Talk:Rupert Bruce-Mitford

Lead

I shortened the overlong lead. All those positions and years of service to associations should probably also be removed. Yoninah (talk) 21:46, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Publications

Many of Bruce-Mitford's publications listed in the article are sourced from the 1989 catalogue of his library (OCLC 858531182, 1136133408). The first 156 entries in the catalogue (out of 6,008) are works by or about Bruce-Mitford. In addition, the copy of the catalogue held by Columbia University's Avery Library (catalogue entry) is Bruce-Mitford's personal copy, and contains many hand-written edits. These include extending the list of 156 to 167, and adding another three works on a blank page at the front, making for 170 total publications.

All this is to say that over the last six(!) years I've tried to track down the listed publications—many of which, like the catalogue itself, are painfully obscure. Only seven remain to track down, although (as seen below) three of these are likely one-offs, duplicative, or under a different name; the true number remaining is thus likely more like three or four.

Still working on tracking down:

• Bruce-Mitford (Dr. Rupert L. S.). Swedish gold exhibition. Sutton Hoo and Sweden. A leaflet inserted in Golden Age and Viking Art in Sweden - a catalogue of an exhibition at the British Museum. NP. 1965. Modern boards.

• #124 in the catalogue. Plenty of copies of the exhibition catalogue are in libraries, but the one I've looked at didn't have a leaflet in it. Notice about the exhibition found here.

• Review of The Viking Ships by A. W. Brøgger and Haakon Shetelig Dreyers Forlag, Oslo, 1953 pp. 248 (probably in Ant. J., XXXIV, 1954).

• Handwritten on the blank page. Bruce-Mitford had three reviews in that issue of The Antiquaries Journal, from pages 246–247, but not on page 248, and not of The Viking Ships. Possible there's a Bruce-Mitford review of the book somewhere else.

• (Weights and Scales from Barton on Humber) in T. Sheppard (Director of the Hull Municipal Museum), Hull Museum Publication No. 208, The Museum, Hull, 1940, pp. 40–42.

• Handwritten on the blank page. This looks to be a reprint of the 1939–40 articles in The Naturalist.

Either one-offs or likely already in the article:

• Bruce-Mitford (Dr. Rupert L. S.). Prospectus of a lecture by Dr. R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford at Dalhousie University - The Royal Treasure of Sutton Hoo. Monday, September 29th, 1980. NP, Dalhousie University. 1980. Buckram folder.

• #59 in the catalogue. Presumably unpublished notes.

• Bruce-Mitford (Dr. Rupert L. S.). The Sutton Hoo ship-burial. NP. 1972. Modern boards. Extract.

• #101 in the catalogue. Likely the second edition of the handbook, but the description is too vague to confirm.

• [Recollections of Sutton Hoo, in the early post-war Years] in Sutton Hoo Trusts? Bulletin, 1989 or 1990

• Handwritten #167 in the catalogue. Likely "Early Thoughts on Sutton Hoo" in Saxon (1989). There was also a Bulletin of the Sutton Hoo Research Committee published from 1983 to 1993 by the the Sutton Hoo Research Trust, but they are online (link), and do not appear to have an article by Bruce-Mitford.

--Usernameunique (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

That is a very impressive piece of work. I don't have any of those so can't be of any use on that from unfortunately! Would it be worth opening the publications section with a note that there's a catalogue? Richard Nevell (talk) 10:57, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Good idea, Richard Nevell; added a note. I'm also still trying to get copies of "Gold and silver Cloisonne buckle" and "Weights and Scales". The other two will be more difficult. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Got the first of those two, which is, indeed, reprinted in Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. --Usernameunique (talk) 19:14, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Hugh Willmott (archaeologist)

A couple years ago, a line was added to the article stating that "Bruce-Mitford's cousin, once removed, is the medieval archaeologist Dr Hugh Willmott." It wasn't actually mentioned in the source given, but the editor who added it, Jephthah20, seems as if they have personal knowledge, so I didn't remove it at the time. (The photo of Willmott in his article is credited to Jephthah20, and an uncropped version appears on Willmott's website.)

