A GREAT White Hero Passes away: Obituary – Professor Roger Pearson M.Sc. (Econ), Ph.D., (London): 1927 – 202 3

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[This guy was a mentor to Paul Fromm of CAFE in Canada. There seem to be many lovely books written by this White intellectual giant. If anyone finds any PDFs or videos about him that would be interesting. I'll also keep a lookout. I can't find any videos about him. Jan]

Posted on March 12, 2023 by CFIRC

[I knew Dr. Roger Pearson for half a century. He was a mentor and dear friend. I participated in the pivotal World Anti-Communist League Conference in Washington, D.C., held under his chairmanship. His decades of devotion to the publication of three academic journals which kept solid racial and political ideas in university libraries was a labour of love and self-sacrifice. To lessen the power of the rabid attacks by far left and Jewish censorship organizations, he avoided movement conferences and the contacts they might have afforded him. He was a brilliant and generous man. I usually lunched with him on my trips to Washington, D.C. He would call me about once a month when he received the newsletters I publish [The Canadian Immigration Hotline and the Free Speech Monitor]. I last talked to him in January of this year. He republished many important racial books including the prescient 1915 War and the Breed, which predicted the genetic catastrophe for European man of the fratricidal World War I. He told me sadly that World War II finished off the genetic destruction begun by WWI, killing off the best and brightest (fighter pilots like his only brother.) This giant, this scholar, this publisher, this friend is irreplaceable. — Paul Fromm]

Obituary – Professor Roger Pearson M.Sc. (Econ), Ph.D., (London): 1927 – 2023 by Mark Cotterill, Heritage & Destiny

Posted by admin978 on March 10, 2023 · Leave a Comment

Dr Roger Pearson (above right) has died aged 95: he is seen here with his good friend Dr Ed Fields in Washington DC, in 2000, during the time when H&D editor Mark Cotterill worked at Dr Pearson’s office.

All of us at H&D were saddened to hear of the recent death of Dr. Roger Pearson, who was a long-standing subscriber to Heritage and Destiny magazine – in fact he was our eldest subscriber, aged 95, when he died in Washington DC, on 23rd February.

Dr. Pearson was a true English gentleman in every sense. He was born in London, in 1927, but spent much of his childhood in Yorkshire. In October 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, he joined the British Army, despite his entitlement to exemption from military service to attend University after completing his Higher School Certificate examinations.

He had volunteered for military service and was inducted into the British Army with a view to obtaining a commission in the (British) Indian Army. After completing basic infantry and corps training with the Queens Royal Regiment in Maidstone, Kent, Roger and his fellow cadets embarked for India to attend the British Indian Army Pre-Officer Training School (Pre-OTS) at Bangalore.

In July 1946 he was commissioned from the British Indian Army OTS Kakul (which today is the Pakistan Military Academy) to serve as a 2nd Lieutenant with Indian troops in Meerut. However, with the approaching Independence of India and Pakistan, he was shortly transferred to service as a 1st Lieutenant with the British Indian Division in the occupation of Japan (Shikoku and Tokyo), from January 1947 to January 1948.

I remember him telling me of how shocked and saddened he was by the behaviour of the American GIs in occupied Japan, and their brutal treatment of the local people, including beatings, theft and numerous rapes of young Japanese women. I asked him about the conduct of our own squaddies over there and he said in general they were very well behaved, and he would have expected nothing less from them. Dr. Pearson always had a very low opinion of American soldiers, and hated their “hazing” tactics, which he described as “very unprofessional”.

His final military service was as a 1st Lieutenant with the British Army in Singapore and Malaya, from January to April 1948.

On leaving the army in 1948, Roger attended university in England. After obtaining a B.Sc.(honours) in economics and sociology, he returned to India in 1952 in a business capacity, first as an assistant accountant in Calcutta (now Kolkata), but eventually as the CEO of several companies in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), primarily in the tea industry – then Pakistan’s second largest export. During this period (1959-65) he served on the Board of the Pakistan Tea Association and was elected President, 1963-4. During that year he was ex officio a member of the Pakistan Tea Board, and the Managing Committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

During his service in India and East Pakistan, Roger retained a strong interest in cultural matters. While in Calcutta (1955-1959), he made numerous journalistic contributions to The Statesman and to The Hindustan Standard and a few short broadcast presentations on All-India Radio. He also wrote Eastern Interlude, a Social History of the European Community in Calcutta from 1649-1911, described by the Hindustan Times (India) as “a vivid picture of European social life in India free from prejudices and prepossessions”; by the Hindustan Standard (India) as “objective …brilliant”; by the Indian PEN “Exceptionally well-balanced”; and by The Times (London) as “most diverting and readable…amusing and vivid… it comes to life on every page”. While I was working for him at his DC office, he republished the book (the original was well out of print by then) around 1999 and sold a further couple of hundred copies.

