Samuel Kerkham Ratcliffe (1868–1958) was an English journalist and lecturer.
Ratcliffe's father owned a King's Lynn flour mill, but moved to work as a railway clerk in Manchester when that business failed. Samuel was sent to be live with an aunt and attend school in London. He started working as a journalist for The Echo , edited by John Passmore Edwards, eventually rising to be leader-writer. [1]
In May 1902 Ratcliffe joined the Indian English-language newspaper The Statesman as its assistant editor under Paul Knight. Later that year he met Sister Nivedita, who would become a lifelong friend. In 1903 Ratcliffe became the acting editor of The Statesman, and continued with the newspaper until 1907 when he was forced to resign for espousing Indian nationalism. [2] Returning to London, he worked for the Daily News under A. G. Gardiner, as well as writing for the Manchester Guardian , The Spectator , the Nation and the Contemporary Review . [3] Ratcliffe was editor of the Sociological Review from 1910 to 1917. [4]
Ratcliffe began lecturing for the South Place Ethical Society in 1912. [1] In 1913 he delivered a series of lectures to the League of Political Education in New York. For the next three decades he spent the winter months lecturing across the United States: "It is probable", suggested his Manchester Guardian obituarist, "that no Englishman ever travelled so many miles in America or was heard by so many thousands of people there as he." [3] He also continued lecturing in England, where he became a member of the South Place Ethical Society's panel in 1915 and in the 1930s was the society's most regular lecturer. [1]
Ratcliffe's son was the scientist Francis Ratcliffe, [3] and one of his two daughters Katherine Monica Ratcliffe (1911-2012) married the neurophysiologist W. Grey Walter [1] and their only child was Nicolas Walter his grandson. After the couple divorced in 1945, Monica married Cambridge University scientist Arnold Beck with whom she brought up Nicolas. [5]
Sir Leslie Stephen was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, mountaineer, and an early humanist activist. He was also the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.
William Grey Walter was an American-born British neurophysiologist, cybernetician and robotician.
Charles Prestwich Scott, usually cited as C. P. Scott, was a British journalist, publisher and politician. Born in Bath, Somerset, he was the editor of The Manchester Guardian from 1872 until 1929 and its owner from 1907 until his death. He was also a Liberal Member of Parliament and pursued a progressive liberal agenda in the pages of the newspaper.
Frank Laurence Lucas was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II.
The Statesman is an Indian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper founded in 1818 and published simultaneously in Kolkata, New Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar. It incorporates and is directly descended from The Friend of India. It is owned by The Statesman Ltd and headquartered at Statesman House, Chowringhee Square, Kolkata, with its national editorial office at Statesman House, Connaught Place, New Delhi. It is a member of the Asia News Network.
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
The Conway Hall Ethical Society, formerly the South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world and is the only remaining ethical society in the United Kingdom. It now advocates secular humanism and is a member of Humanists International.
Nicolas Hardy Walter was a British anarchist and atheist writer, speaker and activist. He was a member of the Committee of 100 and Spies for Peace, and wrote on topics of anarchism and humanism.
Hector Alastair Hetherington was a British journalist, newspaper editor and academic. For nearly twenty years he was the editor of The Guardian, and is regarded as one of the leading editors of the second half of the twentieth century.
Monica Mary Grady, CBE, is a British space scientist, primarily known for her work on meteorites. She is currently Professor of Planetary and Space Science at the Open University and is also the Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University.
The Bande Mataram was an English language weekly newspaper published from Calcutta founded in 1905 by Bipin Chandra Pal and edited by Sri Aurobindo.
John Rhys Harris is a British journalist, writer and critic. He is the author of The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock (2003); So Now Who Do We Vote For?, which examined the 2005 UK general election; a 2006 behind-the-scenes look at the production of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon; and Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll (2009). His articles have appeared in Select, Q, Mojo, Shindig!, Rolling Stone, Classic Rock, The Independent, the New Statesman, The Times and The Guardian.
Faisal Islam is a British political and economics journalist who is the economics editor of BBC News and the occasional presenter of Newsnight. He was the political editor of Sky News from 2014 to 2019, and from May 2004 was business correspondent and later economics editor of Channel 4 News until June 2014.
Dorothy Mary Emmet was a British philosopher and head of Manchester University's philosophy department for over twenty years. With Margaret Masterman and Richard Braithwaite she was a founder member of the Epiphany Philosophers. She was the doctoral advisor of Alasdair MacIntyre and Robert Austin Markus. Emmet was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, where she took first-class honours in 1927.
The Sociological Review is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of sociology, including anthropology, criminology, philosophy, education, gender, medicine, and organization. The journal is published by SAGE Publications; before 2017 it was published by Wiley-Blackwell. It is one of the three "main sociology journals in Britain", along with the British Journal of Sociology and Sociology, and the oldest British sociology journal.
Arnold Hugh William Beck was a British scientist and electrical engineer, a specialist in plasma and microwaves, Professor of Engineering in the University of Cambridge.
Josephine MacLeod was an American friend and devotee of Swami Vivekananda. She had a strong attachment to India and was an active participant in the Ramakrishna Vivekananda movement. She was given the nicknames "Tantine" and "Jo Jo" by Vivekananda. She considered Swami Vivekananda to be her friend and helped him with his finances. MacLeod was not a sanyasin, unlike many others such as Sister Nivedita or Sister Christine. She was instrumental in spreading Vivekananda's message on Vedanta in the West. She made many contributions to the initial and the later phases of the development of the order of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. She was a contributor to many causes espoused by Sister Nivedita, the most famous disciple of Vivekananda, including that of contributing financially towards the development of the Indian National Movement especially in Bengal and elsewhere in India.
Abraham Walter Paulton (1812–1876) was an English politician and journalist.
Sister Christine or Christina Greenstidel was a school teacher, and close friend and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. On 24 February 1894, Christine attended a lecture of Vivekananda in Detroit, United States which inspired her. She started communicating with Vivekananda through letters. Christine went to India in 1902 and began working as a school teacher and a social worker.
Christopher Aiden-Lee Jackson is a British geoscientist, science communicator and Director of Sustainable Geoscience at Jacobs Engineering Group. He was previously Professor of Sustainable Geoscience at the University of Manchester, and before that held the Equinor Chair of Basin Analysis at Imperial College, London. He is known for his work in geoscience, especially in the use of 3D seismic data to understand dynamic processes in sedimentary basins.