Queer Places:
Eton College, Windsor, Windsor and Maidenhead SL4 6DW
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Bernard Winthrop Swithinbank (1884-1958) was a civil servant. Lytton Strachey was part of the Cambridge Apostles like John Maynard Keynes. The relation between the two leaders within the Apostles was always an ambivalent one, riven by rivalry over their loves. There was the charming George Duckworth: Strachey discovered by accident that Keynes was also after him. There was abitter tussle as to who should sponsor him for the Apostolic fellowship; Keynes, being more ruthless, won. We learn that "for two months following the election of Duckworth, Lytton was filled with an almost demented hatred of Keynes." He even "launched an extraordinary onslaught upon Keynes before the assembled Apostles." Shockingly unethical, according to the gospel of the Venerable Moore. Shortly Strachey transferred his affections to Bernard Winthrop Swithinbank, and Duckworth transferred his to the irresistible Duncan Grant. So Strachey was one, or possible two, up.
Bernard Winthrop Swithinbank was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He entered the Indian Civil Service (Burma) in 1909. He was Commissioner from 1933 to 1942, and Adviser to the Secretary of State for Burma in 1942. He married Dorothea and had one son, Charles Winthrop Molesworth Swithinbank (1926–2014), glaciologist and polar scientist.
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