1996 - Fire

Updated January 2021

In 1996, the GA had a setback when a fire struck the warehouse where its stock was stored other than the Handbooks which had been newly printed.

This destroyed a large part of the GA's stock, and Fran Royle, who was then Production Editor (Publications Officer) and the other Solly St. staff had to order reprints of publications to restock the warehouse...


Update January 2021

Memories from Frances Soar from the time:

This warehouse was a temporary location as the GA was moving from Fulwood Road to Solly Street at the time:

Eventually we were forced to move most of our stock to the premises of a local storage company. Unfortunately, they moved our stock to a less secure location without telling us, and a fire there destroyed the lot. Cue lengthy wrangles with insurers and urgent reprints of crucial books, particularly the Handbooks.

Geographers are useful people to know

Ashley Kent
GA News No. 10 - January 1988

This was the year when I started teaching.

When I went through the issues of GA News which are held at Solly St, I came across a number of useful items.

Interesting to see that in 1988 a Working Group was set up to improve the image and raise awareness of geography for pupils, parents, employers and others...

The result of these efforts will appear in a future post as I have a copy...

Charlotte Simpson

For some time, the GA offered life memberships. Charlotte Simpson took up the offer in 1916, and was connected with the GA in various ways for many decades. She seems to have made the most of it.
Life memberships are no longer offered, although those who make a very significant commitment to the life of the Association are given Honorary Membership.





Source

Beaver, S. H. “CHARLOTTE A. SIMPSON.” Geography, vol. 47, no. 3, 1962, pp. 314–315. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565432

Glimpses - the Fishmonger

I enjoy watching films on the Talking Pictures TV website. They show vintage films, many of which I haven't seen before.

Today, I saw the start of a short film called Glimpses, from 1947.
I noticed that it was made in association with G.J Cons, and recognised that this was someone who had been elected to be GA President, but who sadly died before they took office - more on that at the appopriate time.

It turns out the film follows three students who are sent out (without adult supervision of course) to map the food shops on their high street, and end up in the Fishmongers who tells them about their day, starting at Billingsgate Market.

Basically, 3 children are set out completely unaccompanied to do this work...

1955: Leonard Sydney Suggate

Last updated August 2023

Leonard Sydney Suggate, who became GA President in 1955 published several regional Geography books along with L Dudley Stamp.

The 1950s were interesting times for the GA in the post-war period, as with the years following the First World War, when many changes happened as a result of the recovery from war.

Suggate originally worked in the printing trade, but then studied psychology before taking the University of London's Teacher's Diploma in geography.

This led to him becoming a teacher, a fairly rare beast as we have seen so far with the blog. 

Few teachers become GA Presidents historically.

Suggate taught geography at Dorking High School, and later at St. Clement Danes Grammar School during the First World War (eventually retiring from there in 1949), which means he is one of a minority of people who had substantial experience of teaching geography before becoming President.

He took over the Presidency six years after retiring from what seems to have been an outstanding teaching career at a number of schools, and it is great to see that someone who was predominantly in the classroom for their career was able to step up to the role.

He was very much influenced by the 'new' geography of Halford MacKinder, and used these ideas in his teaching as well (although by now they were not as new as they once were), writing about them in his work.

He also attended lectures by Mackinder, Garwood, Lyde and Unstead - familiar names from this blog. The War also provided for him an opportunity to radically rethink school geography. This is great to see someone taking on the chance to hear the important people of the time, and factor those ideas into his practice - something which teachers of today do with some success, building on the evidence of research and taking inspiration from academic geographers and practitioners.

There are several contributions that Suggate made to geography teaching in the post-war period.
He wrote some of the first textbooks for the new analytical geography, such as 'Africa' - pictured to the right (one of the first school texts on the continent), and which ran to several editions.

He also campaigned for the use of maps and photos to be made available to candidates in school geography examinations, as well as greater use of visual aids in teaching.

He served concurrently on the Council of the RGS as well as the GA, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1921. Another GA President to have a strong connection with the RGS.

