Obituary: E. L. C. Mullins

Edward Lindsay Carson Mullins, historian, born London 12 December 1913, Secretary Editorial Board History of Parliament 1951-79, OBE 1971, died London 31 January 1993.

E. L. C. MULLINS was secretary to the Editorial Board of the History of Parliament from 1951 until his retirement in 1979.

After attending University College School, London, and University College, Eddie Mullins was commissioned into the Royal Artillery at the outbreak of war. He was captured at the fall of Singapore and, following an attempted escape from prisoner-of-war camp, was imprisoned under harsh conditions for the remainder of hostilities.

Returning to academic life, he became 'organising secretary' of the History of Parliament, when, in 1951 Colonel Wedgwood's great biographical project was financed by a government grant-in-aid under a committee of historians with Sir Frank Stenton in the chair. All Mullins's ample powers of tact and diplomacy were needed to reconcile the competing, often conflicting, claims and ambitions of the eminent figures who comprised the board. A committee can no more edit a history than it can command a ship, so that gradually Mullins assumed the preparation and production of the work, and by the time of his retirement the 18th-century volumes had seen the light of day.

It is a matter for regret that so much of his own creative writing went into memoranda, minutes and grant applications, so that his own published contributions to the History are limited to the lives of the Bowes family in the Elizabethan volumes. However his two volumes of Texts and Calendars (1958 and 1983) and prize-winning Guide to the Historical and Archaeological Publications of Societies in England and Wales (1968) are and will remain of immeasurable value to historians.

Mullins was appointed OBE in 1971 and elected a Fellow of University College London in 1976.

A tall, slim, somewhat military figure, Mullins spent his last months among the brethren of the Charterhouse, where he found, in Thackeray's words, 'Good quarters, good food, good light and fire and good friends'.

His reserve concealed an acerbic wit and a warm and sensitive personality that will remain in the memories of all who knew him.