Историк Алвин Эдгар, прославившийся исследованиями шотландских клирингов, скончался в возрасте 97 лет

An historian who devoted much of his life to researching the Scottish Highland Clearances and whose first two books were published in his nineties has died. Alwyn Edgar, who was 97, also appeared as a resident historian on Radio Norfolk and performed as an actor and violinist into his eighties at the Sewell Barn Theatre in Norwich. He had lived at Stratton Strawless since 1987 and was married for 67 years to Janet, a former nursery school headteacher in Norwich, who survives him. A graduate of Oxford University, Alwyn taught history and English in schools and began writing about the Clearances in 1963. He was fuelled by his sympathy for the displaced Highlanders and his belief that accounts of that period were generally inaccurate and written from the landlords’ perspective. His work on the subject amounted to one and a half million words spread across five volumes. Two have been published – Clans and Clearance and The Sutherland Clearances – and the remaining three, all fully written, will be brought out in due course. Alwyn was born in 1928 in rural Canada, where his father was a Methodist minister. The family returned to England just before Alwyn’s fourth birthday but his recollection of those early years in North America remained crystal clear throughout his life, even though he never returned there. His father’s work led to a peripatetic childhood in which Alwyn attended four primary and five secondary schools in various parts of the country. He lived in London during the Second World War, once having to move from the school hall to the basement halfway through an exam when an air-raid siren sounded. A talented violinist, Alwyn rejected an offer to join the National Youth Orchestra, preferring to follow a path to university, but first he was required to undertake National Service. For this, he chose to work in a coal mine in south Wales, a romantic notion in which he followed a path trodden by his ancestors, but he would later question his decision, not least when cheating death by seconds as a ceiling collapsed in a passage through which he had just walked. After leaving Oxford he became a barrister but soon opted for teaching instead. He left London to start a family in Lowestoft, where he and Janet became regulars at the Seagull Theatre. In 1982, shortly before playing the part of Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, Alwyn took the theatrical exhortation to “break a leg” too seriously and had to portray the villainous character in plaster and with a limp. After moving to Norfolk he and Janet joined the Sewell Barn, where he never passed up the chance to play the fiddle in a production. He performed in – among other plays – Coriolanus, The Government Inspector, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Under Milk Wood. The last of those, Dylan Thomas’s Welsh classic, underlined Alwyn’s proficiency for speaking in different accents, an ability he acquired, he said, through necessity as a child in order to fit in at new schools as he moved around the country. He also made a couple of appearances at the Maddermarket, particularly enjoying his role in Guys and Dolls. Although he focused on Scotland, Alwyn was also a keen student of Norfolk history and for two years from 1990 appeared each week on Keith Skipper’s Radio Norfolk lunchtime show in the Bran Tub feature. A village would be drawn at random and Alwyn would visit its inhabitants and buildings to discover its past and report his findings on returning to the studio. Alwyn had two children, Bob and Bill, and five grandchildren: Robert, Barnaby, Arthur, Josh and Hannah.