Martin Jasper Rivington Holmes

Martin Holmes, one of the very few remaining Fellows elected before the outbreak of war in 1939, was born in London on 12 May 1905, the elder son of Sir Charles Holmes, who later became director of the National Gallery. From Westminster School he won a classical scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, but a serious car accident put paid to a potentially brilliant academic career. During his long recuperation, Holmes developed his antiquarian interests and, after taking a secretarial course and doing unpaid voluntary work at the London Museum, he joined the small staff there in 1932 as the `temporary shorthand typist', i.e. secretary to the director, Mortimer Wheeler. Holmes progressed to assistant keeper in 1934 and his assiduous study of the objects in the museum's collections resulted in his being recognized as an authority on a variety of subjects, including arms and armour, crown jewels and regalia, funeral effigies and royal costume, particularly in relation to London life from the close of the Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. While still the `temporary shorthand typist' he persuaded Wheeler to procure from Lord Amherst of Hackney the loan of three empty crown-frames connected with the coronations of Charles II, Queen Charlotte and George IV and soon afterwards read a paper to the Antiquaries on them - the first of his many papers on as many topics. In Wheeler's absence in August 1939, digging in northern France, it was left to Holmes and the late Arthur Trotman (then a `boy learner' on the staff) to carry out, very successfully, Wheeler's farsighted and detailed plans for the evacuation of the collections in the event of hostilities. Holmes, as a private in his local territorial unit in Kensington, was soon mobilised and ended the war with the rank of major in the Intelligence Corps. The lease of Lancaster House, in which the London Museum had been housed, had expired in 1940 and when Holmes returned from active service it was to temporary premises in Kensington Palace. Queen Mary, who had a magpie's love of objets d'art, and had spent much of her childhood at the palace, paid many informal visits to the museum and she and the courtly Holmes became friends. One occasion he liked to recall was her visit in the royal Daimler to the tiny Gate Theatre in Pembridge Road, adjacent to the Prince Albert pub, to attend a performance of one of his historical plays. She also remembered him personally in her will with the bequest of a Sèvres chestnut basket. Holmes was the ideal curator for the museum's important material on theatre history. He was to become an acknowledged Shakespearean scholar but even in 1938, when he organized the centenary exhibition of the birth of Sir Henry Irving, his knowledge of the subject was considerable. Holmes' highly original publications on Shakespearean topics include: The Guns of Elsinore, (1964); Shakespeare's Public: the touchstone of his genius, (1960); Shakespeare and his Players, (1972); and Shakespeare and Burbage: the sound of Shakespeare as devised to suit the voice and talents of his principal player, (1978). But his theatrical interests were far from being drily academic since he was a performer as well as a playwright and critic. He had inherited considerable musical talent from his mother, was an accomplished cellist, sang in the Covent Garden opera chorus and sometimes acted in his own plays. He loved Italian opera and was a trustee of the Carl Rosa opera company. Retirement in 1965 saw him permanently settled in the early eighteenth-century family home, Castle Bank, in Appleby, surrounded by his books, his collection of armour and the vast accumulation of costumes and props he had acquired on the demise of the Carl Rosa company which he lent out to local schools and dramatic societies. Holmes immediately embarked on civic duties; elected a councillor for the Bongate ward, he held that office for twenty-five years and served as mayor of Appleby in 1975, 1983 and 1984. He led the campaign to preserve Westmorland's identity in the borough's new name of Appleby-in-Westmorland after the local government reorganization of 1972 when the county was subsumed into `Cumbria'. In retirement he wrote his most popular book, Proud Northern Lady: Lady Anne Clifford 1590-1676, (1975) but equally important in his eyes were his guide to Appleby parish churches and his verse pageant of Appleby's history. Holmes was much distressed by a fire at Castle Bank some nine months before he died but never lost his sense of humour, which was legendary among his friends and colleagues. He died on 4 January 1997 at Castle Bank.