The Herbertson Society

From time to time, echoes of the GA's past, and some of its most illustrious names resurface.

The Oxford University Geography Society appeared on my Instagram earlier and it turns out that it was originally called the Herbertson Society after A. J. Herbertson.

Previously called the Herbertson Society, Oxford’s original geography society was named after renowned geographer Andrew John Herbertson (1865-1915), one of the first Readers at the University’s School of Geography – which was itself one of the first geography departments at a university in Britain!

The original society ceased to exist in 2011, but in the academic year 2014-15 we relaunched Oxford Geography Society to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Herbertson’s death.

That event is also mentioned here. This is a very useful source of information.

There is some useful additional information here about his work.

Sadly, the heavy work-load and an ongoing heart condition took their toll on him and his family: On 31st July 1931 Herbertson died at his home near Chinnor, just short of this 50th birthday. His wife died two weeks later. They lie buried together in Holywell Cemetery, not far from the School of Geography.

1924 - Foundation of the Herbertson Society

"The idea of having a student society was first put forward in 1923 when a Hertford undergraduate, E. W. Gilbert, wrote two pages in the departmental suggestions book. He argued that a society should be formed for the students of Geography and that it should seek to promote social activities as well as the holding of meetings with lectures. He went on to suggest that it be called the Herbertson Society in memory of Herbertson." (Scargill, 1999, p. 39)

A Modern Domesday Book: the Land Utilisation Survey of Dudley Stamp

A website section on the LSE website which appeared in June 2023.

It's written by Anna Towlson to go with an exhibition of mapping earlier in the year (which I missed completely). She works at the LSE.

A reminder that Dudley Stamp was GA President in 1950, well after he started work on the survey. He was also a million selling textbook author.

It outlines the background to the survey:

Sir Dudley Stamp’s aim was to undertake a detailed field-by-field survey of England, Wales and Scotland to find out exactly what the surface of the land was being used for. The idea grew out of his work as Chairman of the Regional Studies Committee of the Geographical Association in the late 1920s. British agriculture had been facing a long and severe depression, mainly because of the increase in world food supplies and competition from cheaper producers. Many towns and cities had been growing at a steady rate since the industrial revolution, with low profits and low wages in the countryside speeding the drift of labour from the land.

Stamp envisaged the Survey as acting as, in his phrase, a “modern Domesday Book”. This comparison caused some confusion at the time, in that it led some people to think that the Survey was part of a large tax-gathering exercise. But in many ways it is very apt: it was a comprehensive national survey that was designed to be of contemporary use as an administrative tool, but it also formed a permanent record of the country’s landscape at a particular time, something that is now of enormous historical value.

Stamp envisaged that much of the field work would be done by volunteers, mainly children from local schools and colleges. He also saw the project as a national educational exercise, an opportunity to interest young people in their local environment, to develop their observational and map reading skills, and to give them what Stamp called “a training in citizenship”, with each region playing its part in a nationwide scheme.

Few people had the profile and the force of will of Stamp to pull off such an ambitious project.

In autumn 1930 he contacted the directors of education in counties across the whole of Britain to explain the project and ask them to coordinate work in their areas. He then spent the next year touring the country to talk to head teachers and education committees and taking out parties to demonstrate field work methods. He estimated that in this first year he covered almost 2,000 miles a month, with his wife acting as chauffeur. By mid-1931, the Survey was underway in most counties in England, and by early 1932 in Wales and Scotland also.

Consider these statistics:

Stamp estimated that there were about 20,000 sheets to cover, with each sheet taking two to three days to complete. Field surveying started in October 1930, but most of the work was done between 1931 and 1934. During this period Stamp continued to tour the country extensively, meeting with local officials and offering encouragement to field workers. The Survey also issued regular bulletins to the volunteers to keep them informed on the progress of the project as a whole and to clarify questions or problems with the surveying.

