All the Cathedrals of France

Basil Cottle, MA, PhD, FSA, was born in Cardiff in 1917. He graduated at the University of Wales and then trained as a school master. During the Second World War he spent three years in the army and a further three years as a cryptanalyst in the 'Enigma' team at Bletchley Park, after which he compiled an Albanian Grammar and Syntax for use by the Foreign Office. The rest of his long and busy life was spent at the University of Bristol, where he taught in the English Department for more than forty years and also gave courses in Anglo-Saxon and Early-Christian Irish Archaeology, eventually becoming Reader in Medieval Studies. A colourful and popular lecturer, Basil Cottle was also in demand as a reviewer of books - a job at which he excelled - and he wrote several, the best-known of which are The Triumph of English, The Plight of English, The Language of Literature, Names and The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames