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[In progress]

1889 Palm Sunday April 14 birth, 12 Upper Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W

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Great-grandfather: George Toynbee (1783-1865), farmer of Heckington, Lincolnshire; descended from Toynbees of Coleby (North Kesteven), Lincolnshire; married Elizabeth Cullen (1785-1829); six sons and a daughter; remarried (Sarah Obbinson); further five sons and three daughters

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Grandfather: Joseph Toynbee (1815-66), George’s third son by his first wife; successful London ear and throat doctor who treated Queen Victoria for deafness and knew Mill, Ruskin, Faraday, Jowett, Mazzini; married Harriet Holmes; died when he exposed himself, experimentally, to a mixture of prussic acid and chloroform; his death caused the family to fall on hard times; at least nine children; his widow died in 1897

Great-uncle: “Uncle Harry” (1819-1909), Joseph’s youngest (full) brother, sea captain and pioneer meteorologist

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Father: Harry Valpy Toynbee (1861-1941), Joseph’s youngest son and ninth child; tea business; 1883- District Secretary, Charity Organisation Society; the head of the Society from 1875 to 1913 was a Balliol man, Charles Stuart Loch; July 1887 married; 1898- one of two Organizing Secretaries; he was socially between the rich whose donations he was soliciting and the poor whom he was helping; 1907 took leave, accepting a position with a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws which took him on prolonged visits to the north of England; when that ended began to suffer from depression; 1909 entered a mental hospital and never returned to normal life

Mother: Sarah Edith Marshall Toynbee (née Marshall) (“Edith”) (1859-1939), daughter of a Birmingham manufacturer of railway stock who had gone out of business; had gained a First in modern history at what became Newnham College in Cambridge (when women could sit the exams but not take degrees); the newly-weds lodged with Uncle Harry, a widower, at 12 Upper Westbourne Terrace

Paternal uncles:

Arnold Toynbee (1852-83), Joseph’s second son, who won a scholarship to Oxford; 1873-75 political economy Pembroke and 1875-78 Balliol; tutor at Balliol in charge of candidates for the Indian Civil Service; 1881-83 Bursar; wife Charlotte Maria Atwood (“Auntie Charlie”) (1841-1931); died of “brain fever” aged 30; Samuel and Henrietta Barnett founded Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel in the East End of London in 1884 in his memory

Paget Jackson Toynbee (1855-1932), who married well enough (Helen Wrigley) to become a country gentleman and devote his life to Dante (and Horace Walpole) scholarship

Paternal aunts:

Gertrude Toynbee

Grace Toynbee (1858-1946), bacteriologist; married Percy F Frankland (same years)

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Texts:

Joseph Toynbee, The Diseases of the Ear: Their Nature, Diagnosis, and Treatment, John Churchill, 1860

Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England: Popular Addresses, Notes and Other Fragments, together with a Short Memoir by B. Jowett, Rivingtons, 1884, posthumous, apparently prepared for publication by his wife

FC Montague, Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, Arnold Toynbee, with an Account of the Work of Toynbee Hall in East London by Philip Lyttelton Gell, M.A., Chairman of the Council, also an Account of the Neighborhood Guild in New York by Charles B. Stover, A. B., in Herbert B Adams, Editor, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Seventh Series, I, Baltimore, Publication Agency of the Johns Hopkins University, 1889

Gertrude Toynbee, editor, Reminiscences and Letters of Joseph and Arnold Toynbee (her reminiscences, their letters), Henry J Glaisher, no date but c 1900

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Siblings:

Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee (1897-1985), who became the leading British scholar of Roman art

Margaret Toynbee (1900- )

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1889-1902

Uncle Harry was puritan and low church; Harry Valpy and Edith, his lodgers, middle-of-the-road Anglican; Edith read history to her son and was the dominant figure in his life before his marriage

c 1897 she published True Stories from Scottish History, London, Griffith Farran Browne & Co to supplement the household income

March 3 1897 birth of Jocelyn

1900 birth of Margaret

Early education by his mother; then under the aegis of a governess at a friend’s house nearby; then a day student at Warwick House, Maida Vale; then at age of ten a small legacy and reduced fees allowed his mother to send him to Wootton Court, Kent, where Greek and Latin were available; summer 1901 enrolled in scholarship examinations for Winchester; fell short by a single place; summer 1902 tried again and succeeded; depended on William of Wykeham’s endowment, intended to help boys from poorer families to rise, though by 1902 the majority at Winchester were fee-paying “commoners”

