M. R. D. Foot
{{Short description|British historian (1919–2012)}}
{{Other people|Michael Foot}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2021}}{{more citations needed|date=February 2012}}
{{Infobox academic
| honorific_prefix =
| name = M. R. D. Foot
| honorific_suffix = {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CBE|TD}}
| image = Michael R. D. Foot (cropped).jpg
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| caption = Foot in 2011
| birth_name = Michael Richard Daniell Foot
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1919|12|14|df=yes}}
| birth_place = London, England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2012|2|18|1919|12|14|df=yes}}
| death_place = Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
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| children = 2
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| education = Winchester College
| alma_mater = New College, Oxford
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| discipline = Historian
| sub_discipline = {{hlist|British history|military history|political history|Special Operations Executive}}
| workplaces = University of Oxford
Victoria University of Manchester
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Michael Richard Daniell Foot, {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|sep=,|CBE|TD}} (14 December 1919 – 18 February 2012) was a British political and military historian, and former British Army intelligence officer with the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War.{{cite book |last=Drennan |first=Basil St. G. |date=1970 |title=The Keble College Centenary Register 1870–1970 |location=Oxford |publisher=Keble College |page=13}}{{cite web |author= |date=21 February 2012 |title=M. R. D. Foot |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/m-r-d-foot-mlmlk7ndcp8 |url-access=subscription |website=The Times |location=London |access-date=3 November 2022}} Foot was the author of the official history about the Special Operations Executive, SOE in France.
Biography
The son of a career soldier, Foot was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he became involved romantically with Iris Murdoch.
Foot joined the British Army on the outbreak of the Second World War and was commissioned into a Royal Engineers searchlight battalion. In 1941 searchlight units transferred to the Royal Artillery. His service number was 85455. By 1942, he was serving at Combined Operations Headquarters, but wanting to see action he joined the SAS as an intelligence officer and was parachuted into France after D-Day. He was for a time a prisoner of war, and was severely injured during one of his attempts to escape. For his service with the French Resistance he was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Croix de Guerre. He ended the war as a major. After the war he remained in the Territorial Army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps in 1950.
After the war Foot taught at Oxford University for eight years before becoming Professor of Modern History at Manchester University in 1967. His experiences during the war gave him a lifelong interest in the European resistance movements, intelligence matters and the experiences of prisoners of war. This led him to become the official historian of SOE, with privileged access to its records, allowing him to write some of the first, and still definitive, accounts of its wartime work, especially in France. Even so, SOE in France took four years to get clearance.{{cite news |title=M.R.D. Foot |url=http://www.economist.com/node/21548904 |newspaper=The Economist |date=3 March 2012 |access-date=30 August 2012}}
Personal life
Foot was very distantly related to his namesake Michael Foot. He was at one time married to the British philosopher Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), the granddaughter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland.{{cite journal|last=Eilenberg|first=Susan|title=With A, then B, then C|journal=London Review of Books|volume=24|issue=17|date=5 September 2002|pages=3–8}} Foot's second wife was Elizabeth King, with whom he had a son and a daughter, the historian Sarah Foot.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/21/mrd-foot|title=MRD Foot obituary|last=Bond|first=Brian|author-link=Brian Bond|date=21 February 2012|work=The Guardian|access-date=14 September 2014}} In 1972 Foot married Mirjam Romme, who under her married name became a distinguished historian of bookbinding. Foot has the distinction of being the only real person to be named in the spy novels of John LeCarre.{{cite web |title=Carpetbagger Newsletter # 129 |url=http://www.801492.org/CurrentIssue.pdf |website=801492 |date=2012 |access-date=15 March 2025}}
Honours
Foot was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001. He also received the Territorial Decoration for Long Service in the Territorial Army.{{cite news |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/9094496/MRD-Foot.html |title=MRD Foot |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=20 February 2012 |location=London |issn=0307-1235 |oclc=49632006 |access-date=9 November 2012}}