He was also a Chief Examiner for the London General School Certificate - another GA President with  significant examining experience as well.
He served on the RGS Education Committee as well, which is of interest as another connection between the two organisations. The work of the RGS's Education Committee continues to be important, and I was involved in supporting the application of several representatives for RGS Council positions in the last few years.

Suggate attended the GA Conference every year apparently, "pipe in hand" - no smoking allowed these days of course.

He was also a Labour party councillor for Hendon.

In 1928, he started to make some changes at Clement Danes School.

When the school moved to a new site, Suggate created a special "Geography room" with a light table (which I remember from geography classrooms I sat in during the 1970s) and cases for equipment and showing artefacts.

I liked the story from his obituary, regarding his apparently indicipherable handwriting. A student asked what he had written at the bottom of their work, to which he replied "you must improve your handwriting, obviously...."

One of the projects that he started (along with another President Leonard Brooks was to develop a scheme where schools could "adopt" ships and send letters to their Captains. It was called the Ship Adoption Society. This has been featured in more detail in the entry for Leonard Brooks, as he mentioned it in his Presidential Address.

Also in 1955, he attended the 125th Anniversary dinner of the Royal Geographical Society, along with other former Presidents such as L Dudley Stamp and J A Steers.

His Presidential year's conference is also described here - in this Nature piece.

Suggate wrote a series of books, which went into several editions.
He described his Presidential election as "at once an exciting and sobering elevation", which I sympathised with.

His Presidential Address was on the theme of geography teaching in Grammar Schools, making it of particular relevance to his audience no doubt.


Two years after completing his GA Presidency, Suggate and his wife emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 67, to join their two sons. 

There, he was also (at that age) Secretary of the Second Triennial Conference of the New Zealand Geographical Association, and continued to write for books. A well deserved and long retirement was enjoyed.


He died in 1970 - another GA President to live to an old age (81) and with 60 years of service to the GA.

I am grateful to Fiona Hirst, Archivist at Clement Danes School for the wonderful image of Leonard from the school magazine at the top of this entry. She very kindly sent me a range of documents and other information to help add detail to what was previously quite a slight entry on the blog compared to some of the previous ones.

An obituary was published in 'Geography' in 1971, written by A D Nicholls, who was a long standing colleagues as well as also being a Former GA President by that time - he is yet to appear here.



References

No Wikipedia entry available. Perhaps a further extension of this project would be to create them for the missing GA Presidents.

Nicholls, A. D. “LEONARD S. SUGGATE, B.Sc., A.K.C. 1889-1970.” Geography, vol. 56, no. 2, 1971, pp. 152–153. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40567514.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.224015/page/n5 - one of Suggate's books

SUGGATE, L.S. Aspects of Geography Teaching in the Grammar School Geography 1956 41 1-14

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-78392752/oskar-h-k-spate-1911-2000 - a pupil of Suggate's remembers his teaching

“The 125th Anniversary Dinner.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 121, no. 3, 1955, pp. 392–404. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1790929.

Something in the IoE archives: https://archive.ioe.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo==%27IE/JUB/B/1%27)

R. J. Harrison Church. “Obituary: Leonard Sydney Suggate, BSC, AKC.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 137, no. 1, 1971, pp. 136–137. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1795429.
Africa Book: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.227333

If anyone knows anything else about this President, please get in touch. This is a relatively brief entry.

Thanks to Fiona Hirst for the additional details and image from the school magazine 'The Dane'

Updated August 2023

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/genealogy/records/leonard-sydney-suggate-24-fhrdcp?geo_a=r&o_iid=41013&o_lid=41013&o_sch=Web+Property

GA Chair of Trustees Role

The Geographical Association is looking for a Chair of Trustees to support the existing Governing Body fulfil its role in a fascinating and ever-changing educational landscape. It will also involve working with the current Presidential team - JVP (me), VP (Susan Pike), President (Gill Miller) and Past President (Stephen Scoffham) along with other key members of the GA's group of trustees. This is an interesting change in the governance of the Association, and we are looking for someone who has significant experience and skills which will allow us to learn from each other.
This is an exciting opportunity for someone.
Please share with people you think may be available and ideal for the role.