Now that I'm cleaning this article up with an eye to GA, I'm removing the line. If appropriate sources can be found, however, it can be added back. This post by Willmott on a genealogy website gives some more details. (See also the reply, which mentions Bruce-Mitford.) Notably, there appear to be several built-out trees on Ancestry.com which establish the connection; from what I can tell, Bruce-Mitford's father, Charles Eustace Beer (surname later changed to Bruce-Mitford), was the brother of Willmott's great-grandfather, Herbert Leonard Beer (surname apparently later changed to Midford). Biddle 2015 discusses Charles and Herbert Beer in some detail, but not the latter's descendants. --Usernameunique (talk) 00:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Adding the below source, which traces Herbert Leonard Midford to William Leonard Midford (Willmott's grandfather).

• "Death of Mr. H. L. Midford". Esher and Dittons. Surrey Advertiser. Vol. CL, no. 10, 491. Surrey. 22 April 1944. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com.

--Usernameunique (talk) 03:37, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Rupert Bruce-Mitford/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 15:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Comments

This detailed, readable and fully-cited article has evidently been a labour of love, edited to its current 180k (!) length by nom since 2016. It is of course easily comprehensive enough for GA, and I could pass it at once without discussion, but perhaps there are a few things that might be worth considering.

• Redlinks like RBM's father in the Infobox and Early life are probably best removed.

• He was actually notable in his own right, being a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. --Usernameunique (talk) 22:56, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• And by the way, the Infobox's Oxford, Oxfordshire, England is dangerously close to Adrian Mole (aged 8½)'s Oxford, Oxfordshire, The Midlands, England, Great Britain, The United Kingdom, Europe, The World, The Solar System ... (maybe lose the Oxfordshire, hmm?).

• Point taken, done. --Usernameunique (talk) 22:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Farrell, Robert T. is redlinked 3 times in the bibliog.

• I try to fill in the author-link parameter for each cite template. Ferrell is clearly notable, hence why he's red-linked here. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:55, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

• That's far from the topic of the article, and at the very least, idiosyncratic, but I guess not in direct contravention of the six criteria.

• The bibliography indifferently mixes Sources (used in the text) with Further reading (not used, maybe not worth reading?). Would be best to list 'em separately; and given that the list is very long, maybe ditch the further reading ones really.

• Those are all sources that I mean to cite; I've now gone through and added everything except the reviews and Wilson 2002, which I still need to get from the library. Do you mind if we leave those as a post-GAN project? --Usernameunique (talk) 18:04, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• Take it on trust, eh? All right, if the other items get fixed.

• The bibliography lists works by Charles Eustace Bruce-Mitford: why? Notability is not inherited by policy (in any direction), so I'd suggest we cut these (and remove mentions of them or links to them, if any), as clearly UNDUE.

• They're cited in this sentence: In 1903, and likely on the basis of his book and articles on Weihaiwei, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; he subsequently became interested in geography and vulcanology, writing additional works on the country. A secondary reason is that it's nice to have them grouped together if I ever get around to writing the article on him. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:01, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• OK. The secondary reason is definitely off-topic, even coatrackish, however.

• The list of Publications includes Books (good idea), Articles (bit doubtful, we rarely list those for any academic), Chapters (usually a terrible idea, such things often repeat material found in both the above sublists), Reviews (why ever would we list these? They're very minor works), and the famous Other category (enough said, we should not be including miscellanies of minor contributions in a Good Article). The total list occupies some 98 kBytes, so it's contributing massively to the article's size. This could be fixed by hiving it off as a separate article (say, Rupert Bruce-Mitford bibliography or some such title) and leaving just a link to that behind (or perhaps a list of his books, with a brief cited review of each one?).

• Per the relevant guideline, "Lists of published works should be included for authors ... Complete lists of works ... are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet." This is especially true for Bruce-Mitford; he published many works, including in obscure journals, but there is no list of his works (besides here) that is anywhere close to complete. (The second-most-complete list is in the auction catalogue of his personal library, which is held by only three libraries.) Tracking down all these works is one of the reasons why the article took seven years to build. As to whether the list should have its own article, the guideline says that this should be done when inclusion in a biography would be "unsuitable". But it's unclear why this would be the case here; the article is on the longer side, but it's clearly organized. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• "unclear": let me help you. The list takes up half the article. That is grossly unbalanced, and exactly the reason why such lists, when long, get hived off.

