HUNTER, Archie 1929-

PERSONAL:

Born October 26, 1929, in London, England; son of Archibald V. (a farmer) and Barbara (Atkins) Hunter; married Mirabel Scott, September 10, 1955; children: Archie, Clare. Education: Clare College, Cambridge, B.A., 1952, M.A., 1956. Religion: Church of England (Anglican).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Church House, Winsham, Chard, Somerset TA20 4JB, England.

CAREER:

Civil servant and historian. Government of Northern Nigeria, administrative officer in British Colonial Service, 1956-61; International Commission of Jurists, Geneva, Switzerland, legal officer, 1961-63; Ministry of Defence, London, England, assistant secretary, 1963-86. Barrister-at-law, Lincoln's Inn. Advisor, Citizens Advice Bureau, 1987-92; member of parish council, 1988-91; member of West Dorset Health Authority, 1990-91; chairman, local conservation group, 1995-98. Military service: British Royal Artillery, 1948-49; became second lieutenant.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Templer Medal nomination, Society for Army Historical Research, 1996, for Kitchener's Sword-Arm: The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter.

WRITINGS:

Kitchener's Sword-Arm: The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter, Spellmount (Staplehurst, Kent, England), 1996.

A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst: Disraeli's Awkward Disciple, Frank Cass (London, England), 2001.

Wellington's Scapegoat: The Tragedy of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Bevan, Pen and Sword Books (South Yorkshire, England), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Archie Hunter has written biographies of prominent military officers. His Kitchener's Sword-Arm: The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter concerns Hunter's great-uncle, who died in 1936, and is based partly on newly discovered family papers, including a batch of personal correspondence and a diary. A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst: Disraeli's Awkward Disciple concerns another of Hunter's relatives, a prominent Tory politician and reformer of the nineteenth century.

General Sir Archibald Hunter rose to the rank of Division commander by the age of forty and was the British Army's senior general in 1914. In later years he also served as a member of parliament. Earlier he had been Governor of Gibraltar before being required to resign for injudicious remarks on local people. In World War I he was chief trainer of Britain's New Citizen Armies. Kitchener's Sword-Arm, Archie Hunter's account of his great-uncle's colorful and controversial career is, according to A. H. M. Kirk-Greene in African Affairs, "a well-researched and pleasantly readable biography."

Hunter also had access to family papers when he wrote the biography of his nineteenth-century relative Sir John Eldon Gorst. In A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst, Hunter chronicles the life of "one of the most fascinating [members of Parliament] … in the nineteenth century," as a critic for the Contemporary Review stated. A founder of England's conservative Tory Party, Gorst was known as a reformer whose proposed education legislation in 1896, enacted only in 1902, transferred power over schools from the national government to local authorities. Gorst also worked on behalf of improving health care for British children. His eventual defection to the liberals, his refusal to compromise his principles, and the lack of surviving personal papers have made Gorst a difficult subject for biographers. Hunter relied on some private family information, as well as extensive research in the correspondence of Gorst's contemporaries, to flesh out the biography. Edgar Feuchtwanger in the English Historical Review called A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst a "comprehensive view of its subject."

Hunter told CA: "Writing, which does not come easily to me, is something I have taken up, quite unexpectedly, in retirement in my sixties. My hope has been that I have been able to add modestly to historical knowledge in the relevant military and political fields covered."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Affairs, July, 1997, A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, review of Kitchener's Sword-Arm: The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter, p. 462.

Choice, May, 2002, G. M. Stearns, review of A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst: Disraeli's Awkward Disciple, p. 1651.

Contemporary Review, April, 2002, review of A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst, p. 252.

English Historical Review, April, 2002, Edgar Feuchtwanger, review of A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst, p. 492.

History Today, November, 2001, Anne Pointer, review of A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst, p. 58.

Journal of Military History, July, 1997, Byron Farwell, review of Kitchener's Sword-Arm, p. 623.