Housmans have been donated the library of Byron Criddle, who sadly died of Covid-19 last year. Byron was an educator and was known for having an encyclopaedic knowledge of British parliamentary politics.
In 1968 Byron was appointed lecturer in French politics at Aberdeen University, where he was to stay for 40 years. In the next few years he co-authored with David Bell four books on the French left, and was also recruited by the social scientist and psephologist David Butler to work on eight successive Nuffield studies of British general elections. He wrote chapters on MPs and candidates. This led to a collaboration with the biographer and journalist Andrew Roth writing Parliamentary Profiles, an exhaustive survey of each MP’s personal background and political attitudes. He also was co-author with Robert Waller of successive editions of The Almanac of British Politics.
The Guardian has published a fuller obituary here:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/14/byron-criddle-obituary
The several hundred books donated to us reflect those key interests of parliamentary politics and related history, and as with all Housmans sales will be sold as cheaply as possible, with prices ranging from £1 to no more than £5.
We are immensely grateful to Byron’s estate for the donation.
