Lionel Elvin

Herbert Lionel Elvin (7 August 1905 in Buckhurst Hill – 14 June 2005 in Cambridge) was an eminent educationist.

Elvin was the son of Herbert Henry Elvin, General Secretary of the National Union of Clerks, and brother of George, who became General Secretary of the Association of Cinematograph Television and Allied Technicians.

He studied at Southend High School for Boys, for which he wrote the lyrics for the school song, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he achieved first class honours in English and History. He was also President of the Cambridge Union Society and an accomplished athlete, representing Cambridge in the half-mile against Oxford in 1927.

After a two-year Commonwealth Fund Fellowship at Yale, Elvin returned to Trinity Hall in 1930 as the college's first Fellow with responsibility for teaching English (he was tutor to both Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams while he was there). He became the Senior Treasurer of the then newly formed Cambridge University Labour Club in Easter Term 1934. In 1934, he also married Mona Bedortha Dutton (died 1997; one son).

His interest in education was broadened by membership of Cambridge Town Council and by the work of Henry Morris, chief education officer for Cambridgeshire, who was the creator of "village colleges" in the county. Elvin was also active in the Workers' Educational Association and served as Treasurer of its Eastern District. Elvin was a man of the left, a radical and a "non-Christian"; his adherence to his principles led him to refuse numerous honours, although he did accept the honorary fellowships awarded to him by Trinity Hall and the Institute of Education. He was a person of great charm and modesty (his Who's Who entry included under recreations "most games indifferently"). He was also the first Chairman of Amnesty International.

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