By January 1932 some 400 sheets had been returned, and by January 1934 this had risen to over 15,000. The bulk of the fieldwork was finished by the end of 1935, with a flying squad of surveyors, mainly geography students or former geography students from London University, finishing off remoter areas that local volunteers could not cover. This stage of the project was clearly an enormous undertaking and by the end Stamp estimated that it had involved about a quarter of a million school children, as well as teachers and other adults.

Source of text: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2023/06/09/a-modern-domesday-book/

One of the key people in the survey, and much forgotten is Eunice Wilson.

She is pictured in the blog post.

Eunice Biki Wilson, 1984. IMAGELIBRARY/755. LSE.

She started at the LSE as a cartographic assistant on the LUS. It was an interesting post that soon absorbed her talent and imagination and she rapidly developed skills that made her a pioneer of cartographic illustration. As new applications were found for the LUS in the field of land use planning, and as its work intensified, Biki eventually found herself as Chief Cartographer in charge of a new drawing office attached to the Land Use Division of Ministry of Agriculture

The survey results proved their value during and after the Second World War.

NLS has maps of Scotland and elsewhere.

The very last area to be surveyed was part of the Isle of Arran in September 1941, although all other areas were recorded by 1939. The surveys were extensively cross-checked by the team, even including Stamp with his wife as chauffeur: ‘I must have covered thousands of miles myself, often standing up on the front seat of my car with my head through the sunshine roof and a roll of six-inch maps in front of me’ (Stamp, 1948). The maps were also cross-checked with adjacent sheets when reduced to the one-inch scale.

Here's the map that features my village in Norfolk

https://maps.nls.uk/view/241043320

Key: http://geo.nls.uk/mapdata2/land_uti/key/openlayers.html

Sources:

Stamp L.D. (1931). 'The Land Utilization Survey of Britain'. The Geographical Journal, 78, 40-47.

Stamp L.D. (1948, with later editions in 1950 and 1962). The Land of Britain: its use and misuse (Longman, London).

Emyr Estyn Evans

From a piece on Emyr Estyn Evans.

"When Estyn Evans (EEE) completed his honours degree course in Geography and Anthropology with H. J. Fleure in 1925, Fleure's Department at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and P. M. Roxby's Department at the University of Liveipool were then the only two honours Geography Schools in the British Isles. Fleure had invited Sir John Linton Myres to act as external examiner. Myres realised that EEE had exceptional ability and suggested that he did his graduate work with him at New College, but EEE never got to Oxford - he was found to be suffering from tuberculosis and spent the next months in a sanatorium near Ironbridge. Fleure rescued him and arranged that he be looked after physically and mentally by R. M. Fleming's medical friend."

"Throughout the 1920s, the battle for recognition of Geography as a university discipline was being bitterly fought. Geography grew out of various university departments, some out of Geology and others out of History, thus there was diversity of input to the new schools. H. J. Fleure FRS had previously been Professor of Biology, and EEE found that the knowledge he acquired from his close contact with archaeologists over this period to be an extension of what he had learnt in Fleure's Department. He began to think like an archaeologist and to see man's development in a context of thousands of years. However, EEE always felt that he was a professional Geographer and archaeology was his relaxation - EEE was back at Aberystwyth, working under Fleure's supervision on geographical items for Encyclopaedia Brittanica."

"He founded a local branch of the Geograpbical Association shortly after his arrival. In 1917, after the sudden death of Professor Herbertson, Fleure took over the management of the Geographical Association which was then at a low ebb. He appointed R. M. Fleming as assistant secretary and under her management membership rose rapidly. The office remained at Aberystwyth until Fleure moved to Manchester in 1930. What was more natural than that a student who had grown up in the shadow of its head office and had been appointed to promote Geography teaching, should establish a branch in a new area? His objectives were to facilitate meetings between Geography teachers and perhaps to help raise the standard of their teaching and the quality of students entering the University. His aim was to promote the quality and status of his subject and not to glorify the state of Northern Ireland as Stout suggests."

