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Authority record

Mallory, George Herbert Leigh (1886-1924), mountaineer

  • Person
  • 18 June 1886 - 1924

George Mallory was a student at Magdalene College, Cambridge (1905-1909) and member of the 1921, 1922, and 1924 British Mount Everest Expeditions. He disappeared with Andrew Irvine attempting to summit Mount Everest in 1924. His body was discovered in 1999.

George Leigh Mallory was born on 18 June 1886 at Mobberley, Cheshire, the eldest son of Herbert Leigh Mallory (1856–1943), rector of Mobberley and later vicar of St John's, Birkenhead, and his wife, Annie Beridge Jebb. He had an elder and a younger sister (Mary and Avie) and a brother, Sir Trafford Leigh Leigh-Mallory (who attended Magdalene College 1911-1914). His father changed his surname to Leigh-Mallory in 1914.

Mallory was educated at Winchester College (1900–05) before joining Magdalene College where he studied history under A. C. Benson. He was secretary and later Captain of the Boat Club, a member of the College's Kingsley Club, the University's Fabian Society and the Marlowe Dramatic Club. He was the College's representative on the committee of the University's Women's Suffrage Association. His circle of friends included many members of the Bloomsbury Group including Lytton and James Strachey, Duncan Grant (who painted several nude studies of him 1912-1913) and John Maynard Keynes.

After graduating he stayed in Cambridge for a year to write an essay which he later published as Boswell the Biographer (1912). During 1909–1910 he lived for five months at Roquebrune in the Alpes Maritimes to improve his French in preparation for a teaching career. In 1910 Mallory became an assistant master at Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey, where he taught English, history, and French, and introduced students, including Robert Graves, to mountain climbing.

On 29 July 1914 Mallory married Ruth, daughter of Hugh Thackeray Turner, an architect. They had two daughters and a son. He was required to remain at Charterhouse when war came, and wrote a pamphlet, War Work for Boys and Girls (1915), to promote international understanding. He was later commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery as 2nd Lieutenant in December 1915, and assigned to the 40th Siege Battery, where he participated in the shelling at the Battle of the Somme. Transferred to a staff position, he served as a liaison officer with the French and was promoted to 1st Lieutenant before being invalided home. He returned to France for the final months of the war. After the war he became increasingly dissatisfied with school teaching and drafted an unpublished public school novel.

Mallory's main passion was mountaineeringand he climbed in the Alps, the Lakes, and north Wales. His climbing companions included Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Geoffrey Keynes, and Cottie Sanders (the novelist Ann Bridge). As a rock-climber he was renowned for his grace and sense of balance, but he also had a reputation for impetuosity, imprudence, and absent-mindedness.

Geoffrey Winthrop Young persuaded Mallory to join the first Everest expedition in 1921 because it would make his name and enhance his career as an educator or writer. In 1921 he explored the Tibetan side of Everest and reached the north col with Guy Henry Bullock (1887–1956) of the diplomatic service, who was a school friend of Mallory's from Winchester, and several porters. In 1922 he returned to Everest and reached 8200 metres without supplemental oxygen, saving the lives of three companions when they slipped on the descent. After George Finch's party went even higher with oxygen, Mallory led an ill-advised attempt to reach the north col after a heavy snowstorm that resulted in the deaths of seven porters in an avalanche.

Mallory lectured on Everest in Britain in 1922 and in America in 1923. The New York Times (18 March 1923) reported that when asked why climb Everest, Mallory replied, 'Because it's there.' In May 1923, he became a lecturer and assistant secretary in the Cambridge University Board of Extramural Studies.

In 1924 Mallory was promoted to climbing leader on Everest when Colonel E. F. Norton unexpectedly replaced General C. G. Bruce, who had fallen ill, as overall leader. Despite a prevailing prejudice, which he had shared, against oxygen, Mallory wanted to use it after seeing the benefits in 1922, and as he became increasingly obsessed with conquering the mountain. He developed a plan to give himself the best chance to reach the summit by using oxygen with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine. After two unsuccessful attempts without oxygen, he put his plan into action. Mallory and Irvine left their camp on the north-east ridge on 8 June 1924, and were seen momentarily through a break in the clouds by Noel Odell (1890–1987), who said they were probably on a rock outcrop known as the Second Step, below the final summit pyramid. Their location during this sighting has been the subject of debate. After they failed to return, a memorial cairn was erected at the foot of Everest, and memorial services were held at Magdalene College, Cambridge, at Merton College, Oxford, at St John's, Birkenhead, and on 17 October 1924 at St Paul's Cathedral, London.

Mallory's friends wanted to believe that he reached the summit, though this remains unproven, and it is usually assumed that he did not. In 1933 Percy Wyn Harris found an ice axe on bare slabs of rock below the First Step with markings that matched those on Irvine's walking sticks. In 1975 Wang Hung-Bao (d. 1979), a Chinese climber, found the body of an 'English dead' in old-fashioned clothing on a ledge at about 26,600 feet, also below the First Step. In 1999 an expedition dedicated to searching for Mallory and Irvine found Mallory's frozen body on a snow terrace at 27,000 feet. The body was identified by a name tag sewn into Mallory's clothing. After a brief ceremony, Mallory's body was reburied in the snow on 1 May 1999.