| class="wikitable" | ||
| Ribbon || Description || Notes | ||
|---|---|---|
| 40px | Order of the British Empire (CBE)
| Commander, Civil Division, 2001 | |
| 40px | 1939–1945 Star | |
| 40px | France and Germany Star | |
| 40px | Defence Medal | |
| 40px | War Medal 1939–1945 | With Mentioned in dispatches Oakleaf |
| 40px | Territorial Decoration (TD) | 12 years service in the Territorial Army |
| 40px | Order of Orange-Nassau | Officer, Awarded by the Kingdom of the Netherlands |
| 40px | Legion of Honour | Knight, Awarded by France |
| 40px | Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 | With Silver Star, awarded by France |
Bibliography
{{Expand list|date=August 2020}}
=Books=
- Gladstone and Liberalism (1952) with J. L. Hammond
- British Foreign Policy since 1898 (1956)
- Men in Uniform: Military Manpower in Modern Industrial Societies (1961)
- SOE in France. An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France 1940–1944 (1966)
- The Gladstone Diaries (from 1968) editor
- War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J. R. Western 1926–1971 (1973) editor
- Resistance – An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism 1940–1945 (1977)
- Six Faces of Courage (1978)
- MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 (1979) with J. M. Langley
- Little Resistance: Teenage English Girl's Adventures in Occupied France (1982) with Antonia Hunt, née Lyon-Smith{{Cite web | title=MI5 suspected young Briton was 'Nazi mistress' | work=BBC News | publisher=BBC | date=26 August 2011 | url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14662543 | access-date=26 August 2011 }}
- SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946 (1984){{cite book
| title = WorldCat: SOE in France
|oclc = 492769493}}
- Art and War: Twentieth Century Warfare as Depicted By War Artists (1990)
- Open and Secret War, 1938-1945 (1991)
- Oxford Companion to World War II (1995) with I. C. B. Dear{{cite book
| title = WorldCat: The Oxford companion to World War II
|oclc = 32364507}}
- Foreign Fields: The Story of an SOE Operative (1997)
- SOE in the Low Countries (2001)
- Secret Lives: Lifting the Lid on Worlds of Secret Intelligence (2002) editor
- The Next Moon: The Remarkable True Story of a British Agent Behind the Lines in Wartime France (2004) with Ewen Southby-Tailyour and André Hue
- Clandestine Sea Operations in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Adriatic 1940–1944{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vytKl24RpfMC&pg=PR4|title=Secret Flotillas: Vol. II: Clandestine Sea Operations in the Western Mediterranean, North Africa and the Adriatic, 1940–1944|first=Brooks|last=Richards|date=20 February 2004|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=9780203641644|via=Google Books}} (2004) with Richard Brooks {{ISBN|0-203-64164-7}}
- Memories of an SOE Historian (2008)
=Articles=
- "Great Britain and Luxemburg 1867" (English Historical Review, July 1952)
=Book reviews=
| class='wikitable sortable' width='90%' |
| |Year
!class='unsortable'|Review article !class='unsortable'|Work(s) reviewed |
|---|
| 2005
|English Historical Review, V120 (2005): 1103–04 |{{Cite book |title=The Deceivers |author= Thaddeus Holt |year= 2004 |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |isbn= 0-297-84804-6}} |
| 2008
|{{cite journal |author=Foot, M. R. D. |date=4 October 2008 |title=Stage effects in earnest |journal=The Spectator |volume=308 |issue=9397 |pages=44 |url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/books/2188476/stageeffects-in-earnest.thtml |access-date=23 December 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204195635/http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/books/2188476/stageeffects-in-earnest.thtml |archive-date=4 December 2008}} |{{cite book |title=Churchill's wizards |author=Rankin, Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Rankin |year= 2008 |publisher=Faber and Faber }} |
Notes
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.spartacus-educational.com/SOEfoot.htm M. R. D. Foot] at Spartacus Educational
- {{IMDb name|2933865}}
- [https://www.unithistories.com/officers/Army_officers_F01.html#Foot_MRD British Army Officers 1939−1945]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foot, M.R.D.}}
Category:British World War II prisoners of war
Category:World War II prisoners of war held by Germany
Category:Officers of the Order of Orange-Nassau
Category:British recipients of the Legion of Honour
Category:Military personnel from London
Category:Academics of the Victoria University of Manchester
Category:Alumni of New College, Oxford
Category:British Army personnel of World War II
Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Category:Intelligence Corps officers
Category:People educated at Winchester College
Category:British recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France)
Category:Royal Artillery officers