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1902-07

September 1902-summer 1907 Winchester College

Made at least two lifelong friends there: David Davies, who became a judge, signed as a witness at both of his weddings and with whom he had lunch nearly every week when they were both in London; and Eddie Morgan, who became a bishop

The teacher who influenced him most was his housemaster and Greek teacher, Montague John Rendall

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1907-15

October 1907-June 1911 Literae Humaniores, Balliol College, Oxford; before taking finals, appointed to a tutorial fellowship for teaching Greek and Roman history, to start in the next academic year but one; meanwhile his scholarship had been extended for a fifth year, to be spent abroad, as a result of his winning the Jenkins Prize

September-November 1911 Italy on foot

November 1911-August 1912 Greece and Turkey on foot

October 1912-c April 1915 Balliol fellowship (did not resign until December 1915)

May 31 1913 engagement to to Rosalind Murray (1890-1967), daughter of Gilbert Murray (1866-1957), classical scholar, and Lady Mary Henrietta Howard (1865-1956)

Mary was the daughter of Rosalind, Dowager Countess of Carlisle, neé Stanley (1845-1921), widow of George Howard of Castle Howard, the 9th Earl of Carlisle (1843-1911). The teetotal Dowager left Castle Howard to her teetotal daughter Mary, not to her sons or to the grandson, the 11th Earl (1895-1963), who had inherited the earldom in 1912; but the Murrays declined the inheritance. It passed to the Countess’s only surviving son, Geoffrey Howard (spelt Geoffry by McNeill, perhaps incorrectly, 1877-1935), in whose family it has remained. Toynbee and his wife would have the use only of a smaller house next door, Ganthorpe Hall.

September 11 1913 marriage, Registry Office, District of Erlington (according to McNeill), Norfolk

September 2 1914 birth of Antony Harry (1914-39)

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1915-19

May 1 1915-1917 Foreign Office, London, propaganda directed at American public opinion; name of department unknown to me; editor, under the direction of Lord Bryce, of the Blue Book published by the British Government on the Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: 1915 (Miscellaneous No. 31, 1916); resigned from Balliol fellowship in December 1915

June 25 1916 birth of Philip (1916-81)

May 7 1917-May 1918 Department of Information, Intelligence Bureau, presumably under the Foreign Office, working on Turkish affairs

May-December 1918 Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, working on Turkish affairs

December 1918-April 1919 Paris Peace Conference, member of the Foreign Office section of the British delegation

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1919-24

King’s College, University of London, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine Language, Literature and History

January-September 1921 Greece and Turkey, reporting on the Greco-Turkish war for The Manchester Guardian

December 22 1922 birth of Lawrence (1922-2002)

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1924-55

Royal (until 1926 British) Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, Director of Studies and other titles; he was supported in the appointment by JW Headlam-Morley

July 23 1929-January 29 1930 to Japan and back (itinerary here)

1933 Rosalind was converted to Catholicism

1936-39 Philip embraced Communism

February 1939 Edith died

March 15 1939 Tony died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound

September or October 1939-June 1943 Balliol, in charge of the Foreign Research and Press Service, a redeployment of Chatham House which was required to provide accurate information of foreign affairs to any branch of the government on demand; Rosalind asked him to live with her in London and accused him of being afraid of the Blitz

November 1942 separation from Rosalind

Just before Christmas 1942 proposed marriage to RIIA research assistant, Veronica Boulter (1894-1980)

April 1943- Foreign Office, London, heading a new Foreign Office Research Department which merged the Foreign Research and Press Service with the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office

May 1945 refused knighthood

1946 divorce

September 28 1946 marriage to Veronica Boulter, Registry Office, Kensington

May 1947 move to house at 45 Pembroke Square, Kensington

Sunday May 18 1947 personal note placed with his letters from Rosalind, quoted in McNeill

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1955-75

February 20 1956-August 3 1957 journey round the world (itinerary here)

March 26 1969 coronary

June 29 1974 reception “Ad Portas” at Winchester College

August 3 1974 stroke, followed by removal to Purey Cust nursing home, York

October 22 1975 death

December 17 1975 Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving, St James’s, Piccadilly

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See this page for a summary of his travels.