He was invited to serve as a member of the Cultural Advisory Committee of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, but this honour was brief because he soon afterwards left India for Pakistan. Roger Pearson is also proud of having saved the historic and architecturally important South Park Street Cemetery (dating from 1765-1815 when Calcutta was the capital of British India) from demolition. On his offer to set up a restoration fund, the Christian Burial Board, which lacked the funds to restore the decaying monuments, agreed to halt demolition and allow him to establish a fund which, with the eventual support of the Calcutta architect Bernard Matthews, Aurelius David Khan, ICS, and Sir John Woodhead, former and last British Governor of Bengal, succeeded in restoring most of the monuments and having the cemetery declared a National Monument by the Government of India.

Having lost his only brother (a Battle of Britain pilot, killed in North Africa shortly after his 21st birthday), four cousins (three pilots/one aircrew) and two close school friends, all without offspring, to the Second World War, Roger was shocked by the massive dysgenic loss resulting from internecine war in Europe.

He was also saddened by the cultural destruction when he visited war-torn Europe as a student in 1950 and found inspiration at a student summer school in Aachen University in Germany, funded by several European governments with the goal of promoting healing across Europe. Roger instinctively perceived its value and four years later, when employed with a British bank in Calcutta, he founded Northern World, a cultural, non-political Journal of North European Friendship, with the particular goal of promoting reconciliation between the closely related nations of Northern Europe who had so recently been engaged in destroying each other in two “Brothers’ Wars”.

Northern World was favourably received in like-minded circles, including the famed author J.R.R. Tolkien (who also subscribed to AK Chesterton’s Candour journal) and the agrarian environmentalist, Rolf Gardiner, both of whom sent personal letters of congratulation. The success of this venture led Roger, now a rising business executive, to announce the formation of a society – along with Peter Huxley-Blythe, to promote North European friendship, called The Northern League for North European Friendship (more commonly known as The Northern League). Under Roger’s leadership the League remained mainly a cultural and essentially non-political organization. With his business responsibilities mounting rapidly, by 1961 he found it necessary to resign his membership and from all Northern League activities.

Following his withdrawal, the Northern League became more political and published a new journal called The Northlander. British members included Robert Gayre, Alistair Harper, Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall,

By 1965, the situation for old-established British firms operating in India and Pakistan was deteriorating. China had already fought a war with India over the borders of Assam, and India was shortly to invade Pakistan and convert East Pakistan into Bangladesh. Roger could see the tide was turning and sold his own commercial interests and moved to America. On his departure he received a farewell address from the Pakistani employees stating, “Your love, affection and sympathy for your staff are never to be forgotten and specially during the reorganization we have found that you have put yourself out to a great extent in finding the retrenched staff employment, which we feel, can only be equalled by a very few.”

Dr Roger Pearson

After leaving Asia East, Pearson returned to England for a few months before leaving to the United States, just before the infamous 1965 Immigration Act, which was aimed at stopping British and other Western Europeans from emigrating freely to America. Once, there he spent a year or so in California editing and writing articles and engaging in lecturing before embarking on a ten-month tour of the Caribbean and Southern Africa.

Returning to the United States, he joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern Mississippi as an Assistant Professor (1968), wrote his Introduction to Anthropology (published in 1974 by what was then the largest Anthropology publishing house in the USA), accepted a position as Associate Professor and Department Head of the Sociology at Queen’s College, Charlotte (today Queens University of Charlotte), before returning to the University of Southern Mississippi (commonly known as ‘Ole Miss’) as Full Professor and Chairman of a new Department of Anthropology offering both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

At ‘Ole Miss’ Dr. Pearson launched the the Journal of Indo-European Studies and the JIES Monograph series (1972) in collaboration with and under the guidance of the distinguished UCLA archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and University of Texas linguist and mythologist Edgar Polome. He continued to publish JIES via The Institute for the Study of Man until well into his late 80s. It is now edited by Emily Blanchard West (St. Catherine).