"Stout says that EEE was 'Ireland's only professional geographer at this stage ' - this is not true. I do not know the position in the Republic. J. W. Darbyshire (an honours graduate of Liverpool University) had come to Belfast's Royal Academical Institution two years previously. Mr Murray lectured at Stranmillis Training College and there were geography teachers at Belfast's Royal Academy, Methodist College and other secondary schools and Thomas Dunne at the Technical College. After he had founded the local branch of the Geographical Association, teachers met monthly - there were lectures and excursions, and this kindled friendships and mutual support that became the strength of the Geography Department. 

In the early 1930s, EEE ran a series of popular Geography Summer Schools. During the first years EEE was laying the foundations of what became one of the largest and happiest departments in the University  it attracted students from Britain, Europe and overseas. He had to devise courses, compose and deliver lectures, supervise practical work, fight his corner at the University's Faculty and other meetings, all with no help - not even a lab assistant! In his foreword to the 1978 Jubilee Publication of the Geography Department, Eric Ashby (Lord Ashby of Brandon and Chancellor of Queen's) wrote of EEE: 'He had to establish the discipline of Geography against material resistances, such as shortage of cash and space, and psychological resistance. He succeeded also in mobilizing some of the expertise of the Department to tackle important social and economic problems in the community".

"At the end of the first year, in July 1929, he joined H. J.Fleure, R. M. Fleming, and other British geographers on the Llandovety Castle, and sailed with the British contingent to the British Association meeting in South Africa. He did not publish an account of the experience but later donated his diary notebook of the trip and his sketch book to the Royal Geographical Society. I have the letter the Society sent him expressing their thanks."

Source:

Evans, Gwyneth. “Emyr Estyn Evans.” Ulster Journal of Archaeology, vol. 58, 1999, pp. 134–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20568235. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

If anyone has an image of Emyr that would be appreciated...

PGCE 1986: York Field Trip

The latest entry from my PGCE Main Method folder from my PGCE in 1986-7 refers to the field trip that we took to York quite early on in the course, sometime in October I think from memory.

This was an interesting day. I had no car at the time - in fact I didn't get a car until I got my first full time job down in King's Lynn and realised that I could no longer rely on the trains that I had been used to when I lived up in Yorkshire where public transport was cheap and plentiful and well connected. Norfolk was not quite like that. I had to quickly learn to drive - I did that within two months - about 10 lessons and passed my test first time - and then took out a loan to buy a very nice white Citroen BX which was a good car with its hydro-pneumatic suspension. It served me well before I replaced it with a burgundy Xantia.

I got a lift there from a student who did have a car, along with a few other teachers who were on the course with me, including Dave Hardy, who I stayed in touch with for quite a while.

We were given the job of following a route in a town trail and thinking about how we would use that and also consider the potential of the city for a geography fieldtrip. We then had to write a report on the

York Field Trip 1986 by GeoBlogs on Scribd

I did some digging about the authors of the guide that we had used, who were named on the front. They were also mentioned in 'Geography' in 1975, so this was perhaps draft version that we used. We were paired with History PGCE students and did some joint investigation of the city.

At the time, a friend of mine was at York University, so I stayed in York before getting the train back to Hull - the impressive Paragon Station - the following day - the trip was on a Friday from memory.

The other aspect of that day that was memorable was that it was the day when we found out our teaching placement schools, and I discovered I would be spending the Spring Term of 1987 at Bransholme School in East Hull. More on that is in my Presidential lecture and post on the blog.

Source

“The Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 60, no. 4, 1975, pp. 311–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41415055. Accessed 24 Sept. 2023.

Image of York Minster: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

Humanities 2020 Podcast

The humanities prepare students to be good citizens and help them understand a complicated, interlocking world. The humanities teach us critical thinking, how to analyse arguments and how to imagine life from the point of view of someone unlike yourself.

Martha Nussbaum

It was a pleasure on Wednesday afternoon this week to sit and chat with Anthony Barlow to record a podcast for the Humanities 2020 website and project.

The project has a manifesto.

Primary schools have a duty to equip children for the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the primary school curriculum in England is failing to do this or to fulfil the legal requirement for a balanced and broadly-based curriculum. Literacy and numeracy dominate the curriculum while other vital aspects of learning are often ignored. This is wrong.

