C. T. Atkinson

Christopher Thomas Atkinson (born on 6 September 1874 - died 18 February 1964) was the preeminent tutor for British military history at the University of Oxford in the first half of the twentieth century.^[1][2][3]

Early life, education, and family

Atkinson attended

From 1909 to 1920, Atkinson was an active officer in the Oxford University Officer Training Corps. He remained at Exeter for his entire career, except for wartime service between 1914 and 1918, when he served as an Army Captain in the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) in Whitehall Garden, London. On 27 January 1915, Atkinson and Julian Corbett were formally appointed to begin collecting material for an official history of the war. Atkinson was eventually based at the Public Record Office, where he eventually became head of the Army Historical Office, while Corbett became head of the CID Historical Section.^[5]

From 1928 to 1949, he served as a member of the Oxford University Delegacy for Military Instruction. During the Second World War, he was a member of the Home Guard. He retired at Exeter in 1941, becoming an Emeritus Fellow of the college.^[6]

Atkinson was still teaching the Special Subject in military history at Oxford as late as the Autumn and Winter of 1954–55.^[7][8]

As a tutor, he was remembered for his sharp mind, downright phrases, and ironic turn of phrase along with many idiosyncrasies and prejudices that included his dislike of Sir

• Michel de L'Hospital: being the Lothian prize essay, 1899 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1900).
• History of Germany: 1715–1815 (Pennsylvania: Jacobs, 1908).
• Marlborough and the rise of the British Army (New York; London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1921).
• Letters and papers relating to the First Dutch War, 1652–1654 Publications of the Navy Records Society. 6 vols. (London: Navy Records Society, 1898–1930). [Vols 1–2 edited by Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Volume 3 edited by Samuel Rawson Gardiner and C. T. Atkinson; vols 4–6 by C. T. Atkinson.]
• The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment - 1914–1919 (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1924).
• The Devonshire Regiment, 1914–1918 (Exeter: Eland Brothers; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1926).
• The Seventh Division, 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1927).
• The South Wales Borderers, 24th Foot, 1689–1937 (Cambridge: Printed for the Regimental History Committee at the University Press, 1937).
• A Royal Dragoon in the Spanish Succession War-- A Contemporary Narrative, edited with introduction and notes by C.T. Atkinson. Special Publication no. 5 (London: Society of Army Historical Research, 1938).
• Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Supplementary report on the manuscripts of Robert Graham Esq. of Fintry edited by C. T. Atkinson (London: HMSO, 1940).
• The
  Dorsetshire Regiment
  : the Thirty-Ninth and Fifty-Fourth Foot and the Dorset Militia and Volunteers (Oxford : Privately printed at the University Press, 1947).
• A history of the 1st (P.W.O.) Battalion: the Dogra Regiment 1887–1947, 37th Dogras, 1887–1923, 1st (P.W.O.) Bn., 17th Dogra Rgt., 1922–1945 (Southampton: printed for the subscribers by the Camelot Press, 1950).

In addition, he reviewed books regularly in The English Historical Review, contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica (twelfth edition), and wrote three chapters in the Cambridge Modern History (volumes 5 and 6).^[13]

References