Details are here on Guardian Jobs. Feel free to get in touch via Ricky Buck / Gill Miller for more details and information.

Deadline is the 20th of February.

Documents are available from the Guardian Jobs page.

Joy Tivy

Updated July 2023

In 2013, I was delighted to receive the Joy Tivy Education Medal from the Royal Scottish Assocation for Geography Teachers, presented to me by Professor Iain Stewart.
A more recent winner of the award was the late Sir Ken Robinson.



It is awarded for exemplary, outstanding and inspirational teaching, educational policy or work in formal and informal educational arenas. 

Joy Tivy after whom the medal is named, is a name that has cropped up several times during the production of this blog.
From her Wikipedia page, shared under CC license

Joy Tivy was a 20th century Irish physical geographer at the University of Glasgow. 

She specialised in biogeography and has been credited for having helped raise the profile of biogeography as a distinct sub-discipline of geography. She published over 40 papers, books and reports and she was often asked to advise government agencies and other organisations.

She was a strong advocate of the importance of field studies for providing essential skills for geography graduates.

Her capacity as a teacher was as highly regarded as her research — she was known to be enthusiastic and engaging to a wide range of audiences - a medal has been created by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in honour of her commitment to Geographical Education and Teaching.

She was the co-author of a book which I used during the early part of my teaching career when teaching 'A' level Geography. It is shown here. Some of you may recognise it. It's a classic, which helped biogeography become more recognised.

References

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Tivy
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: https://www.rse.org.uk/fellow/joy-tivy/

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UI7020CCNsoC&lpg=PA7&ots=NHbnZgpoRx&dq=the%20british%20isles%20ogilvie%201928&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false - Human Geography in the UK.

https://universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH4034&type=P - University of Glasgow page

Thought for the Day

"the lives of men are bound up with the little bit of earth that is given to each to love, and the student of geography must set himself to understand the links that bind him there, and not only these, but also the very different ones that bind him and his fellow men in all lands"

H. J. Fleure 

'Introduction to Geography' (1929, p.79)

1953: GA HQ and Library

Image from Balchin's Centenary of the GA, taken in old HQ 

I'd be delighted to see any images of the GA conferences, events, Presidents or other aspects of the work of the Association. There seem to be decades where few images exist other than portraits of people. I have some images coming up once we get closer to the President day, but not many others.

1954: Professor Sidney William Wooldridge, CBE FRS

Updated August 2023

Professor Wooldridge was the first Professor of Geography at King's College, University of London, where he stayed for many years. 

His name has already appeared on the blog ahead of his rise to the Presidency, having been associated with other Presidents in terms of publishing and other endeavours, and his name will reoccur with later Presidents too. He was also active in the fight against the suggestion of geography joining with Social Studies during the 1940s and keeping its own identity. There are other GA Presidents with links to King's College as well.

Some details here are taken from his Wikipedia entry - shared under CC license - we are getting close to the point where Wikipedia entries stop being provided for GA Presidents. Perhaps we need to contribute some more.

Sidney Wooldridge was born in Hornsey, North London in 1900, the younger son of a bank clerk. His early childhood was spent in Surrey, and his later schooling in North London, where he also took evening classes in geology. He read geology at King's College London (1918–1921), graduating with a first-class degree.

In the 1920s and 1930s Sidney Wooldridge lectured at King's on a combined geography and geology course with the London School of Economics (LSE).

In the Joint School of Geography, King's offered Geomorphology, Meteorology, Biogeography and the History of Geographical Discovery. During WWII this arrangement was disrupted by the evacuation of King's to Bristol requiring Wooldridge to teach human geography.

His conversion to geography complete, he became professor of geography at Birkbeck College, London in 1944, returning to King's in 1947 as its first professor of geography and remaining until his death in 1963.

He was described in a piece from the Royal Society as "the doyen of British geomorphologists and a great champion of field studies of all kinds".

