Found - a scarce pamphlet outlining the life of Alan Noel Latimer ('Tim') Munby (1913 - 1974). He was born on Christmas Day, hence the unused name 'Noel.' The Victorian diarist and poet Arthur Munby ('Man of Two Worlds' of Derek Hudson's book) who 'adored the roughest working-girls' and was for years secretly married to his kitchen-maid was his great-uncle. As a schoolboy and as an undergraduate (at King's College, 1932-35) he collected books; for a brief period after graduation he worked at Quaritch's bookshop. During the war he joined the Territorials (Queen Victoria Rifles); he was captured at Calais in 1940 and held as a prisoner of war in Germany for 5 years. On his return to England he worked at Sotheby's, then in 1947 was appointed College Librarian at King's. He is best known for an excellent collection of ghost stories The Alabaster Hand. Ghost fiction watchers Boucher and McComas praised the stories in The Alabaster Hand as 'quietly terrifying modernizations of the M.R. James tradition.' M.R. James was also a Cambridge academic and Cambridge produced several other writers of fantastic fiction.. The pamphlet is typical of the slim memorial papers turned out at the great universities when a distinguished or well known colleague had died.
Alan Noel Latimer Munby
T.D., Litt.D.
1913–1974
A Memoir composed by direction of
the Council of King's College, Cambridge
by
PATRICK WILKINSON
Privately printed for
KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
1975
Alan Noel Latimer Munby ('Noel because he was born on Christmas Day, of 1913, but 'Tim' to everyone, from Latimer) was one of the best known and best loved Kingsmen of the past forty years. His devotion to King's, his efficiency and unaffected friendliness as an administrator, and his astonishing mastery of bibliographical detail made him for twenty-seven years an ideal Librarian for the College. But he also served it as Praelector from 1951 to 1960, a most welcoming 'father' for those who returned to take their M.A. or higher degree, and as Domus Bursar from 1964 to 1967, when the major joint building scheme with St Catharine's and the reconstruction of the Hall required someone of practical ability, intimate knowledge of our workings, and tact. And even this was far from being all. Thus when the Royal Family visited the College in 1951 he was put in charge of the arrangements, for which seventeen draft schedules were needed before Provost Sheppard was finally happy. When the Fellows' summer parties (called 'Ladies Nights' until we had Fellows of both sexes)