In the mid-1960s Dr. Pearson teamed up with Willis Carto (who would later go on to run Liberty Lobby and publish the Spotlight newspaper) for a while and they published a magazine called Western Destiny (1965-66), which was probably the first high quality journal the “American Right” had published since the end of WWII. They stayed friends up until the late 1990s when Willis Carto fell out with Dr. Pearson for not being extreme enough! From 1966 to 1967 under the pen-name “Stephan Langton”, Dr. Pearson published (via Noontide Press) The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to “a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question”.

However, not content with standing still, in 1974, Dr. Pearson accepted a position as Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech of the University of Montana in Butte, Montana, a mile high in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, in the course of which he also became ex-officio Secretary of the Montana Energy and Magnetohydrodynamic Research and Development Institute.

During his time in Montana he joined the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Further adventures now called, and after one year Dr. Pearson again moved, this time to Washington, D.C. (1975) where he founded the Council on American Affairs as the new U.S. chapter. He went on to become Director of the North American Chapter of WACL and publisher and editor of a new journal entitled The Journal of American Affairs (founded 1975), which later changed its name to The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies). In the early years the journal published articles by both scholars, and senators and congressmen. Dr. Pearson continued to publish JSPS via Scott-Townsend until well into his late 80s.

Traveling widely to attend WACL conferences throughout the Far East, South and Central America, and Europe, Dr. Pearson conferenced face to face with several Heads of State, including King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. In 1978 he was elected World Chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978 and hosted the 1979 World Conference of the League in Washington DC. The five-day proceedings were attended by upwards of a thousand WACL members and guests from free countries around the globe (including Lady Jane Birdwood from the UK). The Opening Ceremony was conducted with the aid of The U.S. Joint Armed Services Honour Guard and the Marine Corps Band and addressed by two U.S. Senators!

While Pravda in Moscow was ready to condemn the Conference out of hand, the left-wing Washington Post (WP), which had had a reporter at the Conference, totally ignored it for some thirty days while preparing a virtually full-page attack on both the WACL and its president, Dr. Pearson. Writing fancifully about “fascists” and South American “death squads”, the author of the Post article also levelled charges against Dr. Pearson’s alleged efforts to enrol “extremists” into WACL – surely not!

Indeed, it is a fact that, unlike the delegates from Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Central and Southern America, Pearson found the WACL European and Asian chapters replete with delegates who were almost soft on Communism (not including Lady Birdwood of course!). One Indian delegate constantly attacked “neo-colonialism”, but seemed never to mention the very real Communist threat to freedom in the 1960s and ’70s.

Dr. Pearson consequently promoted the recruitment of more genuine anti-Communists, such as the Italian Social Movement (MSI), at that time the fourth largest political party in Italy, whose successors – the Fratelli d’Italia (‘Brothers of Italy’) won Italy’s parliamentary elections in September 2022: their leader Giorgia Meloni became her country’s first female prime minister. I’m sure that brought a smile to his face!

After the WACL Dr. Pearson continued to work with the American Security Council, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Journal of International Relations. But efforts by the liberal-left to frustrate his work continued. His scientific comprehension of Darwinian reality, and the importance of genetic, cultural, and environmental concerns for the survival of humanity, made him a target for those who care only about the present generation, and not those numberless generations hopefully still to come. His sociological and anthropological training meant that he never stressed the biological at the expense of the environmental, because biological organisms are dependent on the ecosphere – and also on a culture that supports both the biological and the environmental heritage. This the liberal-left hated, and they carried on a campaign against him and his work well into the 2000s.

Concerned about the future of the human race, Dr. Pearson became a Member of the British Eugenics Society, now known as the Galton Institute, as early as 1963, and was elected a Fellow in 1977. In 1979 he also assumed publication of Professor Robert Gayre’s Mankind Quarterly, which the latter had founded in 1960 with the aid of distinguished scholars such as Henry Vallois, S.D. Porteus, and Sir Charles B. Darwin. As the earlier generation of contributors passed on, he was able to recruit distinguished scholars to replace them, such as Joseph Campbell, Raymond B. Cattell, Hans Eysenck and William Shockley. Dr. Pearson continued to publish MQ via Scott-Townsend until well into his late 80s, and around 2010 passed it over to Prof. Richard Lynn, who publishes it via the Ulster Institute for Social Research.