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A few of Toynbee’s published letters touch on intimate personal matters. I have quoted them, or from them, in these posts:

Father and son

Balliol, Trinity Term 1914

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These posts link (or linked) to recordings or film footage of Toynbee:

The Ancient Mediterranean View of Man

Toynbee and Ikeda

Britain and Europe

Toynbee and Ikeda 3

Reith Lectures 1

Laboremus

Santa Barbara 1967, and the age of planning

New York 1965: Ideology and Intervention

I Agree with a Pagan

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The National Sound Archive at the British Library has material. You can search, but not buy or hear, online (checked August 20 2011). I’ll link to other sound archive material when I come across it.

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Susan Morton’s Bibliography, OUP, 1980 has sections called Films and Tape recordings. They beg a few questions, but I’ll show her entries as they stand, adding links. She does not attempt to list broadcasts that have not been preserved.

Under Films:

“Arnold Toynbee. Columbia Broadcasting System, 1955. 28 mins, sd., bxw, 16mm. Originally telecast as a special programme in the CBS series ‘Lamp unto my feet’. Records an interview with Lyman Bryson.

Arnold Toynbee. National Film Broadcasting Company, released by Encyclopædia Britannica Films, 1958. 28 mins, sd. b&w, 16mm. (Wisdom series.) ‘… talks about the experiences that have influenced his work, describes the quarter century of research and writing that went into his monumental summary of world history, and discusses his philosophy of historical causation’.

Small world: Toynbee, Wylie, Graves. Columbia Broadcasting System, 1960. 28 mins, sd., b&w, 16mm. Arnold Toynbee, Philip Wylie and Robert Graves ‘present historical explanations of the place of traditional religion and ethics in the modern world, and discuss American power and the cold war’. Host: Eric Sevareid; producers: Edward R. Murrow and others.”

Under Tape recordings:

“Arnold Toynbee, history, and the hippies. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1969. [This should be 1967, probably May 1.] 43 mins 44 secs. ‘… conversation with Raghavan Iyer, John Seeley, and Scott Buchanan, about the unlearned lessons of history, the futility of patriotism, and his admiration for the hippies …’

The reluctant death of national sovereignty, by Arnold Toynbee and others. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1972. 27 mins 19 secs. ‘The importance of establishing a world community is emphasized in Mr Toynbee’s interview with three [unnamed] leaders in business and government, when they explore the development of multinational corporations as a possible trend in the development of world community.’”

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Morton mentions one photographic portrait of Toynbee in her section on biographical material, perhaps because it appears in a book: Yousuf Karsh, Portraits of Greatness, Nelson, 1959.

The National Portrait Gallery has seven portraits: a wax medallion (1893) by Euphrosyne (“Effie”) Stillman, a bromide print by Karsh (1955, presumably the one mentioned by Morton), a quarter-plate negative by Elliott & Fry (1955; is that Karsh?), two bromide prints by Godfrey Argent (October 1 1969), a chalk sketch by Juliet Pannett (1972) and a bromide fibre print by Fay Godwin (1974).

There is no well-known oil portrait. There is one (at least) by his son Lawrence, painted in 1955, which hangs in the Toynbee Room, Chatham House. The obvious person for the job would have been Simon Elwes, a cousin of Toynbee’s friend Columba Cary-Elwes of Ampleforth and a well-known professional portraitist even after he lost the use of his right hand. One wonders why it was not commissioned. Perhaps it was and has never been reproduced. Simon Elwes is not mentioned in the Toynbee – Cary-Elwes correspondence or by McNeill.

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For Toynbee acted on film, see Toynbee and Young Indiana Jones.

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Texts:

There are autobiographical asides in many of his writings, and there is important information in the Preface of The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, in Acquaintances and Experiences, in the published correspondence with Columba Cary-Elwes, and in the biography by William McNeill.

Some of Rosalind Murray’s writings contain autobiographical information.

Six volumes of Philip’s Pantaloon series, a novel in verse, remain unpublished, but four have been published and contain autobiographical information:

Pantaloon, or The Valediction, Chatto & Windus, 1961

Two Brothers, Chatto & Windus, 1964

A Learned City, Chatto & Windus, 1966

Views from a Lake, Chatto & Windus, 1968

See also

Arnold and Philip Toynbee, Comparing Notes, A Dialogue across a Generation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963 (“Conversations between Arnold Toynbee and his son, Philip […] as they were recorded on tape”)

Philip Toynbee, Part of a Journey: An Autobiographical Journal, 1977-79, Collins, 1981

Jessica Mitford, Faces of Philip: A Memoir of Philip Toynbee, Heinemann, 1984

Philip Toynbee, End of a Journey: An Autobiographical Journal, 1979-81, Bloomsbury, 1988, posthumous

[In progress]