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20 Facts About Angus Calder

1.

Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder was a Scottish writer, historian, and poet.

2.

Angus Calder subsequently wrote several other historical works but turned to literature and poetry and worked primarily as a writer, though often holding a number of university teaching positions.

3.

Angus Calder was born in London on 5 February 1942 into a prominent left-wing family from Scotland.

4.

Angus Calder's father was Ritchie Calder, a noted socialist and pacifist who became famous for his work as a journalist and science writer.

5.

Angus Calder's siblings are Nigel Calder, mathematician Allan Calder, educationist Isla Calder and teacher Fiona Rudd.

6.

Angus Calder's nephew is travel writer and journalist Simon Calder.

7.

Together Addison and Angus Calder made extensive use of the newly discovered archives of Mass-Observation to examine British public opinion.

8.

Angus Calder was instrumental in creating the Mass-Observation Archive at Sussex in 1970, in collaboration with Asa Briggs.

9.

Angus Calder had been commissioned to write a general history of the British Home Front by the publisher Jonathan Cape while still working on his PhD thesis.

10.

Angus Calder increasingly began to doubt his own thesis over the following decades.

11.

Angus Calder subsequently taught all over the world, lecturing in literature at several African universities and serving from 1981 to 1987 as co-editor of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature.

12.

Angus Calder wrote introductions to new publications of such diverse works as Great Expectations, Walter Scott's Old Mortality, T E Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy and James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson.

13.

In 1984 Angus Calder helped to set up the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh and served as its first convener.

14.

Angus Calder worked as an editor of Hugh MacDiarmid's prose.

15.

Angus Calder had always published verse and won a Gregory Award for his poetry in 1967.

16.

Questions of Scottish national identity assumed growing importance in the 1980s, and Angus Calder became active in the debate.

17.

Angus Calder was delighted to discover that the game of cricket had been introduced to Sri Lanka by a Scot.

18.

Angus Calder's first marriage ended in 1982; he married Kate Kyle in 1986, with whom he had a son, Douglas, born in 1989.

19.

Angus Calder took early retirement from the Open University in 1995.

20.

Angus Calder died from lung cancer on 5 June 2008, aged 66.