Robert Allason Furness

Sir Robert Allason Furness KBE CMG (1883 – 4 December 1954), also known as Robin Furness, was Professor of English at Cairo University and the representative in Egypt of the British Council between 1945 and 1950.[1][2][3][4] He was an expert adviser on the establishment of BBC Arabic, the BBC's first radio station to broadcast in Arabic.[5]

Sir

Robert Allason Furness

KBE CMG
Born1883
Rugby, England
Died4 December 1954
Little Shelford, England
EducationRugby School
Alma materKing's College, Cambridge

Shortly after Sir Robert's death, the writer and historian Hilary Wayment sent a tribute to The Times stating that Sir Robert 'seemed to have the gift of perpetual youth and to enter into the enthusiasms of his younger colleagues with the zest of an undergraduate'.[6] The tribute concluded that to his friends in England and Egypt, 'the lasting impression he will leave behind is one of generous and high-spirited enjoyments, and of sheer charm and quality of mind'.[6] He was also described as 'a very tall, elegant, sardonic man, learned about the poets of Ancient Alexandria, and with a line in extravagant bawdry'.[7]

Early life
King's College, Cambridge

Robert Allason Furness was born in 1883, the son of the Reverend John Monteith Furness and Sophia Elizabeth Furness (née Haslam).[1][8] He was educated at Rugby School, where he was head boy, and went up to King's College, Cambridge, where he was a friend of John Maynard Keynes and Edward Morgan Forster.[2][9][10] At Cambridge he graduated with a first in the Classical Tripos.[1]

Furness was the youngest of four children. His eldest brother, John Monteith Furness (1869–1944), was a Cambridge Apostle as an undergraduate at King's (from which he also graduated with a first in the Classical Tripos) and later an educationalist, becoming Headmaster of Richmond School, the Kedive School in Cairo and later Director of Egyptian Education in London.[11] He was a close friend of Oscar Browning.[12]

Furness's sister, Sophia Mary Maud Furness (1871–1950), was educated at Girton College, Cambridge,[13] and became an authority on the painter Georges de La Tour publishing a book on the artist's work in 1949.[14] Another brother, Everard Haslam Furness (1873–1941), won the mile race at Eton College in 1891 and, following in the footsteps of his brothers, graduated with a first in the Classical Tripos from King's.[15]

Public life
Cairo University

In 1905, Furness entered the Egyptian Civil Service, initially at the Ministry of the Interior.[1] He left the service but then took up several appointments in Egypt.[1] In 1919 he was seconded to the staff of the High Commissioner and was subsequently made Oriental Secretary.[1] Around this time he introduced E.M. Forster to the Egyptian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.[16]

Furness later served as Deputy Director-General of Egyptian State Broadcasting and was Press Officer to the Government of Palestine in 1934.[1] In 1936 he was appointed Professor of English at Cairo University and, at the outbreak of World War II, was made Deputy Chief Censor.[1] After the war he gave up these posts to become the appointed representative of the British Council in Egypt.[1]

Furness was made CBE in 1926 and CMG in 1944.[1] Following his wartime service and his contribution to the British Council he was made KBE in 1951.[1]

Family life

In 1945, Furness married Joyce Lucy Sophie Marc.[1] Joyce Marc was born in 1905 in Montmorency, France.[17] Her father, Maximilian Marc, was the youngest of ten children to a Moscow based merchant banking family.[17] Joyce was educated at Headington School and King's College, London.[17] In the 1930s Joyce Marc was a friend of Herbert Butterfield, Professor of History and later Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge.[17]

Robert and Joyce Furness had one daughter, Mary Alison Anthea Furness, who was born in Cairo in 1946 and later became a journalist and philosopher.[18] The writer, Martin Amis, proposed to Mary Furness in the 1970s.[19] In 1986, Mary Furness married James Waldegrave, 13th Earl Waldegrave, and by that line Sir Robert is the grandfather of Edward Robert Waldegrave, Viscount Chewton, and Robert Arthur Riversdale Waldegrave.[20]

Shortly after Sir Robert's death, Hilary Wayment OBE FSA sent a tribute to The Times stating that 'Sir Robert Furness seemed to have the gift of perpetual youth and to enter into the enthusiasms of his younger colleagues with the zest of an undergraduate'.[6] The tribute concluded that to his friends in England and Egypt 'the lasting impression he will leave behind is one of generous and high-spirited enjoyments, and of sheer charm and quality of mind'.[6]

Publication
  • Poems of Callimachus, Four Hymns and the Epigrams, with a Verse Translation, by Robert Allason Furness, and Sixteen Illustrations. Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 1931[21]

References
  1. Obituary in The Times, Sir Robert A. Furness, 6 December 1954, p.10
  2. Moggridge, Donald (2 April 1992). Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography. Routledge. p. 877. ISBN 9780415051415. Retrieved 15 June 2019 – via Internet Archive. robert allason furness cambridge.
  3. SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 7 JUNE, 1951, Issue 39243, p. 3081
  4. Furness, Sir Robert Allason. Oxford University Press. 16 June 2019. OCLC 5557289752.
  5. Allday, Louis. "Tune in: The fascinating story of how BBC started its first foreign language radio station in Arabic". Scroll.in. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
  6. The Times, 9 December 1954, p.10
  7. Forster, Edward Morgan (14 November 2004). Alexandria, a History and Guide and Pharos and Pharillon. Andre Deutsch. ISBN 9780233050782 – via Google Books.
  8. "Ancestry – Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records". ancestry.co.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  9. "Letter from Sir Robert Allason ('Robin') Furness to E.M. Forster". Retrieved 15 June 2019 – via National Archive of the UK.
  10. Sarker, Sunil Kumar (13 June 2007). E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. ISBN 9788126907915. Retrieved 16 June 2019 – via Google Books.
  11. Lubenow, W. C. (29 October 1998). The Cambridge Apostles, 1820–1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521572132. Retrieved 16 June 2019 – via Google Books.
  12. Alexander, James. "Cider, College, Courtship, Council: A Life of Edward Frederick Bulmer, 1865–1941 (An Exercise in Book-Length Autobiography, 2009)". Retrieved 16 June 2019 – via academia.edu. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  13. Cambridge), Girton College (University of (12 November 1948). "Girton College Register: 1869-1946". Privately printed for Girton College – via Google Books.
  14. Georges de la Tour of Lorraine, 1593–1652, by S.M.M. Furness. Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1949
  15. Cambridge), King's College (University of (16 June 2019). "A Register of Admissions to King's College, Cambridge, 1797–1925". J. Murray. Retrieved 16 June 2019 – via Google Books.
  16. Whidden, James (15 July 2017). Egypt: British colony and imperial capital. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9781526105974. Retrieved 16 June 2019 – via Google Books.
  17. Bentley, Michael (21 April 2011). The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield: History, Science and God. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139502856. Retrieved 16 June 2019 – via Google Books.
  18. The Times, 27 November 1946
  19. Lamont, Tom (6 November 2011). "Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford – review". The Guardian.
  20. "Waldegrave, Earl (GB, 1729)". cracroftspeerage.co.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  21. Callimachus; Furness, Robert Allason (15 June 2019). Poems of Callimachus, four hymns and the epigrams, with a verse translation. J. Cape. OCLC 4781098.
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