 In 1954. as President of the Geographical Association, his subject was ‘The status of geography and the role of field work’. 
In his address he stressed the need for developing at an early stage ‘an eye for country’—i.e. the capacity to read and interpret a piece of country, an accomplishment distinct from mapreading in that the ground and not the map is the primary document. Only those who have seen him in action with a field class can fully appreciate his mastery of the power to impart this accomplishment.

On his skill as a teacher:
Wooldridge had remarkable qualities as a teacher. He had the capacity to transmit his enthusiasm for his subject and the gift of clear exposition. He had a pungency of phrase which delighted his audiences and at times he took pleasure in being as provocative as he could. 
He enjoyed lecturing and gave freely of his time to universities, to training colleges, to field centres and to the Working Men’s College, Camden Town, with which he was for many years closely associated. In the words of a colleague writing in The , ‘it was his passion to bring to young and old the joy that comes from discovering for one’s self some new fact of landscape history and from fitting it into a developing pattern of new scientific knowledge’

Here is the announcement of his new post in 'Geography' in 1947



In 1949, he published an article 'On taking the 'GE' out of 'Geography'. This explored the status of physical geography (something which is still an issue for some - I remember some comments that many of the resources on the GA website were skewed towards what might be called 'human' topics.)

He also referred to the talk that was going on about the merging of history and geography, and the development of 'Social Studies' (something which has certainly been the case in the USA and some other curricula as well)

There were a few quotes in the article which are useful.

"Geography has never been the science of man, it is the science of land, of the Earth's surface"

(Sauer and Leighly)

It was during this time that he became the President of the GA. He had already held posts on the Council and Executive and therefore joined a group of Presidents who had held a great many roles to support the Association.

Image courtesy of: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1964.0021
Used under Fair Use, another image is in Balchin's Centenary book.

Wooldridge was a founder-member of the Institute of British Geographers (1933) and was later IBG president (1949–50). He did not break completely with the RGS, serving on its council (1947–51). 
More details on Wooldridge are contained in an article on the early days of the IBG, linked to here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/622270?read-now=1&seq=6#page_scan_tab_contents

The following two images are taken from this source:



The Presidential address can be read on JSTOR for free with a free account.
Wooldridge, S. W. “Reflections on Regional Geography in Teaching and Research: Presidential Address.” Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), no. 16, 1950, pp. 1–11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/621209
He started his address by explaining while regional geography is the real geography, despite the various different views.



This quote is a famous one...


He talks about the emphasis being placed on research work carried out overseas compared to work carried out in the UK, and this idea of 'otherwhereitis' is an interesting one.



Wooldridge also chaired the Field Studies Council in 1952. This was known as the Council for the Promotion of Field Studies at the time, before it became the FSC. I attended a special event to mark the FSC's 75th anniversary just before Christmas 2019.

The 'Wooldridge and Linton Model' of landscape evolution was dependent on the identification of remnants of three widely developed erosion surfaces. It was influential at the time, and is included in a range of textbooks. Linton read several papers to the IBG as well.

Wooldridge also collaborated with fellow King's alumnus (and GA President) L Dudley Stamp. Wooldridge's interest lay in relating early human settlement and land use to the physical landscape. In 1951 Stamp at LSE and Wooldridge at King's jointly edited London Essays in Geography. He also wrote with another GA President, S. H. Beaver.

He was also a major influence on another president Denys Brunsden, a student at King's College.
He described him as "a monumental presence".

His conference was described in this piece here.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1038/175198a0.pdf



Like L Dudley Stamp, Wooldridge married a King's geography student. He was a keen golfer and cricketer, a lay preacher (converting later to the Church of England and an amateur operetta enthusiast - shades of Rex Walford here.

He continued to work after a stroke in 1954.
He was made a CBE in 1954.
In 1957 he received the Royal Geographical Society's Victoria Medal and in 1959 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

He died in 1963, the year I was born.

