Mansfield Forbes and his Cambridge

This affectionate portrait of Mansfield Forbes, illustrated with photographs, reconstructs his life and interests.

Hugh Carey (Author)

9780521129299, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 February 2010

176 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.27 kg

Mansfield Forbes (known as 'Manny' to several generations of Cambridge colleagues and pupils) was the very young historian-Fellow of Clare College who just after the First World War had more to do with the founding of the Cambridge English Faculty and its intellectual basis than anyone else. He was also one of the great Cambridge eccentrics (but a charming one). Innocent, original, unselfconscious and without egoism, his virtues produced his oddities. As a child, Hugh Carey knew him as 'Uncle Manny'. This affectionate portrait, illustrated with photographs, reconstructs Forbes' life, and explores his other interests, which included Scottish domestic architecture and modern art. Mr Carey also uncovers alternative aspects of that vanished but still influential Cambridge that somehow united in intellectual activity Keynes, the Bloomsbury group, the great physicists and biologists, Richards, Leavis and their colleagues: some high-minded, some high-spirited, others open-hearted - and many quite well cushioned by investment income.

List of illustrations
A note on the illustrations
Foreword
Sources and acknowledgements
1. Introduction: forks and hope
2. Cheltenham sparsely valued
3. Young fellow
4. Letters to Theo
5. The English school
6. The visionary gleam
8. 'Finella' richly valued
9. Tilting at windmills
10. Account rendered
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: Biography: general [BG]