing four years after he had delivered to the publishers and wrote on 4 July to Ivan Hrbek: There is much that I would have liked to have done better if I had know how extremely slow they were going to be. He would have liked to arrange new translations of some of the Arabic texts. He wrote too about the Vietnam book he was doing, with help from Liz who had just taken her first opportunity of visiting Saigon and the south after the events of 30 April and South Vietnams surrender to, and liberation by, northern forces. Thomas with Dossie in Oxford on 26 June had a re-encounter with Sydney Joe Josephs who had been a brilliant student in Thomass Oxford philosophy class of the mid-1950. Joe was now a successful publisher with Macmillan publishing director of the higher

and further education division - and married with four children. Thomas told him of his various unpublished typescripts and invited him to bring his family on a visit to Crab Mill: Joe offered to look at typescripts to see if he could find homes for them. Thomas and BJ on 5 July went for five days at Trethias Cottage in Cornwall where he experienced some breathing and walking difficulties, especially at the end. He went for a further consultation at the Hammersmith Hospital on 30 July. He was making slow progress with his Vietnam chapters and relaying the drafts through Liz in Hanoi for comment from the Vietnamese scholars, or for her to collect and sometimes translate additional material. He worked at Crab Mill for ten days in early August and then was in France for a fortnights holiday with Dossie staying with Christopher Hill and Bridget Hill in the Dordogne. Joe Josephs with his wife Debbie and three of their children came to a Sunday lunch at Crab Mill on 28 September. He took away the first four rough draft chapters or so of Thomass Vietnam book, all the material that had already been typed, to see if Macmillan might be interested. Thomas and BJ went to the House of Commons on 21 October for a British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam report-back meeting when Labour MP Stan Newens reported on his recent visit to Hanoi and Saigon. Thomass friend Lai Van Ngoc was guest of honour and spoke seriously, but cheerfully. Liz was now preparing to leave Hanoi in October and for her post after a brief interregnum to be filled by Thomass cousin Mary Cowan. Liz was also trying to devise a route home via Peking and Moscow that would allow her to coincide with a visit from 8 to 16 October to Moscow and Leningrad by Dossie and Thomas. The travel schedules did not match, with Liz delayed by a wait for a Chinese visa and leaving Hanoi three days after her parents left the Soviet Union. Thomas in his creative retirement as author remained in demand in his fields of African and Islamic studies. In the new year of 1976, Uppsala University in Sweden invited him to be Faculty Opponent or devils advocate in the disputation due in May for a Swedish doctoral candidate Bjorn Beckman writing a thesis on the Ghana Farmers Council and cocoa politics. Dossie was away at a Pugwash conference in Madras, India, when Wilson Katiyo, among several guests at Crab Mil in mid-January, came with a new French partner an interpreter and translator Brigitte Angays. Wilson had a first novel in proof with the publisher Rex Collings, who had made a fortune from publishing the Richard Adams novel Watership Down after its rejection by other publishers; Wilson had a second novel under way for him. Wilson took the typescript of Thomass novel, retitled as Forces of History, to Collings for consideration. Collings responded on 10 March with rejection because he was not really a fiction publisher and suggested Jonathan Cape or Andr Deutsch for their large fiction lists and Deutsch in particular for his African interest. Gervase Mathew, who had stayed at Crab Mill in February despite suffering from emphysema at a stage where his breathlessness was much more severe than Thomass, sent on 11 March a dictated letter that his condition had worsened and he was being thrust into the Acland and into the jaws of Badenoch, though he could not afford more than a fortnight in hospital. Thomas went to Birmingham on 12 March as a speaker alongside Basil Davidson and Polly Gaster at a conference on Angola: The wider implications organised by LaRay Denzer, his student in Ghana days, and sociologist Robin Cohen. Thomas addressed the wider implications of the almost complete liberation

of Angola as the last of the former Portuguese-dominated African countries. He could draw on his Vietnam study and partial resemblances he saw between European liberation movements of the nineteenth century - Greek, Italian, Yugoslav, Polish, Czech, Rumanian, Bulgarian, Irish etc and the African liberation movements in the twentieth century. He looked forward to the part Angola and Mozambique could now play as bases for the liberation of southern Africa in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Gervase, who had been close to the Hodgkin and Davin families, died in Oxford on 4 April. Winnie Davin and Liz Hodgkin were at a gathering of friends to mourn Gervase after his funeral. Thomas was away on a Trethias Cottage stay with BJ in Cornwall, shared on this occasion with Luke and Jean and Lukes younger children Kathy and Mick. Thomas was host at Crab Mill on the weekend of 23 to 25 April to a gathering of more than a dozen of the staff and core contributors to Race and Class, including Malcolm Caldwell and Sivanandan. Proud radicals were concerned that the influx might be too much for the household and were reassured by Thomas that he would have help with the cooking. Guests new to Ilmington were astonished to see the cooking help provided by 79-year-old Annie Humphries, who as Annie Bull had begun service as a kitchen maid in the Kings Mound home of Thomass maternal grandparents. BJ accompanied Thomas when on 13 May he went to Hammersmith Hospital for further consultation with Charles Fletcher and a chest X-ray that indicated that the shadow had gone from Thomass lung. Thomas had taken on the Uppsala disputation as a paid engagement, along with the frequent book reviews he was now writing, though acutely conscious that such tasks slowed down his own Vietnam book slowed anyway by a continuing problem of bronchitis. Liz, during five months of unemployment had helped on Vietnam but she was now offered one job at an immigrant reception centre in Birminghan and was being interviewed for a half-time post to teach African and world history at Birminghams Westhill College. Thomas on 20 May returned to Uppsala - his previous visit was in December 1964 when he went to Sweden with Dossie receiving her Nobel Prize in Stockholm. In the disputation at the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies on 22 May, Thomas recalled his Gold Coast visits of the 1940s and 1950s and Ghana experiences of the 1960s. In a carefully prepared and extensive presentation, he lauded Beckmans approach to the problems of a radical nationalist regime in its relations with the farming population whose cocoa crop was the main source of colonial and post-colonial dependence. Thomas and Dossie in early June were in Yugoslavia where Dossie had a conference and more nostalgia as they found time to visit t locations much changed since Thomas and Teddy had seen them on student travel in 1932. Thomas and Dossie went on for a few days of holiday on an island near Dubrovnik called Mljet. They lived in a twelfth century Benedictine monastery, went for good walks or sat in the sun. Thomas on return was anxious about the Vietnam book that he had promised to deliver by the end of August, but saddened also by news from South Africa of the massacre in Soweto of schoolchildren protesters. He sent t telegrams to Evan Luard his MP and to South Africas high commissioner in London, not believing this did much good, but felt it better than sitting idly by when children, men, and women were killed. Guests continued to throng to Crab Mill. The historian Muhammad Al Hajj from Kano came to visit in mid-August and wrote later in a letter of thanks that he had heard how the house was frequented by guests from different parts of the world but he could not really

