Scientist, explorer, soldier, spy

but it turned out men who played a distinguished part in very different walks of life (from P.A.M.Nash, let us say, to Malcolm Burr), as well as a general product of an agreeable type.

After Oxford, Burr studied at the Royal School of Mines in London, becoming a mining engineer and geologist. Like Alexander, the day job took him around the world, specifically to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and to the Balkans, exploring as a geologist. But his passion was entomology.

Like Alexander, he was a keen member of the Natural History Society at school. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London in 1896, whilst still at Radley. He contributed to the first systematic survey of the flora and fauna of the Radley district published in 1905. In 1910 he became the Co-Founder and Honorary General Secretary of the International Congress of Entomology. By 1912 he was Vice-President and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. Also like Alexander, his first scientific papers on his ‘hobby’ were published within a few years of leaving school when in 1900 ‘Notes on the Forficularia: descriptions of new species and a new genus’ appeared in the Journal of Natural History. Between 1900 and 1910 he conducted fieldwork in Sri Lanka, the Iberian Peninsular, Hungary, Sokotra and Abd-el-Kuri, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Burma and Prussia, indentifying new species and new genera of Dermaptera (earwigs) and Orthoptera (crickets and grasshoppers) in all of them. The species Epilandex burri was named in his honour. He became an expert on the geology of the Balkans at this time. Entomology may not seem the most glamorous of hobbies, yet

Malcolm Burr (1892) as pictured in Vanity Fair in 1913 in the series ‘Men of the Day’. An example of Epilandrix burri, the species of Sri Lankan earwig named in honour of Malcolm Burr (1892).

Malcolm Burr’s discoveries and travels had caught the public’s imagination so much that Wallace Hester included a caricature of Burr in his series of ‘Men of the Day’ as ‘Science and Sport’ published in Vanity Fair magazine in 1913.

He was also a gifted linguist and it was this, alongside his scientific expertise, which gave him entry into Turkey following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, into Bolshevik-era Russia, particularly travelling in Siberia, and in Africa in the 1930s. Between the world wars he wrote travel guides, publishing In Bolshevik Siberia, the land of ice and exile in 1931 and A fossiker in Angola in 1934. In 1934 he was photographed by Howard Coster in a series now in the National Portrait Gallery.

He returned to the Balkans in 1939 but was expelled in the summer of 1940 by the Yugoslav government, charged with being implicated in sabotage against the German railways. This charge was strenuously denied by the British government. On his return to England he served with the Ministry of information and was placed in charge of the Balkan Press Reading Bureau in Turkey in 1942 to 1943. This unit monitored radio broadcasts in the Balkans which were inaudible in London or to British forces in Cairo. He worked for the Ministry until 1945. After the war he stayed in Turkey, where he became Professor of English at the School of Economics in Istanbul. His connections, knowledge of these alien territories and linguistic expertise took him into the British Ministry of Information in World War 2. How much his explorations had been linked to spying between the wars is only conjecture, but geology, earwigs and grasshoppers took Malcolm Burr to places very few British visitors could reach at that period. His book The insect legion was published in 1939.

He was killed in an accident in Istanbul in 1954, aged seventysix. His collection of world Dermaptera, containing many type specimens, and his manuscripts were presented by him to the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum) and his rich collection of European Orthoptera, including many collected by himself, to the Hope Museum, University of Oxford.

Clare Sargent

OR Letters

Chestnut Avenue

Following a recent visit to the midlands, my wife and I called in at Radley to harvest some acorns from Chestnut healthy trees. I was pleased to read in

Avenue. At the time the College was obliged to

“My day” at Radley began in the summer term of 1969. I have always been slightly out of step and was only one of a relative handful of boys to begin my Radley career that term. I had elected to be a Wet Bob and so was obliged to demonstrate my prowess (or not) at swimming to the late Gordon Hill. For weather reasons the pool was not open for the first couple of weeks which was an issue as it was then an outdoor only facility.

As a result I could not start rowing so I found my way to the Forestry Section run, at that time, by Dr Hugh Cardwell. This consisted of a small group whose main activity was propagating and planting trees around the College. Dr Cardwell described tree planting as gardening for the future and had a strong belief that each generation had a duty to pass the college grounds onwards with plenty of March 2020 Lusimus that this tradition is being successfully continued by Benedict Pollard.

of term as it was considered too cold deal with elm disease so this “mission” was, indeed, relevant. Chestnut Avenue is a double avenue with, at that time, elms on the outer avenue and sweet chestnuts on the upper inner avenue. The lower avenue, just beyond the Radley Oak, was planted some fifty odd years previously to “my time” with lime trees that are still doing well.

By the time I joined, the Forestry Section had propagated more than a hundred healthy oak specimens and had begun Looking down the lower avenue towards where College Oak sits at the far end, on the right hand side. Chestnut Avenue (or ‘Cheesers’) stretches behind this spot, away towards Abingdon. a process of interplanting the outer avenue with these young trees. There are a surprising several thousand different varieties of oaks around the world with a wide diversity of leaf, bark and fully grown size. Doctor Cardwell’s vision was to plant as many different examples as we could obtain acorns to propagate that he tirelessly sought from botanic gardens worldwide. Now the trees are fifty years plus old it is easy to see the diversity. At the time we were planting, the avenue was being used for grazing by the College Farm so we built oak tree guards around the young trees that we prefabricated on a “home made” jig. Some of those original guards are still on site and serviceable.

Doctor Cardwell retired in, as I recall, 1972 when the Forestry Section was taken over by Richard Pollard. On my recent visit I was glad to see that the outer avenue was largely completed and quite a few oaks were planted on the inner avenue as well including a Holm, or evergreen, oak. There are a few gaps that, I hope, may be filled one day as the sweet chestnuts reach maturity and will need to be replaced.

Being at Radley at all was a privilege and all the more so having had a part in a worthwhile project that is there for future generations to enjoy. Since my time at Radley I have continued to work with trees and have planted other avenues. Chestnut Avenue at Radley is, however, a particularly special one.

Antony Dilnot (1969)