Friday, October 13, 2023

A signed copy of Bryan Magee's Men of Ideas with a Market Harborough connection


I've blogged before about my discovery that the broadcaster Bryan Magee, who died in 2019, was evacuated to Market Harborough as a boy and lived literally around the corner from where I did as a teenager.

His television series Men of Ideas, in which he interviewed leading contemporary philosophers about the discipline's greatest figures, was broadcast while I was having my interviews for a university place to read philosophy, so it was wonderful preparation.

In his Growing Up in a War, Magee describes his time in Harborough. For most of it he lived in Logan Street (yes, it's named after this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP) with the Toombs family - like Norman Bowler, he was one of those children who were happier in their new home than back in London.

And his special friends was the Toombs's daughter Kath. Which probably explains this signed copy of the book of the Men of Ideas series that I got from a Market Harborough charity shop some years ago.

It wasn't my discovery. Someone I used to work with at Golden Wonder was volunteering in the shop and put it (and a couple of other signed Magee books) aside for me. And I'm very pleased I own it.

Later. Since I wrote this I've remembered my mother talking about a woman called Kath, whom she knew at least to say hello to. I think it's the same Kath.

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