Charles Hadfield - canal man and more

摘要

Hugh McKnight remembers with affection the great canal historian and author, and the acknowledged leader in his field, who was born exactly 100 years ago this month.rnAs a young member of the Inland Waterways Association in the late 1950s I was encouraged to regard a certain Mr. Charles Hadfield as a dangerous character. In the view of the Association's Founder and Vice-President, Robert Aickman, the only waterways in which Hadfield was interested were derelict ones. One of the quartet who had launched the organisation in 1946 along with his friend Frank Eyre, LT.C.Rolt and Aickman, Hadfield and Rolt had been expelled from the I.W.A some years earlier. Aickman became well known for orchestrating such acrimonious disputes. But for the teenage me, Robert Aickman was the sword-wielding knight in shining armour.