Peter Ritchie Calder

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Peter Ritchie Calder, Baron Ritchie-Calder of Balmashanner (1906, Forfar, Angus - 1982, Edinburgh) was a noted Scottish author, journalist and academic.

Calder first worked as a journalist in Dundee and Glasgow where he became noted as a socialist and pacifist.

After moving to London before World War II, he accepted an appointment as the Director of Plans and Campaigns at the Political Warfare Executive branch of the Government, which was responsible for the allied war propaganda effort. He wrote propaganda posters and leaflets and speeches for allied leaders. He was a member of the 1941 Committee, a group of liberal politicians, writers and other people of influence in the United Kingdom. In 1941 he became popular with his book Carry on London, which described the effects of the German bombardment of London, Coventry and other cities in Great Britain.

After the war Calder returned to his former activities as a writer and specialised in internationalism, the peace movement and in the public understanding of science. He worked also with the United Nations and was the President of the British Peace Council and of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Calder was an ardent pacifist and humanist. In 1980 he was one of the signatories of the A Secular Humanist Declaration, a statement of belief in Democratic Secular Humanism, issued by The Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism ("CODESH"), now the Council for Secular Humanism ("CSH").

He also taught International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, from 1961 to 1967. He was created a life peer in 1966 and received the 1960 Kalinga prize.

Lord Richtie-Calder is the father of science writer Nigel Calder (b.1931) and also writer and historian Angus Calder (b.1942). He is also the grandfather of travel writer Simon Calder.

[edit] Works

  • Carry On London (1941)
  • Living with the Atom
  • Born of the Wilderness
  • Men Against the Jungle
  • Men Against the Desert
  • Medicine and Men
  • Profile in Science
  • Man and the Cosmos
  • After the Seventh Day
  • The Future of a Troubled World
  • The Hand of Life
  • Science in our Lives
  • The Wonderful World of Medicine
  • Leonardo
  • The Inheritors: The Story of Man and the World he Made
  • The Pollution of the Mediterranean Sea
  • Science and Socialism
  • West Meets East
  • Dawn Over Asia
  • The Birth of the Future
  • Man and His Environment
  • Hurtling Toward 2000 A.D.
  • A Home Called Earth
  • Science in Israel

[edit] External links

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