Thomas Dewar Weldon

Thomas Dewar Weldon (5 December 1896, Marylebone, London – 13 May 1958, Oxford), known as "Harry", was a British philosopher.

Life

Thomas Weldon was born at 3 Bryanston Mansions, York Street, Marylebone, London, in 1896. After an education at Tonbridge School, he won a scholarship to read literae humaniores at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he postponed to become an officer in the Royal Field Artillery in 1915. He spent World War I in France and Belgium, rising to acting captain, being wounded and winning the Military Cross and bar. He finally went up to Oxford in 1919, graduating with a first class degree in 1921. Weldon was elected a fellow and philosophy tutor at his college two years later, getting to know CS Lewis (Lewis described Weldon as quick to anger and cynical). He then served as Rhodes travelling fellow in 1930, a temporary civil servant in London from 1939 to 1942, and Personal Staff Officer to Arthur Harris in RAF Bomber Command at High Wycombe from 1942 to 1945. His final duties during World War II involved justifying Harris's controversial bombing strategy to politicians and the public. His death in 1958 was attributed by college rumour to suicide but was in fact due to a cerebral hemorrhage.

Works

• Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1945; 2nd ed., 1958)
• States and Morals (1946)
• The Vocabulary of Politics (1953)

References

• (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• R.W. Johnson, Look Back in Laughter: Oxford's Postwar Golden Age (2015) has extensive biographical material on Harry Weldon.

External links

• Times Higher Education