Mallory [née Turner], Ruth (1892-1942), wife of mountaineer George Mallory

  • Person
  • 1892-1942

Ruth Turner was born on 10 June 1892 and was the daughter of Hugh Thackeray Turner (a prosperous architect) and his wife May. She lived at Westbrook, an elegant house on the far side of the Wey Valley, with her two sisters Marjorie and Mildred. Her mother died in 1907.

She first met George Mallory at a dinner in the Autumn of 1913 at the house of Arthur Clutton-Brock, a lawyer and writer who lived in Hindhead Road not far from Charterhouse School where George was teaching. They met socially several times over the next few months and in March 1914 Thackeray Turner invited George to accompany him and his daughters on a trip to Italy. George and Ruth fell in love during the week long’s holiday and became engaged. They married on 29 July 1914 and had three children:

Clare (1915-2001) who married Glenn Millikan (Glen died in a climbing accident in Tennessee in 1947)
Beridge (1917-1953) who married David Robertson
John (1920-present) who married Jenifer Krohn (climbed Mount Everest in 1995).

After George's death she and the three children moved back to Westbrook to live with her father. When he died in 1937 Westbrook was sold and Ruth lived with a cousin.

In 1939 she married her friend Will Arnold-Forster after the death of his wife.

She died of cancer in 1942. Her daughter, Berry Robertson, also died of the disease in 1953.

Macmillan, Alexander (1818-1896), publisher

  • Person
  • 3 October 1818 - 25 January 1896

Alexander Macmillan was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, and was cofounder of Macmillan Publishers in 1843, with his brother Daniel.

Alexander was the partner who developed the literary reputation of the company while Daniel took charge of the business and commercial side. Originally called Macmillan & Co., the firm started as a successful bookshop in Cambridge. The brothers soon started publishing books as well as selling them. After Daniel's death in 1857, Alexander continued to run the firm.

Macfarlane-Grieve, Gavin Malcolm (1893-1974), Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

  • Person
  • 1893 - 12 April 1974

Educated at the Perse School, Cambridge and Durham University before serving in the First World War. He was stationed at Magdalene as Officer attached to a Short Course and dined frequently with the Master and Fellows. Due to the respect and affection he inspired he was formally admitted to the College at the end of the war at the age of 27 with the unusual status of Fellow-Commoner which gave him dining rights at High Table. He proceeded to his BA in 1923 by means of the examination allowances made to ex-servicemen. He retained his Fellow Commonorship until 1970 when he was made an Honorary Fellow.

He taught Music and Religious Knowledge at the Perse School and became a Governor on his retirement. He was a Scout Master and lived at Toft Manor.

Lubbock, Percy (1879-1965), Pepys librarian and writer

  • Person
  • 4 June 1879 - 2 August 1965

Percy Lubbock was born on 4 June 1879 in London, the fourth child of Frederic Lubbock, merchant banker, and his wife, Catherine. He was educated at Eton College, then at King's College, Cambridge, where he was placed in the first class for the classical tripos in 1901.

After university Lubbock worked for the Board of Education in a post he found 'uncongenial'. In 1906 he was elected Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College. In that year his first book, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her Letters, was published. In 1908 he gave up his post in order to devote himself to writing, and in 1909 he published Samuel Pepys.

Lubbock contributed regularly to the Times Literary Supplement between 1908 and 1914 and during the First World War worked on behalf of the Red Cross. Henry James was his idol and friend and after James's death in 1916 Lubbock orchestrated the publication of the unfinished works (The Ivory Tower, The Sense of the Past, and The Middle Years), a two-volume collection of letters, and a memoir.

In 1925 he published an edition of A. C. Benson's Diary, commemorating the Eton schoolmaster whose recommendation had secured Lubbock the post of Pepys Librarian.

In 1926 Lubbock married Lady Sybil Marjorie Scott (1879–1943). They lived at Villa Medici in Fiesole, Italy, for the next fourteen years. In the late 1940s Lubbock moved to Lerici on the Gulf of La Spezia and into his much prized Gli Scafari. He was appointed CBE in 1952. He died at Gli Scafari on 2 August 1965 and was buried at Lerici.

Lowe, Samuel (1775/76 - 1834), clergyman and President of Magdalene College, Cambridge

  • Person
  • c. 1775/76 - 24 November 1834

Educated at Southwell School, Nottinghamshire, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Magdalene College, Cambridge.
He was a Fellow of Magdalene College from 1802-1814, and President from 1805-1810. He referred to himself as the 'Pepys Librarian' but there is currently no further evidence to support that he was appointed to this post. After leaving Magdalene College he became the Rector of Darlaston, Staffordshire, until his death.

Low, Sir David Alexander Cecil (1891–1963), cartoonist

  • Person
  • 7 April 1891 – 19 September 1963

A New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney in 1911, and ultimately to London (1919), where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his satirising of the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and other leaders of his times.

Louis XVII (1785–1795), son of Louis XVI

  • Person
  • 1785-1795

Son of Louis XVI, proclaimed King of France by royalists in 1793. Placed in the care of a shoemaker by the Republican government after the execution of his father, he probably died of neglect.

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