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Sri Lanka
05 Sep 2010
15:34 |
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| William Adair Nelson |
William Nelson has been interested in castles since his schooldays. However, his interest in 'artillery fortifications' began when he was working in Sri Lanka before the Second World War for a firm of Chartered Accountants in Colombo. He was struck by the astonishing variety and number of Dutch Forts in the Island and had the opportunity to travel widely and record them all in detail.
The author came back to Europe to work in Belgium in 1938 and in 1939 returned to London to enlist. He spent most of the War in the Middle-East in the Royal Artillery. For the last thirty years before his retirement W A Nelson was in charge of the finances of Aberdeen University. It is only in the last three years that he has had the leisure to finish his research on the Dutch Forts and to add to the great amount of material he had gathered together many years previously.
William Adair Nelson passed away in Aberdeen, Scotland, in August 1993, aged 86. His obituary appeared in Casemate, the Fortress Study Group Newsletter and in the Aberdeen Grammar School Magazine.
Nelson's second book. Fort Jesus of Mombasa, was published posthumously in 1994. |
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