imagine the frequency until he saw it himself. He commented: An early Arab poet said about people like you: Their visitors are so numerous that their dogs no longer bark at strangers. Dossie in late August was away in the German Democratic Republic and BJ came to Crab and they were joined for a week by Sigle, now in failing health, and her husband Peter Wheeler they had recently sold the Lynd family home at 5 Keats Grove and moved to Tully Cross, Co. Galway in Ireland. Thomass breathlessness had by now been formally diagnosed as emphysema and the condition affected his daily activities, whether in writing or in simple mobility. He had dining rights in Balliol on Wednesdays and found it difficult when the college back gate was closed in the evening to make his way to the common room by the front gate and lodge. He wrote on 6 October to Christopher Hill as Master asking if he might have the use of a back gate key: Christopher naturally gave immediate consent. Thomas sent to the TLS a long review of Arnold Toynbees massive book Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the World, published posthumously, and secured through Joe Josephs more time to complete the Vietnam book - the expected delivery was deferred to the end of December. BJ and Thomas on 28 October went to see Sigle, now seriously ill, and on . Sigle died. Thomas, with BJ and with advice from Teddy, wrote for The Times an obituary of Sigle as publisher, journalist and Communist. Thomass own state of health was not clear and in mid-November he went into the mens chest ward at the Radcliffe Infirmary for a week of observation and tests that stretched into two. His Toynbee review appeared on and Thomas, with his opinion that much of the book was dreadfully dull, suggested: One of the most humane and intelligent of the last generation of scholar-gentry, Toynbee cared about the fate of the common people, but he seldom asked questions about them. Letters from well-wishers over his hospital stay were mixed with compliments on the review Thomas mused in a letter to Teddy that he might gradually shift away from reviewing African things to this vaguer jollier more quasi-philosophical field. The Longman tribute to Basil Davidson was published as African Studies Since 1945 with Thomass essay leading the argument and setting a tone for the book. He was not well enough to attend the launch on 29 November, but Basil took an opportunity to reaffirm: Your contribution to the volume absolutely made it for me. Thomas was invited by Professor E.H.S. Burhop of the World Federation of Scientific Workers to a symposium to be held in New Delhi the following March on science and technology for human development. Thomas thought the invitation to him was a mistake and really intended for Dossie. He declined anyway because of bronchitis and asthma. Professor Burhop replied that there had been no mistake; the invitation was for Thomas since the Federation believed he could make a valuable and penetrating contribution. Thomass financial adviser, his cousin David Bosanquet, was under Thomass instructions preparing a new will that would include small legacies to BJs three children. Polly, the middle of these three, left London at thee end of December to travel via Angola to Mozambique where she was taking up a job in Maputo. Thomas in the new year of 1977 was out of hospital and contemplating leaving the English winter for a warmer climate, possibly in Egypt, and Yusuf Bedri, hearing of this via Liz and his own niece Sulafa Khalid Musa, wrote on 27 January urging Thomas to

book his ticket to Khartoum since he had a second home with the Bedris at Ahfad University College. Thomas remained in England as he had been recommended to have intensive physiotherapy. Thomas and Dossie, at the invitation of Christopher Hill, took up temporary residence for the first fortnight of February in the Masers Lodging at Balliol for Thomas to be on hand for the treatment. Thomas returned to Crab Mill, Dossie went to California, BJ came to spend a few days at Crab Mill. He booked the Trethias Cottage in Cornwall for early July. Thomas was being seen by the familys local general practitioner Dr D.E. Olliff, who was also attending Thomass mother Dorothy, and by an Oxford specialist Dr David Warrell. Thomass condition worsened and in late March he was taken back into the Radcliffe Infirmary. Physical tests showed no new problems and the medical team decided that he had been taken too quickly off cortisone that had been used to treat his asthmatic condition. With an adjustment in his medication, he was writing to friends in mid-April that he was able to eat and drink and work and enjoy nature and people again. The illness, though intermittent, had affected his work and on 2 May Joe Josephs agreed a new deadline of end of summer for Macmillan to see the Vietnam book. Thomas was methodically making provision for his eventual death. He had discussed with Balliols domestic bursar Brigadier D W Jacko Jackson arrangements for his wake and on 4 March wrote to confirm what they had agreed. He asked Jacko to order ten dozen bottles of one or other of two 1975 clarets he had suggested, and lay them down in the cellar labelled "T.H.'s Wake" and for which he would now pay. Thomas, who in good times had a keen sense of food, wine and music, wanted the wine to be in good condition and added the rider: In the unhappy, but not improbable, event of my dying before the 1975 claret becomes entirely fit to drink you would generously substitute an equal quantity of some reasonable 1970 claret from the college stocks and take over my 1975 claret in exchange. Thomas sent a copy of these instructions to Christopher Hill with a further note to Christopher on the modalities of such a wake: he hoped for no religious ceremony, a few words by Christopher as Master or emeritus Master, and a reading by Liz school and university friend the actress Miriam Margolyes (he had in mind lines from Robert Brownings The Bishop orders his tomb at Saint Praxeds Church). Thomas assured Christopher he had no intention of dying just yet. The Balliol bursar duly ordered ten dozen Chteau Abiet 1975 that lay in the cellars in Bordeaux and would be shipped to Britain. Thomas on 13 May signed his new will and sent it to David Bosanquet for safekeeping. Thomas and Dossie took a ten-day package holiday in Crete. On return they were greeted with another reflection on mortality when Teddy sent an obituary of another of Thomass Oxford friends, the playwright Lionel Hale who had died on ??? May, the day of their departure to Crete. Thomas and BJ were together in Cornwall for a few days in July and again at Crab Mill in August. Thomas was able to work in Ilmington, though circumstances changed when his mother because of frailty moved back along Grump Street from the Grey House to Crab Mill and this meant among other distractions from work heavier meals in the middle of the day rather than at night. Thomas as he contemplated writing the last chapter of his Vietnam book found a new distaction as he began to write an autobiography in verse in the style and metre of Byrons Don Juan.. Now prose and poetry were in competition through the autumn as he moved to the close

