Editing Bernard Darwin (section)

==Biography==
Born in [[Downe]], [[Kent]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/LCX3-SPN/bernard-richard-meirion-darwin-1876-1961|title=FamilySearch.org|website=ancestors.familysearch.org}}</ref> Darwin was the son of [[Francis Darwin]] and Amy Ruck, his mother dying from a fever on 11 September, four days after his birth. He was the first grandson of [[Charles Darwin|Charles]] and [[Emma Darwin]] (see [[Darwin–Wedgwood family]]), and was brought up by them at their home, [[Down House]]. His younger half-sister from his father's second marriage to [[Ellen Wordsworth Darwin|Ellen Wordswotth Crofts]] was the poet [[Frances Cornford]].
[[File:Bernard Darwin (golf) LCCN2014712856.jpg|thumb|Darwin playing golf in 1900]]
Darwin was educated at [[Eton College]], and graduated in [[law]] from [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], where he was a [[Cambridge Blue]] in [[Cambridge University Golf Club|golf]] 1895–1897, and team captain in his final year.<ref>{{acad|id=DRWN894BR|name=Darwin, Bernard Richard Meirion}}</ref>

Darwin married the engraver [[Elinor Monsell]] in 1906. They had one son, Sir [[Robert Vere Darwin]], and two daughters; the potter [[Ursula Mommens]], and Nicola Mary Elizabeth Darwin, later Hughes (1916–1976). During the [[First World War]] he served with the [[Royal Army Ordnance Corps]] in [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] as a [[lieutenant]].

After Cambridge, Darwin became a court [[lawyer]], but did not particularly enjoy that career, and gradually moved into [[journalism]], despite having no formal training. He covered golf for ''[[The Times]]'' from 1907 to 1953 and for ''[[Country Life (magazine)|Country Life]]'' from 1907 to 1961, the first writer ever to cover golf on a daily basis, instead of as an occasional feature.

He played the game at an excellent level himself well into middle age, and competed in [[The Amateur Championship]] on 26 occasions across five decades between 1898 and 1935, with his best results being semi-final appearances in 1909 and 1921. In 1922, while in the United States to report on the first [[Walker Cup]] amateur team match between Britain and Ireland and the U.S., and also appointed as non-playing captain, Darwin was pressed into service at the last minute as a player, when one of the British team members, Robert Harris, was unable to play. He lost his team match, but won his singles match.

He was Captain of [[The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews]] in 1934, and was President of the [[Golf Club Managers' Association]] (then the Association of Golf Club Secretaries) from 1933 to 1934 and then again from 1955 to 1958. Though mainly a golf writer, he also occasionally wrote on [[cricket]], and prefaced the first edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He was awarded [[Commander of the Order of the British Empire|CBE]] in the [[1937 Coronation Honours]].<ref>{{London Gazette |date=11 May 1937 |supp=y |issue=34396 |pages=3089 }}</ref>

Bernard Darwin was an authority on [[Charles Dickens]]. He frequently contributed the fourth leading article in ''The Times''. The fourth Leader was devoted to flippant themes, and Darwin was known to insert quotes from or about Dickens in them. When Oxford Press issued all classics by Dickens around 1940, each with a foreword by a Dickensian scholar, Darwin was chosen to contribute the foreword to ''[[The Pickwick Papers]]''. He was also asked by ''The Times'' to pen the main tribute to cricketer [[W.G. Grace]] when Grace's birth centenary was celebrated in 1948. The article has been included since in a few anthologies.

Bernard Darwin's works were kept in print by [[Herbert Warren Wind]] through his curated Classics of Golf Library.

In 1947, Bernard Darwin wrote 'A Century of Medical Service' about the work of the GWR Medical Fund Society. The society was founded in 1847 and was being disbanded in 1947, with the arrival of the NHS. The society provided a complete medical service for the workers and their families in the [[Swindon Works|Swindon rail works]].<ref>A Century of Medical Service by Bernard Darwin {{ISBN|0 9518540 0 3}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=GWR Medical Fund Society (Swindon) |url=https://www.culhamticketoffice.co.uk/bits/welfare3.html |access-date=2024-12-01 |website=www.culhamticketoffice.co.uk}}</ref>

In 2005, Darwin was elected to the [[World Golf Hall of Fame]], in the Lifetime Achievement category.

He is buried in [[St Mary's Church, Downe|St Mary the Virgin]] Churchyard, [[Downe]], Kent.