We want young children to be literate and numerate, but much more than that. We affirm that every child is entitled to rich, stimulating and engaging learning experiences.

We want children to have more opportunities to be creative and to build on their sense of curiosity. We would like to bring more joy and imagination back into the classroom.

The podcast I recorded seems to have been the longest to date. Which I guess is a good thing...

You can listen here if you have 55 minutes to spare... thoughts welcome. It was a bit of a ramble at times.

Thanks to Anthony for the invitation.

After I'd recorded it, I also checked out the ACast podcast hosting system which was being used for the Humanities 2020 podcast, and signed up for a free account and created the site for a podcast of my own which I'm going to call 'Living Geography'. 

Look out for the first episode coming when I can find the time to record it.

Call for GA Presidential nominations for 2025-6 is now open

The Autumn 2023 issue of the GA Magazine is now available to download online, with printed copies arriving before too long.

Among the news and updates on the GA's wider activities, there is the annual call for nominations to serve as the GA's President for 2025-26, following on from Hina Robinson.

It would be great to continue the run of teacher Presidents - not sure we've ever had three teacher Presidents in a row in the GA's history.

If anyone is thinking about the possibility of putting themselves forward I'm happy to answer DMs or chat in confidence. And if you do decide to put yourself forward then good luck!

1989 Conference: Young Worlds

 

Does anyone remember attending this conference? 

I had recently started a full time teaching post in King's Lynn and my HoD may well have attended this...

The development of Geography

Quite a few GA Presidents are mentioned in this piece by Ivor Goodson, on how geography gained its status as a discipline.

It references several key times in geography's development, including the Madingley lecturers and the emergence of the 'new geography'

Source:

Goodson, Ivor. “Becoming an Academic Subject: Patterns of Explanation and Evolution.” British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 2, no. 2, 1981, pp. 163–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1393016. 

PGCE 1986-7

As I've blogged about previously on this blog, I completed my PGCE between 1986 and 1987 at the University of Hull.

My tutor was the rather lovely W V Tidswell. He has his entry on the blog here.

I did teaching practice at Withernsea Primary School, Andrew Marvell School and my main stint was at Bransholme School.

We had our theory (Main Method) sessions in a lecture theatre but mostly in a bungalow off the Cottingham Road. My picture of it is below:

Image: Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

I've started a series of posts over on LivingGeography which will share the contents of my PGCE Main Method folder, which I still have. They will be tagged #pgce1986

The first session with Vincent used the research of Molly Long, GA President in 1970.

There are also mentions of the work of quite a few other Presidents as well - of which more to come in future posts.

As you can see, the quality of the photocopying back then was a little shocking and the page also had Vincent's impenetrable handwriting at the top :)

The research involved asking students their opinions on 25 tasks they might be asked to do in a geography lesson. I think we were supposed to avoid the ones they didn't like and do more of the ones they did like.

To read more, go to the research itself.

Reference:

LONG, MOLLY. “The Interests of Children in School Geography.” Geography, vol. 56, no. 3, 1971, pp. 177–190. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40567553.

The Teaching of Geography (1974)

A report on a gathering of Polytechnic geographers. 

Speakers included Professor Richard Lawton and Rex Walford (both GA Presidents). Rex talked about the use of gaming as a teaching method and had most of the attendees "hopelessly in debt to him" apparently. 

Source:

Cooper, A. D. “Report: The Teaching of Geography.” Area, vol. 7, no. 2, 1975, pp. 95–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000969. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

GA Conference 1977

A report by Sheila Jones

There was also a lecture by Lord Nathan... a connection with the past, as he had been GA President over twenty years earlier.

The Macmillan Education Lecture Energy and the environment was given by the Rt Hon. Lord Nathan, Chairman of the Working Party which produced a report under the same title in 1975. His lecture assessed the balance of energy needs and potential related to the consequent damage inflicted upon the environment, reminding the audience that there is a limit to the capacity of the environment to absorb waste. Of all forms of energy, Lord Nathan seemed to favour solar energy as it does not cause pollution, does not create new heat and is not restricted to certain locations. It is especially suitable for developing countries. He concluded that the solution to prob lems of conflict between environmental conservation and the demands for energy could only be found by a multi-disciplinary team to which geographers made a full contribution.