of the first canto of an intendee twelve and the last chapter on Vietnam that hehoped to complete by the end of the year. BJ was suffering from high blood pressure, a small thrombosis in her leg and thyroid trouble and on 15 November was admitted to the Middlesex Hospital for X-rays and scanning. Thomas visited her on 17 November . Jack Gaster came and found him at his wifes hospital bedside. Courtesy from both men covered the awkwardness: BJ felt a slight blush, but after Thomas had gone, Jack told her he would have come later if he had known she had another visitor. Thomas was also concerned about his mothers condition which now required full-time professional nursing care at Crab Mill. Thomas had made a provisional plan to go to India with Dossie early in the coming year and possibly move on for a short visit to Vietnam again. He now felt it would not be possible to leave his mother for so long a period and wanted to finish the Vietnam book. Dossie was in China in December and Thomas remained at Ilmington working on theintroduxtory canto of his Byonic poem about the familyforebears and under a provisional title of Don Tomaso. In the new year of 1978 Dossie flew to Bombay for Madras, and Thomas tackled book reviews for Events and Times Edcational Supplement. It was the end of January before he gave serious attention to the Vietnam book. For the first time in several months he gave Irene Sabin sections for typing: Gwen Sabin was taking dictation for his correspondence. An unexpected invitation came from the US with a letter of 9 February from the history department of Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. Associate Professor Leo Spitzer recalled meeting Thomas at Philip Curtins house many years earlier when Spitzer was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and Thiomas was giving a public lecture. More recently Thomas had given helpful advice on an article Spitzer and LaRay Denzer had written jointly on Wallace-Johnson and the West African Youth League. Spitzers department could invite a visiting professorspecialising on any aspect of Third World history for the ten week fall term of 1978 and Spitzer was delegated to ask if Thomas would be interested in accepting the appointment. He would be expected to teach a seminar course to selected senior students and a lecture course open to undegraduates. LaRay had warned Spitzer that a cold climate was bad for Thomass health: I can assure you that autumn here in New Hampshire-Vermont is always absolutely beautiful, with maple foliage such as I have never see anywhere else in the world. LaRay on 17 February wrote from Chicago that Spitzer had telephoned here to ask if she thought Thomas might consider an invitation to Dartmouth and she had said there might be complications. Thomas on 27 February drafted a careful response to the Dartmouth proposal. He found the invitaton pleasaing and attractive and in principle would love to come what a wonderful idea in a sometimes bleak world. He emnvisaged an undergraduate course breaking newish ground on The Theory and Practice of Natioal Liberation. This would consider the ideas of revolutionary Third-World theorists and practitioners during the period 1880-1970, and cover such personalities as Muhammad Ahmad (the Sudanese Mahdi) , Jamal al-din Afghani, Phan Boi Chau, Sultan Galiev, Lamine Senghor and Garan Kouyat, Abd al-Krim, Allal al-Fasi, Wallace-Johnson, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Joseph Garang and Frantz Fanon. The seminar could be related to the lectures or on Vietnam, the historical background to the August 1945 Revolution, about which he had almost finished writing a book.

He was frank about the possible complications. On health, he had permanent emphysema-bronchitis-asthma that did not prevent thought or writing or talking (within limits) or discussion, but did make him fairly immobile. He would need to have accessible a sympathetic doctor who understood these s ailments easily and not cost a lot of money. He would need to live somewhere preferably without stairs, and as close as possible to where he would be teaching and the library: his wife would like to come over for part of the time and use Dartmouth as a base for some of her projected American lectures. His mother was turning 92 and very fragile and Thomas would have to be ready to return home for a week or so if she was suddnely much worse and needed Thomas there. On politics, in old age, inf1uenced partly by his children and by the state of the world, he had rejoined the British Communist Party and wou1d not want to hide this up: in the past he had always had to have Attorney-Generals waivers to visit the USA. He thought the fees an almost princey sum and hoped it would be practicable to have lecture and seminar in the middle of the week, leaving the possibility of longish weekends. Thomass frankness was such that Spitzer telephoned LaRay for an opinion of Thomass state of health, and she gave an assurance that Thomas was strong enough to cope with Dartmouth students. Spitzer intended to give Thomas a Tuesday to Thursday schedule. By the end of March Dartmouth was ready to send a formal invitation and had found an attractive and suitable apartment. The appointment offer was made by an associate dean Gene Lyons on 3 April Thomass 68th birthday and reached Thomas as he was leaving for a Trethias Cottage holiday with BJ. They went for walks now very short and Thomas in two sessions read BJ the entire first canto with its 222 stanzas that gave them pleasure but left Thomas somewhat exhausted. From Ilmington he wrote to Lyons accepting and looking forward to returning to do some serious teaching at a campus he had previously visited only briefly. Thomas on 16 May led a discussion on the theme of The National Question in Contemporary Africa at a meeting of the Oxford University Africa Society. He contrasted the complexity of the contemporary African situation with that of 1956 when he published his book on Nationalism in Colonial Africa. He referred to controversial figures such as Idi Amin, Mobutu, Hastings Band and Emperor Bokassa, and to issues affecting Eritrea, Ethiopia. Somalia and Chad. The discussion questions he set up included the prospects for African national cultures and languages. In the discussion a St Antonys doctoral student from South Africa Renfrew Christie drew a comparison between liberated Africa and occupied Namibia and argued that even neo-colonialism would be an improvement on the colonialism represented by Namibia's continuing captivity. Thomas spoke to Christie at the end of the session to encourage him to be in touch, but Christie felt shy and unwilling to impose himself. During the summer Thomas worked on his Vietnam writing and friends in the US were lining up speaking engagements on other campuses an early bid on 3 July was from Thomass former student Charles Stewart now acting director of the African Studies Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Stewart wanted to set up a three lefture series based on Thomass theories of national liberation course at Dartmouth. Thomas was gently discouraging some bids that came as news passed through the bush telegraph that he would be in the US. In the latter part of August Thomas joined Dossie in Bulgaria including six days in the Rhodope. Mountains before a conference of Dossies in Varna..

