| Description | Oral history interview: Harold Reading interviewed by Nina Morgan about his life and geological career, carried out as part of a History of Geology Group (HOGG) project originating around the time of the bicentenary of the Society.
Recording location: Interviewee's home (Oxford)
Duration: 01:55:50
Childhood homes and schooling, joining the British Indian Army in 1942, working in forestry while waiting to travel to India, discrimination against Indians in South Africa, and officer training in India (00:11-10:21); being commissioned into the Guides Cavalry and guarding convoys in the North West Frontier/Waziristan until the end of WWII, then moving around India until leaving in 1947 (10:22-17:43); returning from India and working in forestry, going to Oxford University to do a forestry degree but changing to geology (1948-1951), finding fossils in Finnmark, Norway, and getting a Shell studentship and doing a PhD at Durham University under Kingsley Dunham (17:44-32:53); joining Shell and working in Venezuela [Harold and Nina have tea and biscuits], including colleagues, mapping/exploration practices, interviewee's second child getting polio, and the effects of the Suez Crisis (32:54-54:18); returning to Britain via USA/Canada (1957), working as a lecturer in Oxford teaching palaeontology and sedimentology, initial dissatisfaction with an academic job, and research students (54:19-01:04:00); the discovery of turbidites, and Roger Walker as a research student (01:04:01-01:13:42); research in Finnmark, Norway, and discussion on various research students supervised by the interviewee (01:13:43-01:23:24); sabbatical in Holland, including field work in the Cantabrian Mountains, Spain (1964-1965), and later research students who worked in Spain (01:23:25-01:33:32); retirement from teaching in 1991, continuation with research, discussion of interviewer's career, and changes in the teaching and practice of geology in the interviewee's lifetime (01:33:33-01:43:25); membership of scientific organisations, particularly the International Association of Sedimentologists, and post-retirement activities (01:43:26-01:55:40). |