On the last day, at the Annual General Meeting, the constitutional changes were approved and the new structure of the Association has now become a fact rather than a blueprint. It is hoped that this structure will mean that there will be an improved servicing of the membership and also that it will, as Prof. Wise hopes, be easier to make our voices heard in present and future educational debate.

Source:

Jones, Sheila M. “Report: Education and Economic Geography at the Geographical Association.” Area, vol. 9, no. 3, 1977, pp. 214–15. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001238. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

New OFSTED Subject Report

The long-awaited subject report for Geography has now been published and can be viewed on the OFSTED website.

It's called 'Getting our Bearings'. It applies to England only.

The GA has posted its thoughts on the report on a page on the GA website, from which the report can also be downloaded.

The description of the report below is from the GA website. I have emboldened some key areas.

Ofsted’s finding is based on inspection of the content taught in 50 schools, which was more challenging and representative of the distinctive nature of the subject than seen in earlier reports. The sustained rise in the number of pupils opting for geography GCSE and A level is also welcomed by the report, as is the significant curriculum development work undertaken in recent years by teachers in both the primary and secondary phases.

The report also identifies challenges for geography education. Recruitment of geography teachers is a significant issue, leading to a high prevalence of non-specialist teaching. Ofsted also finds that teachers of geography, specialist or otherwise, receive very little subject-specific professional development. As the GA has proposed on more than one occasion: there is a clear need for a programme of professional development at all key stages, to support the teaching of geography nationally.

The report finds a wide variation in curriculum time between schools, which affects the way the subject is taught and whether ambitious curriculum goals are being realised. Particular concerns are raised about the quality of curriculum planning at GCSE, where exam specification coverage is often prioritised over learning, and the quality of fieldwork provision across all schools, which has not yet recovered from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are also personal responses from Alan Kinder and GA President Denise Freeman, which can both be read on the GA website.

There are also quite a few references to the Geographical Association in the report, including an early mention when defining Geography. There are also references to articles in GA journals, written by members of GA SIGs and committees. Research carried out by numerous GA Presidents is also mentioned in the list of references at the end of the report.

IBG Conference Report - 1975

Until the mid 1970s, the GA Conference took place at the start of the year. That has been mentioned previously and was also mentioned in this report of the IBG Conference in 1975.

In his Presidential Address to the Institute, Prof. M. J. Wise encouraged his audience to reflect on their functions as teachers as well as researchers in geography. 

His title 'A university teacher of geography' related to the life of G. G. Chisholm, known to many for his Commercial Geography, and an active lecturer until 1926. 

The meticulous lectures delivered in morning dress must have captured the imagination of an audience which normally overlooked the value to man of places. 

Richard Hartshorne had seen Chisholm as an exception to the provincialism of other British Geographers of the period. (This is no longer the case, Prof. Wise pointed out: in the field of international contacts, British geographers are nowadays second to none.) 

Source:

“[Annual Conference Report].” Area, vol. 7, no. 1, 1975, pp. 50–53. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000934. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

Dr Edward Christie Willatts OBE

Another unsung hero, linked with the work of Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey but a great deal more besides.

Image from the 1930s. Could that be Edna Green too?

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/3983645366/in/photolist-752dYN

Edward Christie Willatts, geographer and cartographer, born July 4 1908; died January 8 2000

Christie Willatts, who has died aged 91, was recruited by the wartime government to run a geographic information system in the days before the term itself was invented. He was well qualified to do so. He had been the organising force behind Britain's first land utilisation survey. From 1941, until his retirement in 1973, he used his energy, unrivalled knowledge and skill as a presenter of geographical facts, to help planners and decision-makers across Whitehall do their job better.

Professor Dudley Stamp recruited him to run the survey he had conceived of land-use across Great Britain. Willatts recruited and enthused thousands of volunteers, writing their instructions, supplying their maps, and then checking the results. 