Thomas on 24 September left for the US and was driven from Boston airport to settle in an apartment Thomas thought elegant and splendid - at Choate House, an old two-storey white wood-framed clapboard house within two blocks of the history departments office and classroom building. Thomass lecture course on theories of national liberation harked back to ideas he had been developing since October 1969 in the seminar organised by Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe and drew on academic research he had supervised such as Jim Spieglers on nationalist thought among French-speaing West Africans. For Dartmouth he enriched the subject from his travel and research in India and Vietnam and prepared ten new lectures, dropping the Sudans Mahdi from his prospective list of the previous February. He pointed out to his students that the short list of theorists was in no sense representaitve of the full range and diversity of the Third World and he apologised that all the theorists were male. The seminar was centred on a historical explanation of the August 1945 Revolution in Vietnam, but was less burdensome in preparation as he could draw on the latter chapters of the book on which he had been working since 1974. Thomas had an office in the history department where students could come to consult on their individual research interests one caller, on 29 September, after the initial mid-week lecture and seminar phase was accomplished , was interested in the German role in South-West Africa and Tanganyika and another in Morocco and the nationalist Mehdi Ben Barka. The longish weekends that Thomas had sought allowed time for thinking and preparation and for friends and family: by late October he had begun to find odd moments to write the first few stanzas of the second canto of his autobiographical poem. Dartmouth allowed Thomas a day off on his teaching schedule to lecture on related subjects during a return visit after a long absence to Northwestern University , Evanston, and under Charles Stewarts proposal at University of Illinois on the evening of 14 November and during the day on 15 November. Thomas had been joined at Choate Hall by Dossie who returned to Britain on 24 November: Thomas stayed for the end of teaching on 1 December and a further week of seeing and grading student papers. The student papers were a more substantial load than he expected and he took some with him for furher consideration on his return to Britain. Thomas spent Christmas of 1978 at Crab Mill and in the new year of 1979 was with BJ on 2 January to say goodbye and escape from the rest of an English winter that was forecast to be severe. Dossie was visiting professor at the Indian Academy of Sciences under the auspices of a colleague and friend Sivaraj Siv Ramaseshan who had spent a year in Dossies Oxford laboratory. Thomas accompanied Dossie to Bangalore where they were based at the Raman Research Institute, named for Sivs uncle the scientist C.V. Raman, and to travel to other parts of India. Their departure from London was complicated by icy conditions at the airport, aircraft delays causing a change in Air France routing so that instead of flying via Paris they went to Delhi and then to Bombay and arrived in Bangalore on 5 January a day later than planned. They began further travel south on 9 January to Kerala, this time by train that Thomas welcomed as his first chance to see something of India outside the towns and with Siv as company. Thomas at Salem enjoyed the vegetarian evening meal eaten in the open air and south Indian breakfast dishes p- albeit after a night of swatting mosquitoes that eluded the window proofing. When they visited the Meenakshi Temple at Madurai, Thomas found its curative, restorative effect allowed him to wander about for the best part of two hours. At

a Gandhigram rural project on 11 January Thomas sat on the stone beside the tamarisk tree where Toby was said to have sat when resting from his labours in the fields during his stay in India in 1964. Thomas and Dossie, with another of Dossies research colleagues M. Vijayan as companion, reached Trivandrum in the far south where Dossie suffered a cold and cough. Thomas on 14 January met E.M.S. Namboodiripad to ask about his politcal history and how he had come to Marsxism and Communism the background to his leadership of the Communist election victory in Kerala in 1957 and his identfication with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) wing in a later sectarian split. Thomas met other Commnunists includig the Kerala party secretary o who urged the crucial role of the peasantry in the Indian revolutionary movement. The thre travellers began the more than 24-hour train journey back to Bangalore on 20 January without heeding the guidebooks warning that bedding and pillows are not furnished and looking askance at a frightening upper bunk. As Thomas explained to Teddy in a letter written on the jogging train complicated improvisation is now taking place. On return to Bangalore Thomas caught cold and suffered a severe onset of breathlessness. He was moved to a specially air-conditioned room to shield him from pollen and was given oxygen under the careof day and night nurses. Thomas after trying out his Vietnam maeterial in the Dartmouth seminar had left with Liz the main draft of the book in case she wanted to make changes. Liz after making slight amendments went to London on 22 January and then to Basingstoke to deliver theoverdue typescript to Macmillan. Thomas in Bangalore was making a good recovery: as a precaution his Oxford specialist Dr Warrell telexed to Siv on 26 January a medical history since 1958 and a full account of the therapy being used to treat his combination of obstructive bronchitis with emphysema, allergic bronchial asthma and chronic narcolepsy. Thomas on 28 January was able to telephone his mother and Liz in Ilmington to reassure them that he was recovering. Dossie and Thomas decided to waive their planned visit to Madras and to spend more time in Bangalore before going on to Hyderabad, Delhi and home. Siv on 2 February brought in a young man to talk about teaching Thomas Yoga breathing exercises and the teacher at the introductory encounter had Thomas flat on his back on the floor in a Yoga position. Thomas learned his Yoga exercises and found them useful. During a five-day visit to Hyderabad from 14 February Thomas pursued his interest in the philosopher Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and on 17 February he visited Osman Yar Khan to collect recollections of his grandfahers relations with al-Afghani who had lived and taught in Hyderabad for a while a century earlier. While Thomas was in Hyderabad he had a letter fromLiz saying that Macmillan was prepared to go ahead with the Vietrham book and wanted it as soon as possible. Thomas,. wth this encouragement, was eager on return to Crab Mill on 25 February to prepare the Vietnam book for publication with footnotes and revisions. The publisher exepect the task to be done by the end of March so Thomas was desperately working on it in the first days of April. He and BJ had a few days in Trethias Cottage from 8 to 12 April though they realised that the poor health of each might make this the last time. By the end of April th the Vietnam text was in the hands of the Macmillan in-house editor. Thomas was working on a long article on African tyrants for Paul Barker, the editor of New Society, who presented it in the issue of 7 June as reflection on some of the post-