• Fair, though I'm not sure what "balance" accomplishes. If you're reading a book, do you mind if the index and appendices account for half the pages? Not unless it makes for an unwieldy tome, which isn't an issue here. For that matter, splitting it into a separate list would not cut the article substantially, since a decent portion of the publications would still need to be included here. Meanwhile, there are some clear benefits to keeping it as one, such as that everything is in one place, and it makes it easier to see what Bruce-Mitford was doing and working on at every portion of his career--Usernameunique (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• Glad you agree it's fair, as I'm going to insist on this, the books are fine bu the other stuff is not. Choice is a separate list or a shorter one here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:44, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• We both have strong opinions here, which is not to say that either one is wrong. For my part, however, I would again note that the MOS states that "Lists of published works should be included for authors ... Complete lists of works ... are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet." The options are thus not trimming the list vs. bifurcation, but, rather, maintaining the list vs. bifurcation. Meanwhile, I would certainly expect (or at least hope) that an article on a scholar whose notability derives from his published output would include said published output. For similar reasons, many if not most Festschriften and bibliographic obituaries include such a list.

But reasonable minds may well disagree. Looking at the talk page for the relevant MOS page, the word "unsuitable" was chosen precisely because of such disagreement; the range of suggestions for the point at which a split was warranted ranged from 5k (the books alone would put us over) to half the length of the article (we're at about a third).

With all that said, how about this as a solution: we leave the list in the article for now. After I resolve a few of the lingering issues here (particularly uncited works in the bibliography, and more images), I take the article to FAC, and give you a ping. And if you still think the bibliography should be split, we let others weigh in there. Seem reasonable? --Usernameunique (talk) 20:59, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

No, GA ends with the reviewer and one decision box, you can't turn it into a pseudo-FAC because you like that better, best of three or whatever. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• The list of Books (and any other works we agree to leave in the list here) could be reduced in dullness a little by replacing "Bruce-Mitford, Rupert" from all but the first entry with an "|author-mask=" (yes, there's a parameter for that in the Cite templates), such as "—————"; I find it works well at making a list of works look cohesive.

• Done. To be honest, though, it doesn't look as streamlined as I was hoping. --Usernameunique (talk) 03:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, it is an improvement (thank you) but all the "Edited..." notes do intrude somewhat. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• The thumbnail of Folio 74r of the Ashmole Bestiary works very poorly: I couldn't make out those were eagles until I enlarged the thing. You might like to consider using a cropped image (using Commons's CropTool, it's on the menu on the left of the page in Commons, and is easy to use); or enlarging the thumbnail, or both.

• Done. I was unsure at first—I kind of liked the idea of seeing the book spread open (as Bruce-Mitford would have first encountered it), and wasn't sure the resolution would be much of an improvement—but boy, were you right. It looks much better. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:31, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• The caption for the Sutton Hoo helmet should indicate the RBM connection.

• Done. Long term, I'd like to get a more Bruce-Mitford-centric photo there... --Usernameunique (talk) 02:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced the heading "Organisations" is appropriate; from RBM's point of view, the subject of the section would be "Appointments" or "Board memberships" or some such.

• I ended up incorporating the material into the rest of the article and removing the standalone section; it did't quite work by itself, especially as some of his other memberships were already in the rest of the article. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:33, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

• I confess I'm allergic to the use of "would" in biographies, especially as it appears to have two quite different meanings: "BM would take the tram to the British Museum", for instance, means "BM habitually took the tram..." (and that's the wording I'd suggest for such instances); while "he would obtain a Master of Arts in 1961" means "he went on to obtain..." or (simpler and better) "he obtained...", which again is how I'd suggest you reword instances of that type.

• Reworded a bunch of these. --Usernameunique (talk) 02:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• Not keen on the use of "per" in "This, per Biddle, was 'the greatest collection of horology in the world'". Better is "Biddle writes that this was ..."

• Changed to "wrote Biddle". --Usernameunique (talk) 23:03, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Not sure that "agnostic to the issues" is right here; we don't want to say the MMA didn't know (gnosis=knowledge), but that it didn't care, which is not the same thing.

• Changed to "untroubled by". --Usernameunique (talk) 23:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Spot-checks are fine.

• The images all seem to be properly licensed on Commons.

Well, that's about it. As I said, I'd cheerfully pass this article without further ado, but it's always best to ask a few questions first. Great work! Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap, you've obviously seen that I'm working on incorporating your good insights, but I just wanted to belatedly thank you for the review. I'll try to finish up shortly. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:08, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks again for the review, Chiswick Chap, and apologies for taking some time to respond to it all. All issues have now been responded to. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:01, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.