Book Lovers Guide

More about Ralph Merrifield   (22 August 1913 – 9 January 1995)

Ralph Merrifield was hailed as ‘the father of London’s modern archaeology.’  He worked for forty years in the museum service and was deputy director of the Museum of London is one of the leading authorities on Roman London.  Apart from the Second World War, when he served as RAF intelligence officer in south-east Asia, Ralph Merrifield spent his working life as a museum archaeologist, first in Brighton and then in London. When he retired he was deputy director of the Museum of London and it is on Roman London (on which he first published in 1965) that he is recognised as a worldwide authority. His London, City of the Romans. Published by Batsford and the University of California Press, was hailed as an outstanding work. As an archaeologist, Mr Merrifield has also had an eye for the unusual, and travels to Ghana, China and Japan increased his interests in comparative ritual and magic. He has always – even in retirement -  kept in close touch with field archaeologists and current excavations. 

Penguin/Random House writes of him:

 “Henry Maximilian Beerbohm, the essayist, caricaturist, critic, and short story writer who endures as one of Edwardian England’s leading satirists, was born in London on August 24, 1872, into a large and prosperous family of Baltic German descent. Among his many diversely talented siblings were the author and explorer Julius Beerbohm, and his half brother the flamboyant actor and theatrical manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree. A sophisticated child who read Punch magazine and celebrated his tenth birthday with a glass of champagne, Max Beerbohm exhibited an adroit wit from an early age. While a student at Charterhouse school in Surrey, he amused masters and classmates with irreverent caricatures and prose parodies. Beerbohm entered Merton College, Oxford, at the age of eighteen and quickly gained a reputation as an aesthete and dandy. ‘I was a modest, good-humored boy,’ he recalled. ‘It was Oxford that has made me insufferable.’ Beerbohm’s renown soon extended to London, where he was swept into Oscar Wilde’s literary circle.”

‘My gifts are small,’ Beerbohm once reflected. ‘I’ve used them very well and discreetly, never straining them; and the result is that I’ve made a charming little reputation.’ In 1910 he married American actress Florence Kahn and settled in Rapallo, Italy. Knighted in 1939, Sir Max Beerbohm died in Rapallo on May 20, 1956.” 

When George Eliot, her contemporary died, Ouida told her publisher, “English literature is very sorry stuff nowadays. You must make much of me, for now George Eliot is gone there is no one else who can write English.”

Hidden from sight for so long that little is known about her.  

Maude Mary Butler

Maybe real name is Mary Maude Butler?

Father was Isiah Butler  latterly of Bournemouth. Brother Richard Trott Butler.

Born in Walsall

A Selected Bibliography.

Cecil : the boy who stood between published in 1891 

A soldier's son  2 editions published between 1912 and 2012

The rightful daughter, or, The two lights of Fernlytton published in 1896 illustrated by Maude’s brother W.E.

Waiting and serving, or, The major's little sentinel published in 1892 

Bob's heroine : a story containing a small hero, as well as a heroine  3 editions published in 1890 

Daffodil : a brave little lady by Maude M Butler( Book ) published in 1893 

Adèle's love : the story of a faithful little heart by Maude M Butler( Book ) published in 1889 

Paul. A little mediator  published in 1897 

The ghost of Reeder's Wood : what it was and who found it out published in 1895 

Midnight pluck, or, The ghost of Reeder's Wood  published in 1924 in English 

The story of little Hal and the golden gate published in 1888 in English 

The boy baronet; or, Cecil   ..........More research to follow.

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Bryn Roberts (7 April 1897 – 26 August 1964) was a Welsh trade union leader. He grew up in Abertillery, leaving school at the age of thirteen to work at a colliery. He joined the South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF), and won a union scholarship to attend the Central Labour College in 1919. Two years later, he returned to Wales and was elected as checkweighman for Rhymney, then worked full-time for the union as its agent for Rhymney Valley and sat on its executive. He was also elected as a local councillor for the Labour Party.[1] In 1929 he finished second behind Aneurin Bevan in the contest to find a Labour candidate for the Ebbw Vale constituency.

In 1934, Roberts left the SWMF to become General Secretary of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). He represented the union at the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and was the TUC's representative to the American Federation of Labour in 1942. In 1954, he was part of a joint trade union and Parliamentary delegation to China.

Roberts retired in 1962 due to increasingly poor health and died two years later.  Courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Roberts

There are many interesting accounts to be read about the life of Fred Uhlman (1901 -1985.) He was a remarkable inspiring and outstanding individual born in Stuttgart in 1901, named Manfred. He  rose to become a respected barrister at law in Germany between 1927-1933. He was practising in a period just before the Nazi party came to power in 1933, in the same year he left Germany for Paris and then eventually to Britain in 1936.  Ironically, he found himself labelled ‘an enemy alien’ and interned during the war on the Isle of Man.  He wrote ‘Captivity’ in 1946. He began painting to support himself.  In the Leicestershire City Council Artworks Collection is one of his paintings from 1958  entitled ’Lead Mine.’