colonial systems emerging in the new states. Thomas used his classical training and Africanist experience to depict African leaders several of whom he had known personally within an Aristotelian classification of three kinds of tyranny: barbarian despotism, elective dictatorship and arbitrary power. With Ugandas Idi Amin in the latter category and challenged by Tanzania, Thomas drew the recondite conclusion: One honours Julius Nyerere as the Athenians honoured their historica tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Thomass mother, Dorothy Forster Hodgkin, died on 16 June and was buried besisde her husband in the churchyard at the village church, St Marys Ilmington 20 June. Thomas and Teddy wrote her obituary for the Oxford Times and the Evesham Journal, whose fuller version on 28 June depictedg the death of the third of seven beautiful daughters of the Master of Balliol as the breaking of a link with Victorian Oxford. Thomas had been planning to return to India in the autumn (when Dossie would ge going in late October for a further stint as Raman Professor) and wanted to do some serious teaching at Aligarh University whose Professor Maqbool Ahmad had suggested this. He was now locked into a Macmillan production schedule for delivery by 20 October of corrections and glossary and other supporting material of a complex text for the Vietnam book. Erica Powell had been seeking advice from Thomas on finding a publisher for her book on her experiences as private secretary to Nkrumah. Thomas, over-running on the Vietnam tasks, invited her help on the final stages. She came for the last twwo weeks of October when Dossie was a fulfilling a schedule in Delhi, Lucknow, Bangladesh, Calcutta and Assam. Thomas with secretarial and domestic support from Erica Powell among others was able to deliver to Macmillans office in London on 7 November a typescript that could go to the printers, though it had blemishes he would have liked more time to remove. Dossie overworked on her journey and in Darjeeling was diagnosed with a heart flutter and high blood pressure and a very high pulse rate, so a Bombay visit was taken out of her programme and she rested in Delhi. Thomas and BJ had a celebratory feast to mark the finishing of the book and her imminent departure with Jack on a three-week visit to Polly in Mozambique. Dossie returned to Ilmington on 16 November. Siv, writing to Thomas on 20 November about Dossies heart murmur, said: I was for some reason not too worried. This was my innate confidence in her inner strength (that seems to radiate from her all the time). Siv, who had been a guest at Crab Mill in the past, had read the obituary of Thomass mother and recalled her telling him of the modestyt at the turn of the century: undergraduates would not roll up their sleeves if playing tennis when ladies were present. LaRay Denzer was at Crab Mill for much of Decemberwith her work on WallaceJohnson, and St Clair Drake wrote from Stanford on 9 December that he had feelrers out in several directions to bring Thomas to campuses in California for a time. Thomas was perceived as an uncomon combination of Africanist and Arabist, and a serious historian with radical credentials. His books were few and brought to birth after unusually prolonged labour, but several of his writings that began as seminar papers had become seminal texts in the journals and in the anthologies. His 3M paper Mahdism, Messianism and Marxism in the African setting - from the Khartoum conference in 1969 was published in Yusuf Fadl Hasans collection Sudan in

Arica in 1971 and gained even wider currency when it was included in Peter C.W. Gutkind and Peter Watermans African Social Studies: A Radical Reader in 1977. Thomas early in 1980 published in Race & Class an article on The revolutionary tradition in Islam that spanned Africa, Asia and the Arab world. For the History Workshop a journnal of socialsit historians, Eve Hostettler wroteon 25 March that they had soughtr and gained permission to reprint the article t in their own forthcoming November issue: We feel your article is a model of its kind clear, accessible and instructive about a delicate and complex subject. Thomas on 27 March was issued a multiple entry visa for the US, celebrated his seventieth birthday on 3 April and was admitted to the US on 8 April for a round of university visits. Thomas during his tour that went from Northwestern University via Minneapolis to the University of California in Los Angeles explored this current interest in the radical tradition in various permutations of Islam and of Muslim West Africa. He was also developing another theme on which he lectured principally of the anticolonial tradition in British politics. He considered a very broad range of writers and thinkers in Britain and relationships between such anti-colonial groups and individuals in the British context and the resistance and liberation movements in the Third World colonial countries. He looked at movements against slavery, against racism and at radical, revolutionary streams of political ideas and practice. Thomass California schedule was particularly strenuous with several engagements in Los Angles and Stanford from 22 April - and conversations with such old friends as St Clair Drake whom he had not seen for many years. He had a slight medical scare before his Stanford University lecture on 26 April and was grateful that he and Dossie had arranged a few days off with Linus and Helen Pauling and a visit to the Callifornia beach resort Big Sur. LaRay Denzer and Charles Stewart planned a collection of essays on radicalism in West Africa for an American Sage Publications series and on 27 May they wrote confirming a request for Thomas to develop a particular thread within his study of the revolutionary tradition in Islam. This would be on the legacy of Kharijism the Khawarij were Muslims who separated from the rest of the community in protest against an arbitration agreed by the fourth Caliph in AD 657 and the tentative deadline proposed first drafts by 1 July 1981 and final drafts by 1 September 1981. Thomas was facing a more immediate deadline: the Vietnam book was at proof corection and index preparation stag. Corrections were due back with Macmillan by the end of May. Thomas with signifcant assistance from Liz over the weeks since his return from California was still grappling in early June. He hand Dossie were also going to Rumania combined with her participate in an an annual gathering of Nobel prizewinners at Lindau on Lake Constance in Germany. They were leaving on 14 June and Thomas would miss the George Antonius memorial lecture in Oxford by the Palestinian sscholar Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Thomas, reluctant at the prospect of another journey, was when it came to to it delighted by the beauty of the scenery in both countries and by frescoed monasteries in Bukovina. Thomas on 15 July signed a contract with Sage Publications for the Kharijism chapter. Although it was mid-summer Thomas was already thinking of going abroad to avoid the cold of the next winter. Yusuf, hearing again from Sulafa Khalid Musa of this new project, wrote on 5 August from Omdurman that Sudan was his best bet and that Dossie

