M. R. D. Foot

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For other people named Michael Foot, see Michael Foot (disambiguation).
M. R. D. Foot
British history
  • military history
  • political history
  • Special Operations Executive
    • InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
    Victoria University of Manchester

    Michael Richard Daniell Foot,

    Second World War.[1][2]

    Biography

    The son of a career soldier, Foot was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford,[3] where he became involved romantically with Iris Murdoch.

    Foot joined the

    Territorial Army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps
    in 1950.

    After the war Foot taught at

    Oxford University for eight years before becoming Professor of Modern History at Manchester University in 1967. His experiences during the war gave him a lifelong interest in the European resistance movements, intelligence matters and the experiences of prisoners of war. This led him to become the official historian of SOE, with privileged access to its records, allowing him to write some of the first, and still definitive, accounts of its wartime work, especially in France. Even so, SOE in France took four years to get clearance.[4]

    Personal life

    Foot was very distantly related to his namesake Michael Foot. He was at one time married to the British philosopher Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), the granddaughter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland.[5] Foot's second wife was Elizabeth King, with whom he had a son and a daughter, the historian Sarah Foot.[6] In 1972 Foot married Mirjam Romme, who under her married name became a distinguished historian of bookbinding.[3]

    Honours

    Foot was appointed a

    Territorial Army.[3]

    Ribbon Description Notes
    Order of the British Empire (CBE) Commander, Civil Division, 2001
    1939–1945 Star
    France and Germany Star
    Defence Medal
    War Medal 1939–1945 With Mentioned in dispatches Oakleaf
    Territorial Decoration (TD) 12 years service in the Territorial Army
    Order of Orange-Nassau Officer, Awarded by the Kingdom of the Netherlands
    Legion of Honour Knight, Awarded by the France
    Croix de Guerre 1939–1945
    		 With Silver Star, awarded by France

    Bibliography

    Books

    • Gladstone and Liberalism (1952) with
      J. L. Hammond
    • British Foreign Policy since 1898 (1956)
    • Men in Uniform: Military Manpower in Modern Industrial Societies (1961)
    • SOE in France. An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940–1944 (1966)
    • The Gladstone Diaries (from 1968) editor
    • War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J. R. Western 1926–1971 (1973) editor
    • Resistance – An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism 1940–1945 (1977)
    • Six Faces of Courage (1978)
    • MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 (1979) with J. M. Langley
    • Little Resistance: Teenage English Girl's Adventures in Occupied France (1982) with Antonia Hunt, née Lyon-Smith[7]
    • SOE, The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946 (1984)[8]
    • Art and War: Twentieth Century Warfare as Depicted By War Artists (1990)
    • Open and Secret War, 1938-1945 (1991)
    • Oxford Companion to World War II (1995) with I. C. B. Dear[9]
    • Foreign Fields: The Story of an SOE Operative (1997)
    • SOE in the Low Countries (2001)
    • Secret Lives: Lifting the Lid on Worlds of Secret Intelligence (2002) editor
    • The Next Moon: The Remarkable True Story of a British Agent Behind the Lines in Wartime France (2004) with Ewen Southby-Tailyour and André Hue
    • Clandestine Sea Operations in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Adriatic 1940–1944
      ISBN 0-203-64164-7
    • Memories of an SOE Historian (2008)

    Articles

    • "Great Britain and Luxemburg 1867" (
      English Historical Review
      , July 1952)

    Book reviews

    Year Review article Work(s) reviewed
    2005
    English Historical Review
    , V120 (2005): 1103–04     		Thaddeus Holt (2004). The Deceivers.
    ISBN 0-297-84804-6
    .
    2008 Foot, M. R. D. (4 October 2008). "Stage effects in earnest". The Spectator. 308 (9397): 44. Archived from the original on 4 December 2008. Retrieved 23 December 2008. Rankin, Nicholas (2008). Churchill's wizards. Faber and Faber.

    Notes

    1. Keble College
      . p. 13.
    2. ^ "M. R. D. Foot". The Times. London. 21 February 2012. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
    3. ^
      OCLC 49632006
      . Retrieved 9 November 2012.
    4. ^ "M.R.D. Foot". The Economist. 3 March 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
    5. ^ Eilenberg, Susan (5 September 2002). "With A, then B, then C". London Review of Books. 24 (17): 3–8.
    6. ^ Bond, Brian (21 February 2012). "MRD Foot obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 September 2014.
    7. ^ "MI5 suspected young Briton was 'Nazi mistress'". BBC News. BBC. 26 August 2011. Retrieved 26 August 2011.
    8. OCLC 492769493
      .
    9. OCLC 32364507
      .
    10. ISBN 9780203641644
      – via Google Books.

    External links
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=M._R._D._Foot&oldid=1200119837"