Abstract
IT is sad to realize that the time has come for Sir Cyril Fox to retire from the post of director of the National Museum of Wales. The old saying may be true, "Le roi est mort, vive le roi", but his successor will find it no light matter to continue Sir Cyril‘s distinction as a researcher and his efficiency as an administrator. Fox was educated at Christ‘s Hospital and Cambridge. He was always an ardent archaeologist, even in the days of long ago (1912-24) when at Cambridge he occupied the post of superintendent of the University Field Laboratories. Indeed it was at this time that his great work, "The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region", which gained him his Ph.D., was written and published, and that he did so much splendid voluntary work for the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, where his beautiful lettering on the labels of things he arranged is still admired. In 1924 he was elected a Kingsley Bye-Fellow of Magdalene College, and later—after his nomination to the directorship of the National Museum in Dublin by the Irish Academy had been refused by the then Irish Civil Service on the grounds that he was an Englishman—he became a keeper and lecturer in the National Museum of Wales, of which he was soon to become the director. Sir Cyril has, not unnaturally, been president of a number of archaeological societies, and has published regularly the results of his researches. His most thought-productive work, perhaps, has been "The Personality of Britain", which has passed through no less than four editions. There are other archaeologists who can claim a high degree of scholarship and achievement, but few who can inspire and charm as does Sir Cyril Fox ; to be with him is indeed an inspiration. The best wishes of all go to him in his retirement at Exeter, where his wife is lecturing and where we may be sure he will have retired only from administration, and will doubtless pursue his researches with continued zest and a freer mind.
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National Museum of Wales : Sir Cyril Fox, F.B.A. Nature 161, 840 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161840b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161840b0