In 1990 Pearson founded the bi-monthly Conservative Review, an American version of Right NOW!, and published it via the Council for Social and Economic Studies. The magazine lasted almost seven years, but folded in 1997, due to lack of support from the “right-wing” of the GOP.

Not forgetting the importance of Universities to the rising generation, and concerned by the premeditated campus disruptions during the 1960s and 70s, Dr. Pearson joined the University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO), and served as its President 1980-84. Combining his credentials in the social sciences with his practical experience in the commercial world, his bank training in accounting, and his professional status as a former Fellow of the British Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and member of the British Institute of Directors, he also served as a Trustee of the Benjamin Franklin University in Washington D.C. for a number of years before that respected institution, noted for the quality of its alumni, was absorbed into Georgetown University.

In 1984 Pearson received a Certificate of Appreciation signed by General Daniel O. Graham, Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency under President Reagan, and later of High Frontier, expressing “grateful appreciation for the important work you have done to prepare the way for a more secure world.” Also, a 1985 written accolade from the US Department of Education for “outstanding service to U.S. Education, and Education Reform Efforts”. But perhaps the most significant tribute, and one that annoyed Pearson’s critics most strongly, was a signed letter from President Ronald Reagan commending Pearson for “promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad …bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defence.”

Later an embarrassed White House official asked Dr. Pearson not to use the letter for publicity purposes, after they had come under attack from the Washington Post!

Dr Pearson introduced genuine committed activists to strengthen anti-communist campaigns during the 1970s.

Dr. Pearson wrote over a dozen books including:
Eastern Interlude. Thacker Spink, Calcutta; Luzac and Co., London (1953) – republished by Scott-Townsend 1999.

Eugenics and Race. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1958).

Blood Groups and Race. 2nd ed. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1966).

Race & Civilisation. 2nd Ed. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1966).

Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples. London: Northern World (1958); Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1965).

Introduction to Anthropology: An Ecological/Evolutionary Approach. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston (1974)

Sino-Soviet Intervention in Africa. Council on American Affairs (1977)

Korea in the World Today. Washington, D.C.: Council on American Affairs (1978)

Ecology and Evolution. Washington, D.C.: Mankind Quarterly Monograph (1981)

Essays in Medical Anthropology. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1981)

Anthropological Glossary. Marla at, FL: Krieger Publishing (1985)

Evolution, Creative Intelligence, and Intergroup Competition. Cliveden Press (1986)

William Shockley: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Preface by Arthur Jensen. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1992).

Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Introduction by Hans Eysenck.[47] Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991. (2nd. Ed. 1994).

Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1991) [2nd ed. 1998].

I first met Dr. Pearson in 1996 a year or so after I had moved from Devon in England to live the States. A mutual friend Carl Knittle, who was working for him at his down-town DC office at the time introduced us. Carl had just handed in his notice, and they were looking for his replacement, which turned out to be me!

I ended up working there for over six years, and only left when the US Government issued me with a ten-year exclusion order towards the end of 2002, so I had no choice but to leave and return to dear old Blighty.

From his DC office – which was only six or seven blocks from the White House – and only one block away from a black (now Hispanic) ghetto! – Dr. Pearson edited and published three journals, the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies (JSPS), the Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES) and his pride and joy the Mankind Quarterly (MQ). He also published numerous books and monographs, many sold through his mail order (and later online) book shop – Scott Townsend Books.

Both Dr. Pearson and his wife Marion – who died around ten years before him – were very kind to me. In fact, if it had not been for them, I don’t think I would have survived so long Stateside. They had four children, two boys and two girls. The girls both married Europeans (a Frenchman and a German) and they were very proud to have a true pan-European family. Their eldest son Edwin was born (in India) on exactly the same day as me (in Worcester) on October 3rd, 1960, which they both found amusing. Sadly, Edwin died very young in his forties.

