Basil Mathews

MATHEWS, Basil Joseph. b. Oxford, 28 August 1879; d. Oxford, 29 March 1951. Educated at the City of Oxford High School, he worked at the Bodleian Library and the City Library before becoming private secretary to A.M. Fairbairn, principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. Fairbairn arranged for Mathews to enter the University to read history (BA 1904) after which he became a journalist for the Christian World, which sent him to Edinburgh to cover the World Missionary Conference of 1910. The conference inspired Mathews, and he became Editorial Secretary of the London Missionary Society (1910-19, with a period at the Ministry of Information during the war, 1917-18). He later worked for the...