Ronald Edmond Balfour
Ronald Edmond Balfour (1904 – 10 March 1945) was a British medieval historian and a fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
Early life
Balfour was educated at Eton and King's, Cambridge, matriculating in 1922. He was elected a Fellow of King's College in 1928 and Lecturer in History in 1930.
War service
During the Second World War he held administrative posts with the French section of the Ministry of Information. In 1941 he was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps[1] then worked in Winchester and York interviewing recruits and finally with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section (MFAA) of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. He was killed by a shell-burst while operating beyond the Allied front line at Kleve (Cleves), seeking out artworks to be protected from war damage. He is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.
Legacy
He bequeathed his personal library of 8,000 books to be divided between the Cambridge University Library and the King's College Library.
In the 2014 film The Monuments Men, he is loosely represented by fictional British officer "Donald Jeffries", played by Hugh Bonneville.
References
- ^ "No. 35121". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 March 1941. pp. 1, 892.
External links
- Monuments men: Ronald Edmond Balfour
- George Clooney's Nazi art theft film attacked for ignoring real-life British war hero
- Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y
- Articles with short description
- Short description is different from Wikidata
- Use dmy dates from April 2022
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with NTA identifiers
- Articles with CWGC identifiers
- Articles with SUDOC identifiers
- 1904 births
- 1945 deaths
- People educated at Eton College
- Fellows of King's College, Cambridge
- Monuments men
- 20th-century English historians
- King's Royal Rifle Corps officers
- British Army personnel killed in World War II
- All stub articles
- British historian stubs