It's not often that the epitome of the muscular Anglican missionary, Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe, gets a write up in the daily papers - but he makes it to today's Guardian, thanks to the ever engaging Ian Jack. Tyndale-Biscoe spent much of his life in Kashmir. He is remembered as an educationalist. The boys school in Srinagar which bears his name still flourishes.
Ian Jack writes of the missionary as the man who introduced football into the valley - a very suitable way to mould men. Tyndale-Biscoe also spent a great deal of time tackling what he saw as the vices of his time - a lack of manliness, and the prevalence of sodomy and brothels. His autobiography was entitled, with an immodesty of which he would have been entirely unaware, Tyndale-Biscoe of Kashmir.
He didn't "stay on" in independent India, but moved to what was then Rhodesia - a story in itself - and died there in 1949.
Ian Jack writes of the missionary as the man who introduced football into the valley - a very suitable way to mould men. Tyndale-Biscoe also spent a great deal of time tackling what he saw as the vices of his time - a lack of manliness, and the prevalence of sodomy and brothels. His autobiography was entitled, with an immodesty of which he would have been entirely unaware, Tyndale-Biscoe of Kashmir.
He didn't "stay on" in independent India, but moved to what was then Rhodesia - a story in itself - and died there in 1949.
RSS Feed