and Thomas could stay with him or have their own self-contained house at Ahfad. He sent Thomas the translation into English of the second volume of the memoirs of his father Babiker Bedri. Thomas completed the second canto on childhood - of his own verse autobiography, as he put it on the kitchen table, Crab Mill, Ilmington, Friday, August 8th, 1989, 4.10 p.m.. Thomas was conjuring in his mind an elaborate winter foray that would begin with a visit to Katy Antonius in Cairo, continue with Sudan, then go on to Lebanon to see the Antonius daughter Soraya Tutu Antonius and even perhaps take in Syria. He wrote on 11 September accepting Yusuf Bedris invitation in principle for the following February. He wrote too of his disappointment that publication date for the Vietnam book he had expected to be out by Christmas had been put off until April. Meanwhile Thomas was developing his theme of the anti-colonial tradition in British politics and had drawn up a bibliography when on 21 October he spoke on the subject in the seminar of the University of Birminghams Centre of West African Studies., where he was an honorary fellow. Though this was so far only one lecture Thomas saw it as the germ of another book one that Nick Jacobs, planning to start his own imprint, was interested in publishing. Thomas in late October went with Dossie to Ireland where she was giving a memorial lecture for Desmond Bernal in Dublin. Thomas in Dublin on 26 Octobr began the third canto of his autobiograhical poem covering his undergraduate memories of Balliol He had followed an awakened interest in British politics by writing to Michael Foot (whom he had met in the 1930s through an introduction from Hugh Foot, his colleague in Palestine) urging him to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party after James Callaghan stood down. Jacobs telephoned Thomas on 10 November to tell him that Foot had won the contest over Denis Healey. Thomas thought Foots success made the anticolonial theme particularly appropriate and it gave Thomas some hope of serious radical politics in Britain again. Thomas on 21 November wrote to John Hunwick, teaching at the American University in Cairo, about his hope of coming with Dossie to Cairo early in January to stay with Katy Antonius and of writimg a small biographical piece about George Antonius, if he could collect enough material. She wrote on 7 December saying they should stay as long as they wishes. The St Antonys College Middle East Centre added point to the plan when Roger Owen, as director, wrote on 18 December 1980 inviting Thomas to deliver the George Antonius memorial lecture towards the end of Oxfords Trinity Term. Thomas marked the new year of 1981 with a distribution among close family and friends of the first two cantos of his autobiographical epic, now entitled Don Toms, in an edition of twenty photocopies made by Liz: he sent a copy to the publisher John Murray for that houses historic links with Byron, and a copy to Anthony Kenny who from Michaelmas Term 1978 had succeeded Christopher Hill as Master of Balliol.. Thomas and Dossie in Cairo (for a few days from 12 to 17 January) did not stay with Katy Antonius in Maadi since she had health problems of her own, but visited her three times. They stayed with the Egyptian scholar and linguist Magdi Wahba and his wife Josephine in Zamalek then went on to Sudan to stay with Yusuf Bedri in Omdurman. They received on 25 January a letter Teddy had sent while they were in Egypt for the melancholy purpose of telling that Ann Cubitt, formerly Hartley and formerly Sitwell, had died on 11 January. John Murray on 27 January wrote commending the bravery of

the Don Toms project but warning of the monotony of Byrons verse form. Murray could not envisage a wide and attentive enough audience to allow them to publish Thomass poem. Teddy on 2 February wrote that he had heard from Ireland of the deaths of more old friend Eric Gills daughter Joan Hague on 25 December 1980 and her husband Ren Hague on 19 January 1981. Yusuf Bedri was conducting his guests on small expeditions to other parts of Sudan, including places in the north that Thomas had not visited during his previous stays in the country. Thomas had abandoned thoughts of going to Lebanon or Syria, returned to Britain and contemplated several writing tasks before him. He thought he should focus on the Antonius lecture but went back to the third canto of his poem. This took him to 11 March and then with Teddys help he gathered up his correspondence from Palestine of the mid1930s for his Antonius reminiscences and carried out research on Antonius and official papers to add to his own perceptions. He was working hard on the lecture but took a genuine holiday in Greece with Dossie from 23 April to 6 May at Tolon, near Nauplia, on the Aegean shores of the Pelopponese. This, rather like Bamburgh, was a fishing village that had become a holiday resort, and they stayed at the Hotel Minoa run by the friendly Georgidakis family from Crete, and enjoyed the view over inlets and islands and small boats on the sea. Thomas on return continued his Antonius preparation, attended birthday celebrations in Manchester ??? for Hilda and Alan Nunn May and on 18 May was heartened when he received an advance copy of his book Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path that Macmillan now proposed to publish on 23 July. In a further health scare he was admitted to the Churchill Hospital on 30 May. He was allowed home on 10 June physically frail but in sufficient spirits to write a doggerel sonnet in praise of a male staff nurse John OBrien who had overseen his care. Teddy helped with the preparation of a final typescript for the Antomius memorial lecture at St Antonys on 17 June. Thomas was present huddled in a chair, but unable to read his lectture, and Teddy read it on his behalf. Many of the audience were thrilled at the brilliance of the talk but alarmed for Thomass health. Thomas went back to hospital at the beginning of July for a further week of treatment, leaving on 10 July with a high elbow frame to assist mobility. Despite the physical difficulties he pressed on with his intellectual interests. He had been working with BJ and with ideas from other members of his circle on an anthology of writings on various aspects of love, under a working title of Love and Revolution. On 13 and 14 July he dictated to a tape recorder an introduction to this collection as a kind of successort to kinsman Robert Bridges anthology made in 1915, The Spirit of Man carried in first world war soldiersknapsacks to France and enjoyed by the young in the 1920s and successive decades. Thomass book Vietnam: the Revolutionary Path was published on 23 July and promoted by Macmillan as an account of the first time a revolutionary movement under Communist leadership succeeded in overthrowing a colonial state. Macmillan in consultation with the author had sent review copies to an extensive international network of potential reviewers and had clear indications that it would be widely reviewed. By early August when he had graduated to walking with a stick rather than a frame Thomas was hatching another literary conceit. He was planning a birthday book for BJs

seventieth birthday due the following March when friends of their youthful days would write tributes in verse or prose. Teddy, who had in his young days been an amateur printer, was giving advice and Thomas agreed that contributors should eventually be sent sheets of hand made papers on which to write their pieces and the sheets would eventually be bound together as a book. In yet another literary project LaRay Denzer was putting together a select collection of Thomass essays and papers over the years that could be published in book form. Thomas on 17 August dictated to the tape recorder an inroduction to such a collection. Teddy wrote on 18 August that Roger Hardy, who had attended the reading of the Antonius lecture, would like to print it in the Gazelle Review of Literature on the Middle East, if it had not been bespoken somewhere else. Thomas was planning to escape the English winter for an earlier and longer stay in the Sudan than the year before. On this he had the advice of his Smith cousin Oliver Wrong, professor of medicine at University College Hospital, who had invoked the interest of pupils and colleagues in the Sudan medical profession on Thomass behalf. The head of the University of Khartoumsdepartment of medicine Professor Abdel Rahman Mohamed Musa wrote on 18 August recommending a chest physican Samir L. Damian who had considerable experience in Glasgow before returning to the Sudan. Thomas, staying quietly in Ilmington, was receiving treatment from a physiotherapist and on 27 August was with help able to climb a few steps into the rose garden at Crab Mill. Dossie was away at a Pugwash meeting in Banff, Canada, and BJ came to stay with Thomas for the first few days of September. Thomas in October was canvassing for contributions to the BJ birthday book, especially among peoople from the Oxford where he recalled she was the centre of a circle of exciting friends and admirers. Since Thomas would be abroad he was entrusting the the responses and further organisation to BJs elder daughter Lucy Syson. Among the admirers Sir Isaiah Berlin wanted to respond but was perplexed, replying to Thomas I could copy out a verse from the Song of Songs, or even Proverbs, about the beauty and valour of women, but I somehow dont think this would quite do and to Lucy I would do anything that I could to give her pleasure; but I am totally incapable of writing a poem, however bad I have known this, sadly, since earliest boyhood, and nothing has altered since. Thomas on 9 October replied to Sir Isaiahs possibly rhetorical questions that something from the Song of Songs would be beautiful and wholly appropriate and drawing attention to publication in the Balliol Record of the Balliol section of his autobiographical poem. BJ from whom all these preparations was being kept secret - wrote on 11 October: How sad it is that the pattern of our lives has changed so much Instead of your oncea-week and then once-a-fortnight trip to London, now it seems to be a once-a-month dash to Crab for me, with long blanks in between. Thomass plan with Yusuf Bedri was for the long Sudan stay to begin not in Omdurman but in Khartoum North with Sulafa Khalid Musa and her hsuband Ahmed Bedri at their Shambat house near the Food Research Station where Sulafa worked. Thomas had in mind a further literary project to write prose portrait sketches of various precious friends each associated with a particular phase of his life. The list included his school friend Randall Swingler, university contemporary Derek Kahn, Prudence Pelham (and George Antonius) from the Palestine years, Gladys Malbon from adult education in the Potteries, Isa Wali from the West African experience,