He did this by travelling the country by motorcycle and sidecar with fellow geographer Edna Green, whom he married in 1937. 

When the government requisitioned the survey offices at LSE, he commandeered a barrow to wheel all the maps and records to Bacon's, their printers in nearby Fetter Lane. When these were blitzed, Willatts set up a drawing office in his own home.

The Royal Geographical Society awarded him the Gill Memorial in 1950 for research, and he was appointed an OBE in 1958. He helped to found, and later became an honorary member, of the British Cartographic Society.

Source:

Obituary from 2000: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/mar/17/guardianobituaries4

He also helped J A Steers with his survey of the coastline of England and Wales.

His Obituary in 'Geography' was written by GA President Professor Michael Wise

Willatts had trained as a teacher 1930-31 and, at a time when good teaching posts were difficult to find, had received an attractive offer from Hulme Grammar School, Manchester. As he was already undertaking fieldwork for the LUS in Surrey, Willatts seized the new opportunity offered by Stamp for a year at an annual salary of £200. The decision brought great good fortune to the LUS. Willatts' work involved visiting education officers to win support, recruiting schools and student volunteers to undertake the field work, writing and publishing leaflets and instructions, supplying the six inches to the mile quarter sheets, collating and analysing the completed sheets, arranging the publication of the one-inch maps and, later, the production of the County Reports.

Source:

“Dr E.C ‘Christie’ Willatts, OBE 1908-2000: An Obituary.” Geography, vol. 85, no. 2, 2000, pp. 166–166. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40573410. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

E. C. Willatts (1946) "Some Geographical Factors in the Palestine Problem" The Geographical Journal,Vol. 108, No. 4/6 (Oct. - Dec., 1946), pp. 146-173 (32 pages)
J. R. James, Sheila F. Scott, E. C. Willatts (1961) "Land Use and the Changing Power Industry in England and Wales", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 127, No. 3 (Sep., 1961), pp. 286-309
E. C. Willatts (1971) "Planning and Geography in the Last Three Decades" The Geographical Journal, Sep., 1971, Vol. 137, No. 3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 311-330

Other references:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fresearchportal.port.ac.uk%2Ffiles%2F178033%2FSoddy_Report_Land_Use_Surveys.pdf&psig=AOvVaw0Rdpo2-DtdvBHYJlVZHFcw&ust=1694970764136000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjhxqFwoTCNCp46fSr4EDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAP

A piece in the BCS journal:

Christie Willatts inspired and helped to train almost an entire generation of cartographers at a time when there were no formal qualifications in the subject outside geography and surveying. Forced on him by the wartime situation he recruited many young women some straight from school and who count themselves fortunate to have had such a teacher. Having begun his postgraduate career by training as a teacher and having held parttime university teaching posts at LSE and Birkbeck College in London, his role became one of combining research with trainingwithin the Civil Service. His national contribution lay (with Dudley Stamp) in the completion of the aims of the LUS, then of laying the groundwork for a national atlas and lastly of raising the profile of geographical cartography in Britain, with decisionmakers and national institutions.

John Bale

This post updated with some sad news in October 2023.

Also updated in January 2025 - plus a nice comment added too.

A review of John Bale's biography - by Trevor Higginbottom.

This is a very well-written and absorbing autobiography that tells us much about geographical education from 1960 to 2001. During this period John Bale's career included posts at Townfield Secondary Modern School for Boys, where he encountered 'deadbeat teachers' and 'lively' boys, Avery College of Education and the University of Keele. In 1998 he was appointed to a professorship in the latter's Education Department. 

The book contains many insights into the important influences during this period of, for example, the Geographical Association, the London Schools Geographical Group and the 1970 Charney Manor Conference. Individual geographers played an important role in Bale's career, including 'the dynamic walking whirlwind' Rex Walford and Michael Wise. Bale was a sportsman with a specialist interest in sport geography, in which he became a leading world figure. The book contains reflections on the influence of subject trends on his thinking in this respect, including 'quantitative' and 'welfare' geography. 

