George Catlin

Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin (26 July 1896 – 7 February 1979) was an English political scientist and philosopher. A strong proponent of Anglo-American co-operation, he worked for many years as a professor at Cornell University and other universities and colleges in the United States and Canada. He preached the use of a natural science model for political science. McMaster University Library holds his correspondence archive and the body of some of his works. He had two children, one of whom was the politician and academic Shirley Williams.

Early life

Catlin was born in Liverpool, the son of Edith Kate (Orton) and George Edward Catlin (1858–1936), an Anglican clergyman. He was educated at St Paul's School, and New College, Oxford.

He volunteered for military service in the early months of the First World War, but was rejected, and spent most of the war working for the liquor traffic department of the Central Control Board. However, he became a soldier in the last months of the war, fighting on the Western Front in Belgium. and won three major prizes, including the Gladstone Prize and the Matthew Arnold prize in 1921 for his essay on the political thought of Thomas Hobbes entitled Thomas Hobbes as Philosopher, Publicist and Man of Letters. There he completed his doctoral thesis, published in 1926 entitled The Science and Method of Politics. This was followed in 1929 by A Study of the Principles of Politics. He was an assistant professor of Politics at Cornell by the age of 28 and subsequently twice acting chairman. In 1926 he was appointed to be the director of the National Commission (Social Research Council) to study the impact of prohibition in the United States. His conclusions were subsequently published as a book. He also had ambitions to be directly involved in British politics through the Labour Party. He was also a member of the Pilgrims Club of Great Britain.

His autobiography, on which he had worked sporadically since the end of the First World War, was finally published in 1972 as For God's Sake, Go!.

Honours

In the 1970 Birthday Honours, Catlin was knighted for services to Anglo-American relations.

Private life

Catlin married the English novelist Vera Brittain in 1925 after a courtship that began as a correspondence. She was pursuing her own career as a writer in Britain and the marriage endured many Atlantic-wide separations. They had two children: John Edward Jocelyn Brittain-Catlin (1927–1987), whose memoirs, Family Quartet, appeared in 1987; and the Liberal Democrat politician Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby (1930–2021).

After Vera's death in 1970, Catlin married Delinda Gates (1913–2002) in Chelsea, London, in 1971. He died in Southampton, Hampshire, in 1979 at the age of 82 and was buried alongside his father at St James the Great Church, Old Milverton, Warwickshire.