In 1980 the Institute of British Geographers marked the fortieth anniversary of Structure, Surface and Drainage in South-East England by the publication of The Shaping of Southern England, a collection of papers which both emphasised the importance of the work, and showed how dated it had become. Fundamentally, the 'Wooldridge and Linton Model' was based on the view that the south-east region had been tectonically stable except for two brief periods, in the Upper Cretaceous and the mid-Tertiary. Subsequent work has shown that this view is far too simplistic, throwing much of the interpretation of cycles of landscape evolution into doubt.
(Source: Wikipedia)

He is quoted in this extract from a piece by Rex Walford (another GA President)

"'Go out into the field, for through the soles of your boots shall ye learn' . That somewhat simplistic dictum was often quoted to me in my school days, by a geography teacher ever eager for his pupils to have fieldwork experience. We clocked up the miles on field trips with missionary zeal, anxiously believing that virtue would accrue in large quantities if the hike was more than six miles and we came home raw-soled and properly exhausted. In a generation nurtured on the philosophy of the Le Play Society, inspired by the example of S. W. Wooldridge, and receptive to the outdoor exploits of the Baden-Powell organisations, field teaching and the development of an 'eye for country' became the Holy Grail for many geographers from the twenties to the sixties."
Rex Walford, 1984

Research is something that Sidney Wooldridge felt was particular important, and felt the association needed to both continue to support it, and be involved in it.

‘IF THE ASSOCIATION were to turn its back on research geography, there would indeed be small hope of engaging and retaining the interest and support of the university geographers’

(Wooldridge, 1955, p. 75)

References

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_William_Wooldridge

1938 article: Wooldridge, S. W. “TOWN AND RURAL PLANNING. THE PHYSICAL FACTORS IN THE PROBLEM.” Geography, vol. 23, no. 2, 1938, pp. 90–93. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40561780.

A KEY REFERENCE:
Royal Society Biographical Memoirs publication:  https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1964.0021

On taking the 'Ge' out of 'Geography' - https://www.jstor.org/stable/40562793 (1949)

Stoddart, D. R. “Progress in Geography: The Record of the I. B. G.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 8, no. 1, 1983, pp. 1–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/622270 - source of the image above

Wooldridge, S. W. “Reflections on Regional Geography in Teaching and Research: Presidential Address.” Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), no. 16, 1950, pp. 1–11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/621209
Wooldridge, S. W. “THE PHYSIQUE OF THE SOUTH WEST.” Geography, vol. 39, no. 4, 1954, pp. 231–242. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40564986

"The Status of Geography and the role of fieldwork" - Geography,. 40, p.73-83 (1955)

Image used under Fair Use from this Source

Bill Marsden
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/pluginfile.php/631169/mod_resource/content/1/geog_sk6_06t_5.pdf
Describes Wooldridge's concern about the divide between school and academic geography - an area also touched on by another President Andrew Goudie.

Wooldridge was to resurface as a key figure in the geography versus geographical education encounters of the post-war period. He was a trenchant peer critic. In 1950 he addressed the IBG and scorned the contentment of his audience with ‘agreeably titillating’ articles on subjects of minor interest which made ‘no claim whatsoever to scholarship’ (Stoddart, 1983, p. 5). To Wooldridge a firm physical basis was the sine qua non of a high quality geography. He claimed that the social/urban orientation of the subject was becoming too strong. Geography, he maintained, was about ‘place’ and not about ‘man’ (Graves, 1975, p. 56). On the educational front he abhorred the analogous post-war trends towards introducing social studies into the curriculum. These he blamed on geographical educationists. The tendencies threatened to take ‘the ge- out of geography’, as he put it (1949, pp. 9–18). Social studies would On Taking the Geography Out of Geographical Education Some Historical Pointers in Geography Page 7 of 15 ‘destroy the value of geography as an important medium of education’ asserted the Education Committee of the RGS (1950, p. 181), in a report reputedly the work of Wooldridge. Like Geikie, he argued that the priority in schools should be detailed fieldwork in the rural landscape, developing a ‘laboratory spirit and the careful, indeed minute study of limited areas’ (1955, p. 80)

Also a piece on the Britannica website:

According to a leading British geographer, Sidney William Wooldridge, in The Geographer as Scientist: Essays on the Scope and Nature of Geography (1956, reprinted 1969), regional geography aimed

to gather up the disparate strands of the systematic studies, the geographical aspects of other disciplines, into a coherent and focused unity, to see nature and nurture, physique and personality as closely related and interdependent elements in specific regions.

