Arthur Basil Cottle was a British grammarian, historian and archaeologist.
11 Facts About Basil Cottle
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Basil Cottle was the younger son of Arthur Bertram Cottle, a clerk, and Cecile Mary Bennett, a schoolmistress.
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Basil Cottle attended Howard Gardens Secondary School in Cardiff, where his precocious talents came to the notice of Evan Frederic Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar, Welsh poet, author, occultist and convert to Roman Catholicism, who gave Cottle the use of the extensive library at Tredegar House.
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Notwithstanding this disadvantage, Cottle went on to the University of Wales, where he obtained a double first in English and Latin, and a second in Greek, his favourite subject.
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At the outbreak of the Second World War, Basil Cottle was judged to be medically unfit for active service and instead became a private in the Royal Pioneer Corps, stationed at Huyton.
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Basil Cottle later taught generations of Bristol students to appreciate their works.
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In 1946, Basil Cottle took a position as an assistant lecturer in the department of English in the University of Bristol.
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Basil Cottle was an expert on the writings of the Accrington poet Janie Whittaker, and the Welsh Nonconformist minister, the Revd Henry Maurice, an Independent, who had formerly held the living of Church Stretton, and whose journal for the year of Indulgence, 1672, belonged to him.
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Basil Cottle described himself as a Welshman, an amateur herald, and an Anglican, and he was immensely proud of his Welsh roots.
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Basil Cottle became the president of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
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Basil Cottle befriended numerous clergy and ordinands in the diocese, and through his roles as Sub Warden, successively at Wills Hall, and from 1948 to 1972 at Burwalls, he was an influential figure in the lives of many generations of undergraduates.