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William C. Atkinson
The memoirs of William C. Atkinson (1902–1992) Stevenson Professor of Hispanic Studies at Glasgow University for forty years, are published here for the first time, prefaced, edited and annotated by Ann L. Mackenzie. Written, in the main, c.1971–1972, his reminiscences take the form of five self-contained chapters (which he calls ‘Fragments’), dealing in turn with every decade in his career as professor and scholar. His memoirs offer many insights worthy of record into social and political conditions in Spain in the 1920s–1940s, and in many countries in Latin America (including Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Brazil) which he visited in the 1940s–1970s, on several lecture tours, usually sponsored by the British Council. There are many recollections of important events he experienced and people he came across. He was in Spain in the mid 1920s, at the start of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. He has much of interest to say about the career and activities of various presidents and other public figures in Latin America, including, for example, Perón and Eva Perón in Argentina. He is illuminating about conditions in the universities, both in Spain (he studied at Madrid University) and in Latin America, where he lectured in all twenty countries, and witnessed, at different periods, campus closures and student unrest. He also recalls his activities nearer home. During the Second World War, as described in Chapter 2, ‘1972–: One Man’s War’, he was seconded to the Foreign Office. Though based in Oxford, he was sent into Portugal and Spain on fact-finding missions. In Chapters 2 and 4 in particular, he tells us a great detail about how things were in the University of Glasgow, for both staff and students, in the 1930s (‘1932–: Glasgow and a Chair’) through to the early 1960s (‘1952–: Around and about a Quincentenary’).
