Archibald Robertson

Archibald Horace Mann Robertson (1886 – 14 October 1961) was an English civil servant who became a writer on history, and social affairs from a left-wing perspective and critiques of Christianity.

Early years Robertson was born in Durham in 1886, eldest of the three sons of the similarly named Archibald Robertson and his wife Julia, née Mann. The father was an Anglican clergyman and the master of Hatfield College, Durham, who later became Principal of King's College, London and then Bishop of Exeter.

In 1899 Robertson won a scholarship to Winchester College, where it was that he began to doubt the Christian and Tory orthodoxies which were expected of him. This process started with his reading of the history of the French Revolution. Further spurs to his thinking came from Shelley's Queen Mab with its "devastating notes", J. W. Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science and, most of all, Belfort Bax's The Ethics of Socialism.

From school he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, )

In 1910, having graduated, he entered the British Civil Service His position exempted him from active service, but he agonised, as did many on the left, about the morality of the conflict. Eventually he decided to support the war, on grounds which he much later described as "casuistry".

1931 onwards Following the death of his father, in 1931 Robertson resigned from the civil service.

He died in Oxford on 14 October 1961. Robertson was married; his wife Sylvia survived him.

Works

(Volume I Volume II both 1949 second editions) (second edition in 1947)