According to this view, all geographers—whatever their systematic interests in particular classes of phenomena—should be regional specialists who appreciate the full complexity of phenomena combinations.

His papers are held at King's College, London
https://kingscollections.org/catalogues/kclca/collection/w/10wo50-1

Image: 'The Spirit and Purpose of Geography' - pictured at Charney Manor Conference 2017 - image by Alan Parkinson shared under CC license

Update - from a piece on Marguerita Oughton - March 2020

In the early summer schools Miss Oughton played a more direct and personal part. The first, at Rhoose, Glamorgan, with Dr. Margaret Davies in 1952, was a vigorous introduction to course organization that left her with a conviction that there are few things that the Association can do for many of its members that are better worth while than the provision of practical courses in fieldwork and field teaching methods in our own countryside. This conviction was enhanced by the stimulating experience of assisting the late Professor Wooldridge at a summer school at Pulborough in the Sussex Weald in the following year. Of this I was to hear a good deal in my own home not many weeks later from Wooldridge himself. He confessed to being "much impressed by that young woman", who had obviously handled him, as she had handled any difficult members of the party, with firmness and sympathy, and had surprised him with what he called an "unfeminine capacity for administrative detail." It is not difficult to detect here a note of admiration and affection on Wooldridge5 s part that remained with him in some measure till his death.

Linton, David L. “Miss Marguerita Oughton: An Appreciation.” Geography, vol. 50, no. 2, 1965, pp. 172–176. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565934. Accessed 27 Mar. 2020.

Updated August 2023

Im not the first @kclgeography academic to focus on Kent. S W Wooldridge first professor of geography wrote on the Weald, Alice Coleman wrote a guide to east Kent. Obviously important connections between London and Kent, now as ever! pic.twitter.com/ZhMlck8fOS

— Phil Hubbard (@PhilHubbard1) October 7, 2022

Catherine Duigan’s tweet reminded me of records I have of my mother, with her cousin, on a Kings College London geography field trip in the mid 1930’s. It is a mixed class, probably some geology students as well, with probably lead by Wooldridge #fieldtrip pic.twitter.com/FGnRIhfFfI

— Gina Douglas (@Gina_Douglas) September 7, 2020

A link with Michael Wise (another former GA President):

https://www.alumni.lse.ac.uk/s/1623/images/editor_documents/alumni_groups/king_s_-_lse_geog_alumni_society_newsletter_2016.pdf - memories of his time at LSE

Those who were at Juniper Hall will remember the final evening’s entertainment of Wise on the piano and Wooldridge rendering songs by Gilbert and Sullivan. 

Thought for the Day

Alan Grant Ogilvie

Thought for the Day

Arthur Austin Miller, 1948

Miller, A. Austin. “The Dissection and Analysis of Maps: Presidential Address.” Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers), no. 14, 1948, pp. 1–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/621257

From the archives

As you'll have guessed, the creation of this blog has already taken me many hundreds of hours so far, and will continue to take hundreds of more before it is completed. It's a bit of a labour of love.

I've been doing some research on the histories / biographies / genealogies / publications / contributions of each of the GA Presidents since the first, over 125 years of GA history (and geography).
Here are some of the sources I've used in case you want to follow this, and add anything else from what you can find.

Sources
Websites
GA website

Wikipedia pages have been produced for many of the past Presidents, but not for many of the recent ones, which could be something to rectify as part of the project perhaps.

Journals
The Geographical Teacher and Geography have both printed Presidential addresses in the past. For those who subscribe to 'Geography' at the moment, free access is provided to both of these journals going back to the first issue, via JSTOR.

Peter Jackson put together a brief biography of the Association for the 125th year, and that is available from the GA website.

Books

Rex Walford wrote an excellent book on the history of Geography Education in secondary schools in the UK, which I got a second hand copy of some time ago. This is more open in its descriptions than just the GA's role, but there are plenty of mentions of the impact of

Rex Walford: "Geography in British Schools 1850-2000" (Woburn Press, 2001) - Paperback, 260pp ISBN: 0-7130-4027-0

Some second hand copies are available for 1p (plus P&P) on Amazon.

