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The Prothero Lecture: Sir George Prothero and his circle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Extract

It is an accident of birth that has brought to a retired College Tutor the honour of giving the first Prothero lecture. To declare my interest at once, it happens that Sir George Prothero's wife was my mother's sister; both my parents died before my sister and I could remember them. We occasionally stayed as children with the Protheros at 24 Bedford Square, but I hardly began to know my uncle better until I was an undergraduate in the last three years of his life, and I was still too raw to get much deeper than the sense that here was a quiet, dignified man, obviously distinguished but overworked and tired. He died in 1922 at the age of 73. There were no children. Before she died in 1934, Lady Prothero gave me the diaries which he had kept with hardly a break for fifty years, and some bundles of letters to him, mostly 1914–18.I am ashamed to say that I hardly did more than skim these diaries and letters until, after my retirement, I was asked by this Society's Council to look over the papers and letters which Prothero had bequeathed to the Society. These came to it on his widow's death, along with most of his historical library, and with his residuary estate.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1970

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