Nicholas Allen interviewed by Alan Macfarlane, 19^th September 2001

0.00.05 Introduction; father worked at British Museum before the war, then a civil servant; secretary and then treasurer of the British Academy; mother lived in France and Germany during the 1930’s and a good linguist; keen mountaineer and encouraged his interest in mountains, culminating in the Himalayas; brothers.

0.04:25 Father sent to Far East to write a report on shipping and took his family to Hong Kong in 1947; stayed for two years; wondered if it played as significant part in becoming an anthropologist, but doubt it a little exposure to anything but ex-pat culture; various schools then prep school in England and to Rugby; much influenced by  very good classics master, Norman Saunders, who established a tutorial system and fostered interest in art, Italy etc.; by 18 could speak French, German, Italian, Spanish, but virtually no science

0:09:45 Took classics scholarship to New College, Oxford, in1956 but decided to read medicine so in last couple of terms at school took ‘O’ levels in physics, chemistry, botany and zoology; university requirements nothing like as stringent as now so had caught up with other medics after a couple of terms at Oxford; had decided that classics was rather too narrow and there was a good case for becoming a doctor; rather attracted by the idea of philanthropic work

0:13:10  No particular teacher had much influence but John Dorling, a fellow student with wide curiosity, did; in the fourth research year realised that medical research was not of particular interest; very uncertain what to do afterwards; went to St Mary’s Hospital in London but didn’t feel happy there so took time off climbing and travelling

0:16:38 After medical exams came across the idea of anthropology; did three house jobs in various hospitals; not trained in work as a general practitioner so found medical training of little use in Nepal; first found Haddon’s book on history of anthropology on the bookshelves of Alfie Gell’s father who was his mother’s brother in about 1964; then read ‘Teach Yourself Anthropology’ and then went to see Godfrey Lienhardt

0:19:00 Memories of Godfrey Lienhardt; decided to do the diploma at Oxford and was taught by Rodney Needham; found it very exciting after the dreary nature of a medical training with lots of new ideas; Needham conveyed sense of intellectual adventure; not interested in applied anthropology or economics but much on Levi-Strauss and structuralism and he had just finished translating ‘Totemism’; rather rude about Radcliffe-Brown but fan of Hocart

0:25:38 Memories of Evans-Pritchard; John Beattie; David Pocock; Edwin Ardener;

0:29:30 After diploma took another house job as didn’t get an SSRC scholarship to continue; came back to Oxford and took B.Lit. and spent eighteen months reading the ethnography on the Himalayas; wrote thesis on Nepal; climbing influenced interest in the Himalayas; Needham, who had been a Gurkha,  put him in touch with Furer-Haimendorf

0:33:00 Started language course at S.O.A.S. towards the end of B.Lit. and registered for Ph.D. at both Oxford and S.O.A.S on Needham’s advice; took language course with Lionel and Pat Caplan and Alan Macfarlane; remember Furer-Haimendorf  for arranging funding but didn’t have much influence on thinking as own interests were philological; chose to study the Rai; supposed to write on social change as part of Michael York’s SSRC project but really wanted to study the most traditional aspects of the culture from a salvage point of view; change in Nepal

0:38:10 Impressions of fieldwork in Nepal; mythology and ritual; difficulties with language; meeting with Austin Hale of Summer School of Linguistics in Kathmandu; happier last part of fieldwork; visit of future wife

0:42:08 Writing up period under Ravi Jain as supervisor, then Maurice Freedman, and finally Rodney Needham; examined by Furer-Haimendorf and Lienhardt; first job in anthropology at Durham for four years; started course on anthropology and language

0:45:15 Came back to Oxford partly for family reasons; Needham then Professor; difficulties within the department; Needham left and a management committee set up to run the department

0:49:10 Main areas of teaching – social anthropology of South Asia, then Hinduism; did no further fieldwork in Nepal but moved on to the Western Himalayas in the early 1980’s, to Himachal Pradesh; rather unsatisfactory and really wanted to do Tibeto-Burman comparativism and not enough material in that area; interest in Dumezil’s ideas, prompted by Needham, offered method for grasping long-term history of sanskritic tradition and the history of Hinduism; now working on Sanskrit and the ‘Mahabhatra’, also interested in the biography of the Buddha but need to improve understanding of pali; may develop interested in kinship terminology in the future