W. G Balchin wrote an excellent biography of the 'first hundred years' of the Association, and this has also been one of the main books I've referred to. This ends in 1993 of course.

W.G.V Balchin: "The Geographical Association: The First Hundred Years 1893-1993" (The Geographical Association, 1993) - Paperback, 113pp
ISBN: 0-948512-57-1

Both of these men are also Past Presidents of the Association, so they will get their own entries in the blog when the time comes.

A chronology of the Association - download as a PDF file

There have also been numerous other books by the Presidents, and many are available to view digitally on the Internet Archive site.
There is a published history of the Manchester Branch of the Geographical Association which has some details on the Geographical Association as well.
Also thanks to Dorcas and Aaron at Solly St. for finding me the past copies of the GA News (which aren't available digitally earlier than 2004)
Thanks also to the former Presidents who have filled in a special Google form questionnaire I sent round, and others who have sent me e-mails. Chris Kington has a special package for me too, which I am going to collect in a few weeks.

And finally, thanks to archivists from a number of institutions and other colleagues, who have already proved very helpful in sourcing images and other documents to flesh out some entries which were looking quite brief without their help. They are all individually thanked on the relevant posts.

Thought for the Day

"Mankind must be made much more aware of the world it lives in, its rigorous limitations and its limited possibilities. Above all, it must be assisted and persuaded to think of the world as a whole".

David Linton, 1960

Source
Shepherd, W. H. “A One-Day Conference on the Teaching of Geography: A REPORT.” Geography, vol. 45, no. 4, 1960, pp. 300–303. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565188

3.1.33: Progress in Geography - the Record of the IBG

There are references to a whole host of GA Presidents in this piece by David Stoddart.

Many former GA Presidents were involved in the formation of the IBG.
This article outlines the involvement of a whole range of geographers including Alice Garnett, Ogilvie Buchanan, Wooldridge, Stanley Beaver, H J Fleure and Arthur Austin Miller. You will be familiar with many of those names from previous entries on the blog I hope.



A key figure in the formation of the IBG was C. B. Fawcett, pictured here.

The first meeting of the IBG was held on the 3rd of January 1933, when C B Fawcett was elected as President, Arthur Austin Miller was elected as Secretary and Treasurer.

Ogilvie Buchanan became President in 1953.

There were Annual Conferences with Presidential and other lectures once again. I like this description of Sidney Wooldridge's lecture, which I may need to have a go at finding...








Here are the Presidents up to the merging with the RGS:



Plenty of GA Presidents there.

References

Stoddart, D. R. “Progress in Geography: The Record of the I. B. G.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 8, no. 1, 1983, pp. 1–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/622270

Thought for the Day

 Field study is a means of acquiring knowledge through the observation and exploration of our terrestrial environment. There are few aids to this kind of learning. It requires qualities and powers of mind different in some respects from those which are developed in the process of learning from books or from discourse. It is a kind of learning arising in the first place from curiosity about the visible and tangible world, and requiring a capacity for looking beyond the superficial appearance of things.

Geoffrey Hutchings, former GA President

Source: HUTCHINGS, GEOFFREY E. “Geographical Field Teaching: Address to the Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 47, no. 1, 1962, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565627

1953: Dr Osbert John Radclyffe Howarth, OBE

Updated October 2023

Dr. Osbert J R Howarth was a curator of Down House (the former home of Charles Darwin), for English Heritage.

He was Secretary of the British Association, 1909-1946 and wrote a centenary history of the association in this capacity.

When I started researching Dr Howarth, there wasn't a lot of information on him to be found at all, and this still remains one of the more scant entries on the blog even after my researches. It has thankfully grown over time.

W.G.V Balchin's centenary book mentioned him in a brief few lines shown below:

Born 1877- Died: 1954. Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. History degree and Geography diploma.
1904-1911 Geographical assistant to the editor of Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

He was linked with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for whom he was Secretary from 1909 to 1946.
He co-wrote a history of Geography with fellow President John Scott Keltie, see references. This would have been a significant work at the time.

