Fragments of University Reminiscence (1922–1972)

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975), Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and the University of London, was a leading specialist on international affairs, widely read and influential in the 1940s and 1950s. As Atkinson indicates, Toynbee was best known for A Study of History (1934–1961), a universal history in twelve volumes, in which Toynbee traced the development and decay of nineteen world civilizations.

2 As he goes on to say, Atkinson spent four years at Oxford in that Department (then part of the Royal Institute of International Affairs). As the person responsible for Spain and Portugal and their dependencies, his main function was to research the contents of Spanish and Portuguese language newspapers for any information he judged useful to the UK government and its Foreign Office in the conduct of the war. As he indicates below, he was also sent by the government on several fact-finding missions to Spain and Portugal.

3 In his obituary on Atkinson, Giovanni Pontiero comments that ‘the years away from the then tranquil environment of academic life provided him with a broader perspective of the socio-political realities affecting the Iberian peninsula’ (Giovanni Pontiero, ‘Professor William Atkinson’, The Independent, 30 September 1992, p. 23).

4 In an article he wrote in 1924, Atkinson records being in Barcelona in 1923, when Miguel Primo de Rivera (1870–1930) took control of Spain (see ‘September in Barcelona’, BSS, I:4 [1924], 145–47 [pp. 146–47]). His dictatorship in Spain lasted from 1923–1930. King Alfonso XIII was forced into exile in 1931, and the Republic, as Atkinson says here, ‘was born’. It is not surprising that Atkinson should include in his memoirs comments on events in contemporary Spanish history. He was a historian, after all, as well as a literary critic (see especially, William C. Atkinson, A History of Spain and Portugal. The Peninsula and Its Peoples: The Pattern of Their Society and Civilization [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960]).

5 A reference to 1640, when Portugal after a successful uprising, regained its independence, lost in 1580, from Spain; and the Duke of Braganza became King João IV of Portugal. ‘Dr Salazar’: meaning, of course, António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970), dictator, and Prime Minister of Portugal (1932–1968).

6 The typescripts of a few of these regular war-time BBC talks by Atkinson have survived and are lodged in Glasgow University’s Archives.

7 As a Catalan nationalist, Josep Trueta i Raspall (1897–1977) was forced into exile in England after the Spanish Civil War. Trueta belonged to a group of exiled Catalans who had denounced the treatment of Catalonia by the Franco regime. He wrote The Spirit of Catalonia (1946), to explain Catalan history to English-speaking society at large. During the Civil War Trueta had been Head of Trauma Services in Barcelona. His use of a new method for treating open wounds and fractures helped save many lives during several wars. In Oxford, he joined a team that developed penicillin. He became Professor of Orthopaedics at the University of Oxford and directed the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. After retirement in 1966, he returned to Catalonia.

8 Major-General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, KBE, CB, DSO (1868–1951). William and Eve [Evelyn] Atkinson’s fourth child was Elspeth Atkinson, now Horsman. She took her Honours degree (in French and Spanish) at St Andrew’s University, and went on to an academic career in French Studies at Glasgow University.

9 A reference to the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow.

10 Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), more commonly known as Joachim von Ribbentrop, was Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 1945. He became a close confidant of Hitler, and was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1936; he became Foreign Minister of Germany in February 1938. Before World War II, he played a key role in brokering the Pact of Steel (an alliance with Fascist Italy) and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact); and he opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union. Arrested in 1945, Ribbentrop was convicted at the Nuremberg trials for his role in starting World War II and in the Holocaust; he was executed in 1946.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the editor.