User:P. S. Burton/New7

Robert Paton Longden (1903 – 8 October 1940) was a British educationalist and headmaster of Wellington College, Berkshire from 1937 until his death.

Longden was the only child of Vice-Admiral Horace Walker Longden CMG and his wife, Emily Gretchen Hewitt. His grandfather, Sir James Longden, had been Governor of Ceylon and British Guiana.

Longden was born in 1904, at Lisle Court, Wootton on the Isle of Wight, the home of his maternal grandmother, Ernestine Hewitt. Robert Longden was an undergraduate at Magdalen College. He was appointed a Student of Christ Church in 1928. Earlier that year, he had spent some time in North Africa and returned to England on April 28 from Algiers.

In 1931, his "Notes on the Parthian Campaigns of Trajan" had been published in the Journal of Roman Studies Vol. 21. He assisted with the cataloguing of the Wilshere Collection at Pusey House. He held the post of Censor at Christ Church when he was appointed Master of Wellington College, Berkshire in 1937. In the early summer, he holidayed in the United States with his parents, returning to Southampton on the Georgic on July 19th.

He was killed during a bombing raid whilst on Home Guard duties at Wellingon on October 8 1940.

His name is on the Memorials at Magdalen College, Wellington College and on the Crowthorne War Memorial

http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U213027?rskey=HOGxFJ&result=1