He wrote and edited numerous Geographical books for Oxford University Press, including 'A Geography of Ireland'. He co-wrote a book on the British Empire with fellow President A J Herbertson.

He was a great advocate of the Commonwealth replacing the Empire.

He even chose this theme for his Presidential Address, which was called "The Commonwealth in the Geography Syllabus".

"The British Association: A Retrospect" by O J R Howarth. The first edition, published in 1922 covers the years 1831-1922; a second edition published to coincide with the British Science Association’s centenary in 1931 covers the hundred years from 1831-1931.

He had a life long interest in the GA, but sadly died in 1954, just after completing his Presidential term.
This is described in this report on the following year's conference.

Some of his other publications:




His Presidential address was published in 1954 in 'Geography'.

I like his starting point about the positioning of the address within the President's tenure, and the ability to speak freely. He then said that having never taught geography he was going to tell geography teachers what he thought they ought to be doing, particularly teaching about 'world citizenship' and range further afield rather than a focus on the UK as it had at the time, from Howarth's perspective. This is an interesting position from which to start as GA President of course, but not uncommon in the earlier years of the GA.

It seems that he did a good job as President, as reported in the Annual Report for 1953

He wrote a 'History of Geography' with John Scott Keltie. This was published in 1913 and is available to read from this link.

References

If anyone knows anything more about this President, or has images, please let me know. I am lacking a decent photograph of this President.

One copyrighted image is here.
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/dr-o-j-r-howarth-18771954-194318 - Artist is Robert Darwin.



Howarth, O. J. R. “THE COMMONWEALTH IN THE GEOGRAPHY SYLLABUS. Address to the Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 39, no. 1, 1954, pp. 5–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40564669

Howarth, O. J. R. (Osbert John Radcliffe), 1877-1954. The British Association for the Advancement of Science: a Retrospect 1831-1921. London: The Association , 1922.

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/31840/supplement/3791/data.pdf
- according to this he connected with the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, and his son served with the Naval Reserve I think according to this source
https://www.unithistories.com/officers/RNVR_officersH2.html
which describes him as a "scholar in geography".

1922: Book on the Scope of School Geography - book on the Internet Archive site.

The Study of the Geographical Environment - book on the Internet archive site.

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7178190M/The_British_association_for_the_advancement_of_science
http://www.aughty.org/pdf/historical_geog_irl.pdf

A book called "History of Geography" was written with John Scott Keltie and published in 1913. It can be read on the Internet Archive site.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/58349/58349-h/58349-h.htm - readable Project Gutenberg book which explores the 'history of geography"...

I contacted the British Association for the Advancement of Science to see whether they had an image, or more information on this President.
I'm still waiting for a response at the time of posting. Actually still waiting over two years later.

Update - this book was co-written with two others, including a familiar name in R N Rudmose Brown.

Readable on the Internet Archive and quite useful...

https://archive.org/details/scopeofschoolgeo00browiala/page/n5/mode/2up

Updated August 2021

National Portrait Gallery photo.

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp153847/osbert-john-radclyffe-howarth

Updated October 2023

We were delighted to be visited by the Granddaughter of Osbert John Radcliffe Howarth who was a part of the Downe Home Guard stationed at Charles Darwin's former home, @HomeofDarwin! Jo spotted her grandfather in the photograph on display at our Museum! #homeguard #darwin #raf pic.twitter.com/oqZhoUIZUb

— Biggin Hill Memorial Museum (@BigginHillMMT) June 13, 2021

He's on here somewhere then...

The Archives of Down House and BAAS have letters from Howarth in them, as does the Bodleian Library.

I discovered in an issue of the Elizabethan the confirmation that he went to Westminster School, followed by Oxford University.  This makes him an Old Westminster.

https://elizabethan.westminster.org.uk/Filename.ashx?tableName=ta_elizabethan&columnName=filename&recordId=609

The extra information about him being involved with the production of the geography section of Encyclopaedia Brittanica was also really interesting. Another avenue to explore...

The magazine also had information on his wedding.