Diaries of David Allan Hamilton (1905-2001)

Throughout his life, Hamilton recorded his walking and cycling trips, a total of 900 nights spent away from home. His earliest memories were committed to paper as a boy scout and the final entry in his diaries, when he was 69, records a cycle/camping trip from his retirement home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, to West Runton, Norfolk - a distance of 48 miles each way.

The diaries comprise five large volumes (MSS.328/N93/1-5), each full of handwritten entries, sketches and photographs. They cover a number of trips throughout Great Britain, as well as trips to the Netherlands, Germany (in 1933) and France (in 1934). The last detailed descriptions and photographs date from 1936, after which most entries record only date and distance covered.

Hamilton was born in Willesden, London in 1905, the eldest son of a working-class couple of Scottish origin. His interest in the outdoors began in the recently-founded Boy Scouts and gradually included cycle trips (e.g. around North London to the Scout camp at Gilwell Park). Although receiving a scholarship to attend Kilburn Grammar School, he left at 16 and worked as an office boy for a tea importer in London. In the 1920s he trained as an elementary school teacher at Goldsmith's College London, also completing an external BA (econ) at Birkbeck College, London. He married a fellow-teacher in 1937 and they worked together until both retired in the 1960s and moved to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

Joining the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC) in 1929 and becoming a life member, he also became a life-long communist. As his diaries record, he found great solace in the call of the wild as a means of surviving the turbulent years of economic depression, the struggle against fascism and the cold war. He cycled regularly until he was over 80, including a 20-mile cycle ride to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary in 1987. His final years were spent in Inverness, near his daughter, and, following a stroke, he died in a nursing home in 2001 at the age of 96.

This collection is available to researchers by appointment at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. See https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/using/

Link to full catalogue: https://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/NCA/1/24