Mike Audley-Charles was head of the department of geological sciences at University College London
HenryAudley-Charles
Sun 14 Feb 2021 11.43 EST
Last modified on Wed 17 Mar 2021 15.20 EDT
My father, Mike Audley-Charles, who has died aged 86, was a geologist with a special interest in south-east Asia. His research during the 1960s and 70s offered new interpretations on the formation of the Banda Arc, a set of island arcs in eastern Indonesia, the evolution of Gondwana, a southern supercontinent that existed about 550 million years ago, and the origin of the Timor Trough in the ocean north of Australia.
Mike was born in Worthing, Sussex, to Laurence, a merchant seaman, and Elsie (nee Ustonson), a housewife. His father was killed in the second world war, and as Mike’s mother could not afford to keep her two children, he spent his early years in an orphanage, going home in the holidays. He left the orphanage aged 16, after taking O-levels, then studied A-levels at Enfield Technica
This ambitious history of the British Empire touches on everything from the Mahabharata to Marx
In ‘Time’s Monster’, author Priya Satia tells many truths long unacknowledged. Feb 13, 2021 · 05:30 pm British cavalry charging against Russian forces at Balaclava in 1854. | The Relief of the Light Brigade / Public Domain
Since Niall Ferguson first published
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World almost two decades ago, there has been a remarkable resurgence of jingoistic Empire nostalgia in Britain, a trend that has gained renewed impetus with Brexit and as part of the current so-called “culture-war”.
Take for instance the controversy over the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, which has become an unlikely rallying point for those of a more conservative persuasion. Rhodes’ modern-day supporters insist that was a great man whose memory should be honoured, and that removing his statue would be tantamount to the erasure of hi