Surgeon, soldier, politician and historian, Richard Harmon Luce, born at Halcombe, Malmesbury, gained a first in Natural Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge and then qualified as a surgeon at Guys Hospital.  In WW1 he served as Director of Medical Services of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force rising to rank of Major-General and was knighted in 1919. …

He was educated at Magdalen College and New College, Oxford, was ordained and became a Fellow of Magdalen. Between 1845 and 1905 he worked as a ‘special assistant’ in the manuscripts department of the Bodleian Library, and became known for writing its history or Annals, which was published in 1868 (2 ed. 1890). He was…

Charles Kingsley was born at Holne, Devon and educated at Kings College, London and Magdalene College, Cambridge.  He took holy orders and married Fanny Grenfell and in 1844 was given the living at Eversley, after being curate there for two years.  At that time Eversley was a remote village in the northeast Hampshire heathland fringed…

Sir Frederic Madden was born at Portsmouth and was keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum from 1837 to 1866. He was the supreme palaeographer of nineteenth-century  England and a researcher and editor of extraordinary energy and quality. He tackled the most arduous and difficult projects and brought them to fulfilment.

Born in Camberwell, at the time of the 1911 census Edgar Mitchell was a ‘boarder’ in Croydon and his occupation was that of ‘newspaper reporter’. He moved to Southampton in 1913 to take up a post with the Southern Daily Echo, initially as a sub-editor, theatre critic and leader writer. In due course, under the…

The son of a Dutch merchant who had settled in London, Möens went into the Stock Exchange at a young age, but soon ‘retired’ as a man of means to Boldre, attracted by the yachting at Lymington. He became an antiquarian with a special interest in Flemish genealogy and Huguenot history, but also involved himself…

One of the greatest British soldiers of the 20th century, Field Marshal Montgomery lived for nearly thirty years at Isington Mill, near Binsted. In the immediate post-war years, he restored what was a dilapidated shell into a luxury home surrounded by lawns and gardens and, following a state funeral, he was buried at the Church…

He came from a family of Winchester brewers and as the eldest son had to the chance to enter the business, but did not take to it and handed the opening over to his brother William (who played a part in saving the city’s muniments by keeping them in a malthouse, HRO, 21M85W/10/1921). In an…

Rose Hamilton Moutray Read was the eldest child of Edith and Lt Col John Moutray Read of the 4th Cheshire Regiment. Her brother, Anketell (b 1885) was killed in France in September 1915, while engaged in a rescue mission for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. This was a strikingly parallel experience to Dorothy…

Mudie was a Scot, born in Angus. He was largely self-taught. In sequence he was a weaver, soldier, teacher and then a journalist. He became a reporter for the Morning Chronicle and editor of the Sunday Times. In 1838 he moved to Winchester and was commissioned to write his Illustrated History of Hampshire.  Altogether he…