During those six years working at his office at 1133 on 13th Street, NW, I met so many interesting people, including to name but a few Dr. Philippe Rushton, Prof. Glayde Whitney, Attorney Sam Dickson, Paul Fromm, and the men with the deep pockets – Harry Weyher and Bill Regnery.

American Renaissance, which is run by Jared Taylor, used to hold their annual conference near to their office in Northern Virginia, not too far away from down-town Washington DC, so many conference attendees use to pop into the our office to say hello, and sometimes taking Dr. Pearson out for lunch, en route to the conference. It was always nice to meet new and old friends.

Two other “doctors” from time to time used to visit the office, when passing through DC – Dr. William L. Pierce and Dr. Edward R. Fields – they would normally go out with Dr. Pearson for either lunch or dinner depending on the time of the visit. I later found out that during Dr. Pierce’s last visit the FBI had staked out the building! They tailed them both to a local restaurant, sat inside at a table close to theirs while they ate and talked, then tailed them back to the office. It seems that every time Dr. Pierce left the National Alliance compound in West Virginia, to go out of town, the Feds went with him! Anyway, it was good to see American taxes were put to good use!

President Reagan’s controversial letter to Dr Pearson

And then there was “9-11”. On September 11th 2001, I got into the office on time, which was a couple of minutes before 9am and started to drink my coffee (I would do the typically American thing of eating my bagel while walking to work!). Up until then – as they say – it was just a normal day at the office!

Dr. Pearson was already in his office (which was the room next door to mine) hard at work. He normally got there before me, around 8.45am most mornings. However, he did not have very far to travel – as he lived in an apartment (flat) just above the office, on the 4th or 5th floor (I think). We said our usual pleasantries, and I then got on with going through the mail from the previous day (I did not normally work on a Monday) and from the weekend.

Looking back on it, around the time I was getting my breakfast, around 8.46am, New York was turning into a scene of devastation after the first of the two planes smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And around the time I was sitting down at my desk and starting to open the mail, around 9.03am the second plane was smashing into the South Tower.

Both 110 storey towers collapsed within an hour and forty-two minutes, leading to the collapse of the other World Trade Center structures including the 7 World Trade Center, and significantly damaging all the surrounding buildings.

Of course, Dr. Pearson and I were oblivious to all this, as we did not have a radio or TV on in either office, and it was just before the days of smart phones.

The first we knew that something was wrong, was when Dr. Pearson’s wife Marion rang him from their upstairs flat, where I guess she was watching the events unfold on TV. He told me what she had told him, but to honest it did not really sink in there and then what was going on. So, we just carried on working as normal.

I guess five minutes later, just before 9.20am we got another phone call which I answered this time. It was BNP leader Nick Griffin! He told us basically what Mrs. Pearson had just told us, that two hijacked planes had crashed into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, but then added that two more planes were now on their way to DC to blow up the White House and Capital Buildings, and that we needed to get out quickly!

Of course, even we wanted to get out – which we didn’t – where were we meant to get out to? However, Nick meant well, and I appreciate him warning us anyway, even though there was nothing we could do about it. I thanked him and told him we would not be moving from the building at this time, but if he could ring back with any updates, that would be very useful.

I talked over the situation with Dr. Pearson, and he said he did not think the planes would even reach DC, and even if they did, their targets were so far away from us that we would “probably be ok”! So, we sat back down at our desks and carried on working.

However, we had only been back at our desks for a couple of minutes, when we heard a hell of a commotion going on outside our building. At 9:37am, the third of the hijacked planes crashed into the west side of the Pentagon (the headquarters of the American military, as well as a large underground shopping mall), which was just over the Potomac River in NW Arlington, Virginia, causing a partial collapse of the building’s west side.

To give you an idea of distance, The Pentagon is about three and miles south east of our office, maybe a ten-minute drive away. It’s just south of Arlington National Cemetery, and just north of Alexandria.

I can remember hearing an explosion, and then the noise of hundreds of other office workers, and locals outside our office on the streets. I said to Dr. Pearson that I was going outside to see what the heck was happening, because we had no windows in the office so I could not peer out. Once outside I could see all the smoke in the distance, and word got round that the Pentagon had been hit.

I can’t remember there being a panic, but a lot of my fellow DC workers were very concerned as word had got around that the 4th plane was on its way to DC!

