Robert Allason Furness

Sir Robert Allason Furness (1883 – 4 December 1954), also known as Robin Furness, was Professor of English at Cairo University and the representative in Egypt of the British Council between 1945 and 1950. He was an expert adviser on the establishment of BBC Arabic, the BBC's first radio station to broadcast in Arabic.

Shortly after Sir Robert's death, the writer and historian Hilary Wayment sent a tribute to The Times stating that Sir Robert 'seemed to have the gift of perpetual youth and to enter into the enthusiasms of his younger colleagues with the zest of an undergraduate'. The tribute concluded that to his friends in England and Egypt, 'the lasting impression he will leave behind is one of generous and high-spirited enjoyments, and of sheer charm and quality of mind'.

Early life

Robert Allason Furness was born in 1883, the son of the Reverend John Monteith Furness and Sophia Elizabeth Furness (née Haslam). He was educated at Rugby School, where he was head boy, and went up to King's College, Cambridge, where he was a friend of John Maynard Keynes and Edward Morgan Forster. At Cambridge he graduated with a first in the Classical Tripos. He was a close friend of Oscar Browning.

Furness's sister, Sophia Mary Maud Furness (1871–1950), was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, and became an authority on the painter Georges de La Tour publishing a book on the artist's work in 1949. Another brother, Everard Haslam Furness (1873–1941), won the mile race at Eton College in 1891 and, following in the footsteps of his brothers, graduated with a first in the Classical Tripos from King's.

Public life

In 1905, Furness entered the Egyptian Civil Service, initially at the Ministry of the Interior.

Furness later served as Deputy Director-General of Egyptian State Broadcasting and was Press Officer to the Government of Palestine in 1934. Her father, Maximilian Marc, was the youngest of ten children to a Moscow based merchant banking family. The writer, Martin Amis, proposed to Mary Furness in the 1970s. In 1986, Mary Furness married James Waldegrave, 13th Earl Waldegrave, and by that line Sir Robert is the grandfather of Edward Robert Waldegrave, Viscount Chewton, and Robert Arthur Riversdale Waldegrave.

Shortly after Sir Robert's death, Hilary Wayment sent a tribute to The Times stating that 'Sir Robert Furness seemed to have the gift of perpetual youth and to enter into the enthusiasms of his younger colleagues with the zest of an undergraduate'.