Gervase Mathew from working and teaching in Oxford, Joseph Garang and Abd alKhalig Mahgub from early and late visits to Sudan, and Tran Van Giau the Vietnamese historian. Thomas, Dossie and Liz had sent a birthday card for the thirty-second birthdayon 11 September of a South African political prisoner and former St Antonys student Renfrew Christie. Christie had been arrested in October 1979 and in June 1980 sentenced under the Terrorism Act to a long term of imprisonment on charges of conspiring with the African National Congress of South Africa to supply information on coal, electricity and uclear activity in South Africa, including work on nuclear explosives research. The message on the card was too long to be counted as a greeting and had to be censored as a letter while the outside correspondent was vetted. Christies received the message on 23 October with permision to correspond with Thomas. Christie on 1 November asked Thomas for a letter of strictly no more than five hundred words with no mention of South African politics that must be posted in the first week of January in the new year. Macmilllan was expected to publish Christies book Electricity, Industry, and Class in South Africa and Thomas was willing to write a foreword. Oliver Wrong on 30 October provided an advisory note for Thomass travel to avoid the main period of chest infections in Britain: Mr Hodgkin is still very weak. He can walk with assistance, but should have a wheel chair for any but the shortest walk. BJ on 3 November drove over to Crab Mill for a farewell lunch before Thomas and Dossie on 5 November left on their winter journey abroad. They flew on a British Airways TriStar and on the dinner menu Thomas wrote for the BJs forthcoming birthday a conscious pastiche of the Shakespeare sonnet 104 .To me, fair friend, you never can be old as To me, BJ, you never can be old. They arrived on 6 November to a warm Bedri welcome: Sulafa with Yusufs son Gasim were at the foot of the aeroplane steps with a chair and they were taken in two cars to Ahmed and Sulafas home. They quickly felt established with their hosts, their two daughters (Sulafa was several months into pregnancy) - in a setting of flowery garden, palm trees, water lilies, butterflies and innumerable small birds. Yusuf Bedri came round on 7 November and they all had lunch prepared by Sulafas elderly cook. Thomas on 14 November wrote to Michael Wolfers in London about this Garden of Eden of the first days and of the serpent appearing in the guise of accident proneness that in the week since arrival had brought him two tumbles and one nasty cut in the leg. Thomas was wondering whether to take up Yusufs offer of a house in Omdurman and if Michael might like to come out to join them: You could write some articles. Help me to work on Abdel Khalig and Joseph Garang . Thomas envisaged more journeys round the Sudan and suggested January as the time. Teddy on 15 November wrote to Thomas of Bickham Sweet-Escotts death on 12 November: That eliminates another of that distinguished group of Oxford friends you have been immortalizing (not too strong a word I think) in Don Toms. Teddy sent The Times obituary that he had written some ten years earlier. BJ wrote also to Thomas of Bickhams death -another sad reason for not trying to repeat my 60th birthday. . Liz who was forwarding letters from Crab Mill advised on 18 Novembr that her mother had a letter from the Queens private secretary inviting her to a lunch for olders of the Order of Merit with other OMs. Michael Wolfers on 27 November told Liz over lunchtime drinks in the University of London Union that by coincidence he was invited to

the first graduation in mid-December for the University of Juba (where he had been a visiting senior lecturer in political science), was keen on going to the ceremony and would stay on three weeks or so afterwards. Thomas on 7 December copied his two doggerel poems for BJs birthday as neatly as he could onto the sheet of good paper that Lucy had sent me: the new pastiche written on the flight to Sudan and an old poem composed for her many years before when he and BJ attended a Marxist lecture that raised the question How Socialist was Ghana under the CPP? Michael Wolfers arrived in Khartoum from a night flight on the morning of 12 December, booked into the University Of Jubas resthouse in Khartoum and with the help of a Juba agriculture student made his way to Shambat, with letters and deliveries from Liz. He brought the bad news of the death of Ava Helen Pauling on 7 October and the good news of a sympathetic full-page notice in the London Review of Books for 3-16 December by Victor Kiernan of Thomass Vietnam book. Kiernan wrote: It was a happy inspiration for a writer who has spent many years studying African to transport himself to the other end of the world and look at the evolution of a totally different society, though one equally in the end herded by Western guns into a new era. The result is a fine achievement . Thomas was keeping score, writing to Liz on 15 December so now we have four rave reviews to boast of and for Macmillan to quote Michael, Basil, Huu Ngoc and Kiernan. Lucy Syson had with Thomass encouragement disclosed the secret plan for the BJ birthday book to her father whose jocular reaction was that as long as Thomas was safely in the Sudan he thought it a thoroughly good idea and would like there to be a party at Antrim Road for all the contributors. Thomas on 20 December sent back the typescript of his now overdue Khwarij chapter for Liz to send on to LaRay Denzer and Charles Stewart. He had written to Yannis Georgidakis in Tolon reserving a two bedded room for a return visit oin late March and Yannis on 20 December wrote confirming the reservation. Thomas, whose thoughts had turned to returning to Crab Mill in time for his birthday on 3 April was much recovered during his stay at Shambat - athough there were recurrent problems over the domestic helpers and Sulafa was under the stress of her advancing pregnancy. He was walking a good deal by himself, more or less independently with two sticks, and enjoying parties, his food and his liquor. Yusuf with several children and grandchildren came to Shambat on Christmas day and on Boxing Day Michael Wolfers brought over the Vice-Chancellor of Juba University Abdul Rahman Abu Zayd and his American wife Karen Koning, since both had studied at McGill University.They invited Thomas and Dossie to a party they were giving on 29 December with several old friends of Thomas including Jamal Mohammed Ahmed, scholar and former ambassador in London, and the much imprisoned Communist former Sudanese MP Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim. He began writing to Teddy on new years eve that he thought he could hardly have survived the winter: the claret laid down for the wake in Balliol could go on maturing a little longer. He added a postscript that Teddy should not forget that the coming 2 March would be BJs 70th birthday and would Teddy telephone her with Thomass love and blessings. [graduate party] On the new years day of 1982 Mary Bennett wrote to Thomas of the death of another of their friends Lesbia Winnifrith who had, she said, died as competently as she had lived