He became less interested in teacher training, finding lesson observation 'often a numbing experience where the main objective seemed to be one of control'. 

Arguably, Bale's influential work could have been used much more in lower secondary and primary geography to develop both the cognitive and affective dimensions of the subject, given that sport is an important motivational topic for many young people. For example, the very influential 'Geography for the Young School Leaver' Project's learning materials included very little on this theme. 

In 2001 Bale took early retirement from Keele 'severing (his) increasingly tenuous (and increasingly tedious) links with geographical education'. 

In the same year he assumed a new role in the Centre of Sports Studies at the University of Aarhus where, until his retirement in 2006, he made very significant contributions in the humanistic and social scientific fields of sport. 'Professional' autobiography is a genre which other geographers might consider: for example, some long standing geography teachers might usefully describe their involvement in the 'golden years' of curriculum development in geographical education in the latter third of the last century. It is important that this is recorded given that, hopefully, there might one day be a return to these exciting processes of curriculum change in the subject.

Source:

Higginbottom, Trevor. Geography, vol. 100, no. 2, 2015, pp. 121–121. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43825437. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

Another reviewer here also says good things about the book.

I'd love to take a read if anyone has a copy lurking on their shelves. It's proving elusive via eBay / ABE Books etc. which are my usual ports of call.

John was a PGCE Tutor at Keele University, and is fondly remembered by those he taught.

He also co-edited this book with Rex Walford and Norman Graves (two former GA Presidents)

It is well worth a look at - there are some useful chapters on the development of geographical education.

His book on Primary Geography is also one that I have in my library of old educational books at school. 

Updated October 2023

I was contacted by Jeremy Krause, a former GA President with the sad news that John passed away recently.

He said:

This is a sad loss of someone who, in their own way, influenced so many of us as a geographer and especially as someone committed to Primary Geography.
'Geography in the Primary School' published in 1987 came at a time when there was much debate about what the Primary Geography Curriculum should contain. The first chapter of John’s book entitled ‘Young geographers and the worlds inside their heads’ clearly indicates his take on children’s education. 
I have lost one of the greatest influences on my geographical and education career. I met John when he was Head of Geography at Nobel School in Stevenage. He supported me with my undergraduate dissertation. A few years later I met him at Avery Hill and then at Keele Uni. It was John that encouraged me to undertake my Masters.
He was one of those people 'you meet along the way’ - he shaped who I am. He gets mention in my GA Presidential Blog

My father’s obituary, @guardianobits https://t.co/x8rldzc6yj

— Anthony Bale 📚🐈‍⬛🏳️‍🌈 (@RealMandeville) October 25, 2023

The Guardian Obituary is here.

It describes the importance of a teacher: Frank Baber, in igniting John's love for Geography.

My Dad, Prof. John R. Bale, died peacefully at home yesterday aged 83, after living with dementia for many years. Here we are together in a photo booth c. 1979, & some of his books as a geographer & sports historian. Scholar, runner, Welshman, Guardian-reader, & a wonderful Dad pic.twitter.com/epl4rDJUGk

— Anthony Bale 📚🐈‍⬛🏳️‍🌈 (@RealMandeville) October 21, 2023

We send our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Professor John Bale who has sadly passed away at the age of 83. John was an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the @ICSHC and pioneered the geographical study of sport. @DMUHistory @BritSportHisSoc pic.twitter.com/yoHHc5LTtJ

— ICSHC (@ICSHC) October 27, 2023

Another memory via Facebook

 

And an RGS obituary. By Christopher Philo.

"His work spoke to embodied, performative dimensions of largely ‘pre-cognitive’ human-being long before that was a big theoretical attraction in the discipline; it engaged debates about the spatial organisation of spectacles, events and ‘disciplining’ regimes, as well as about many more empirical subjects such as sports stadia/events and the contestation of urban social space; and it addressed many different sports – football, cricket, running, and more – played and spectated in many different worldly contexts, in which regard John was also prescient in contrasting colonial visions/practices regarding the sporting body with the rather different ‘body-cultures’ indigenous to peoples and places beyond Europe and the West."