However, the 4th plane – United 93 – never reached DC. And US authorities even to this day, don’t know for sure if the target was to have been the White House or the Capitol.

The story put about by President Bush’s spin-doctors that the passengers aboard United 93 decided to act once they realized all was lost – i.e. storm the flight deck, attack the terrorists and bring the plane down before it reached Washington DC – sadly did not happen. But why would it have done, it never happened on the other three hijacked flights, and they had many more passengers.

What did really happen, was that Bush ordered United 93 to be shot down before it got anywhere near DC. This flight was the only plane not to hit its intended target, instead after being shot down it crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 170 miles from DC at 10:03 am.

Once the news spread around DC that plane number four had crashed and that there were probably no more hijacked planes up in the skies, most of the workers either returned to their offices – as I did – or they left and started to make their way back home.

Dr Pearson’s institute received funds from important American donors including the Pioneer Fund

I asked Dr. Pearson what we should do, and he said, “just carry on working Mark”! Which is what I did until around noon when I went for an early lunch. All public transport in DC was in the process of being stopped, but most of the bars and restaurants seemed to be open, with customers glued to the TVs. I found a Subway close by and got a meal and a soda (pop to you Brits!) and tried to check my cell phone, only to find it not working. The internet had also gone down, but landlines were still working.

I made my way back to the office, where Dr. Pearson was still working. He informed me he was then going up upstairs to his flat for his lunch. So, I just went back to work. Strange when you look back on it.

My girlfriend of the time (Jackie) was calling the office every half an hour or so, asking when I was going to get out of DC and come home. I told her the same thing each time: as soon as I can.

Dr. Pearson came back down to the office around 2pm I guess, and told me to pack up for the day, since it would take me ages to get home as there was no public transport. Even most of the ‘enriched’ taxi drivers had gone home by then. So, I called Jackie back from the office landline and said I was going to start to make my way back to Falls Church, but be prepared for a long wait as it may take a while!

A full report of the events from “9-11” can be found on the H&D website – click here for details.

There are so many incredible stories I could tell you about Dr. Roger Pearson and the goings on at the office and around DC, including our trips to the Martin Luther King Jr. Post Office, which used to run out of stamps!; our trip with Zach (who use to work part time at the office himself in the early days) to Burger King, where Dr. P. ordered off the cuff not from the set menu, which completely baffled the young black counter assistant!; the day Dr. Pearson telephoned Zach’s home and his brother Corey answered the phone and thought it was, and I quote “the King of England calling”! The day Dr. P. went for a lunch time drink with Zach and I in a bar near McPherson Square, and a lefty looking bloke with very long hair stood by us waiting to be served. Zach said to Dr. P. “what do you make of him”, to which Dr. P. replied “he’s probably a homosexual”! The day after Princess Diana died (I was at work even though it was a Sunday): Dr. P. and I went out for lunch near the White House and Yanks were coming up to us in the restaurant giving us their condolences, as if we knew her!

Of course, we had our ups and downs, but overall, I had six very enjoyable years working for Dr. Pearson, where I learnt not only how to run an efficient office (a well-oiled machine – you should see the H&D office now!), but so much more about race, eugenics, anthropology, history and American politics.

The last time I spoke to him was shortly before Christmas. I think my phone call had woken him up from an afternoon nap, and it took a couple of minutes for him to realise who I was. But after that he was fine, and we had a good old natter, chatting about old times in DC and the political situation in the UK. He was still very sharp even at 95.

I will sorely miss Dr. Roger Pearson, he was one of a kind. And if there is a Valhalla, he will surely have a place there.

From chapter 8 of Fagrskinna, one of the kings’ sagas, written around 1220. The composition is by an anonymous author from the 10th century and is referred to as Eiríksmál, and describes Eric Bloodaxe and five other kings arriving in Valhalla after their death. The poem begins with comments by Odin (as Old Norse Óðinn):

“What kind of a dream is it,” said Odinn,
“in which just before daybreak,
I thought I cleared Valhǫll,
for coming of slain men?
I waked the Einherjar,
bade valkyries rise up,
to strew the bench,
and scour the beakers,

Wine to carry,
as for a king’s coming,
here to me I expect
heroes’ coming from the world,
certain great ones,
so glad is my heart.”