sitting in the garden between one sentence and the next. BJ wrote to Thomas that day blessing his decision to winter out of England, lonely though it waas: It really is an unspeakable winter. Thomas on 5 (and 6January ???) wrote to Liz that Dossie wanted to accept the Queens invitation to the OM get-together lunch at Windsor Castle on 1 April and he had not the heart to discourage her: Indeed I have said and I am prepared to sink my principles on this occasion and go too, seeing that she has been sacrificing the whole of the winter to me, looking after me so wonderfully all this time. He mused that Windsor seemed somehow nicer than Buckinhgam Palace or was that simple casuistry. This new plan meant arriving in England on 30 March and they would go to Tolon from 14 until 30 March. Sulafa was preoccupied with a grand dinner party she was giving on 7 January for the Hungarian Ambassador and a new Minister of Industries - casting a shadow like a Ball in Jane Austen, Thomas thought. Michael Wolfers came to the dinner and collected the Hodgkin letters as he was leaving next day for Britain. Thomas stressed the urgency of the letter he was sending to Renfrew Christie in the Pretoria Maximum Security Gaol and Dossie that of the letter she was sending to Sir Edward Ford informing the Queen that Thomas would attend her OM lunch (on a recent royal occasion the Queen had regretted Thomass absence abroad a pretext when he was actually at home). Thomas and Dossie on 11 January began a sentimental journey with Yusuf Bedri to Rufaa on the Blue Nile in central Sudan where Sheikh Babikr Bedri in his hometown had established the first school for girls and to Wad Medani where they had been the year before. Thomas on return to Shambat found a request from Teddy for possible readings for Bickhams memorial service. He responded on 15 January with various suggestions from classical authors: Otherwise, what? Of course, I love that Spinoza passage, from the beginning of De Intellectus Emendatione, about what one means by the good life and the supremacy of reasson to all other human ends Thomas andDossie on 1 February moved to Yusufs rooms at Ahfad College in Omdurman Thomas given an iron bedstead with two mattresses to aid mobility. At the end of February BJs chidren showed her the birthday collection that Thomas had inspired. BJ had seen that some secret was being cooked up and had feared it would be a washing machine as the last thing she wanted. She was delighted and genuinely surprised at seeing Thomass poems and moving contributions from other friends. She was being shown these unofficially so that she would be prepared for a formal presentation at a party for contibutors that Lucy and Jack had arranged for 7 March. Berlin had ducked the Song of Solomon for a recollection of a 1930s visit with BJ to the novelist Elizabeth at Bowens Court in Ireland. Thomas and Dossie with Yusuf flew on 3 March to Port Sudan where Yusuf was fundraising for Ahfad. They travelled on to Erkoweit on 7 March (where Thomas found the slightly greater altitude made his breathing more difficult than in Port Sudan) and briefly to Suakin with mosque and ruined palace that Thomas had long wanted to see. When they were stopped and questioned by oldiers about their purpose they found that a visit was imminent by the Duke of Edinburgh {verify ????} and there were security concerns Thomas fled rapidly back to Port Sudan. He and Dossie on 9 March made a boat journey over coral reefs. They returned to Omdurman for a final few days before the sart of the homeward journey on 14 March via Athens where they were joined by Liz and by Peter Carter, who had

been racing to deliver a book to OUP, and the all went on to Tolon. Thomas was making new friends including on 19 March Andreas Kaede {spelling with umlaut really} and his wife Karin from Germany who were on their honeymoon. A letter from Teddy brought news of the death on 7 March of their Smith cousin the former Bishop of St Albans Michael Gresford Jones married to their Hodgkin cousin Lucy Bosanquet. Thomas s when on 19 March he sent a letter of condolence to Lucy Gresford Jones commented to Teddy Everyone seems to be dying in a depressing way. He telephoned BJ in London to arrange to meet in the week after his return to England. Andreas took Thomas in his car on a drive over tracks through olive groves and hills to seee a beautiful valley through which Liz and Peter had walked the day before and to which the others were returning on foot. They found a sparkling stream and a frescoed chapel On 22 March Thomas joined a British archaeological tour party, organised by the Oxford Town and Gown travel agency and mainly from Oxford, on a charabanc journey to Mistra and Sparta. The sunshine of the first week had turned to clouds and rain. Thomas was affected by travel sickness as the bus was swinging round mountain bends. On a meal break he had more or less to be carried up steps to a taverna in Mistra, but had no appetite. Thomas rested in the hotel on 23 and 24 March and on the second evening attended a lecture given by an archaeologist. At dinner after the hotel he complained of feeling unwell. He was helped up to bed and an appointment was made for a doctor to see him next morning. In the night he woke and cried out that he could not move. In the morning he seemed better and he asked Liz to help him prepare for the doctors visit. As he was walking across the washroom adjoining the bedroom he fell forward on the wash basin. They carried Thomas to his bed, Liz called Andreas in for help. They tried resuscitation and when the doctor arrived he also attempted resuscitation while indicating that it could be of no avail. The doctor explained that Thomass heart had given out and his death had been immediate. The registrar John Yannakos certified Thomass death from cardiac arrest and pulmonary disease at 7.45 on 25 March 1982 . It was Greeces national day marking the anniversary of theoutbreak of a seven-year revolutionary war of indepdendence against the Ottoman Empire.